Dance with Enthusiasm: Six Personal Branding Advantages for Amazing Corporations

Why would a company care about the personal brands of their employees? Now, more than ever, we rely on personal recommendations. All of us are part of the target audience for countless products and services. We are flooded with targeted advertising every day. When we need a product or service, social media, apps, and websites empower us to conduct our own research. Recommendations, comments, and ratings from customers color our opinion and influence whether we contact the company to learn more.

Today’s buyers also form opinions of a company and its products and services based on their employees. After all, companies are made up of people. The team a company builds tells you a lot about the company itself. And every member of the team is a brand ambassador, whether that is their official title or not. The personal branding of employees directly corresponds to the company's branding and success.

As the primary social media platform for business, LinkedIn offers tremendous opportunities for companies and their employees to capitalize on this dynamic. But sometimes there is a hesitancy to do so. There might be concerns about control over company messaging. Or anxiety that helping employees brush up their profile just makes them more attractive to competitors.

Companies need to overcome those fears. Here are just a few of the reasons why:

1.    Don’t sit this one out. Your key stakeholders are already dancing.

Too many companies respond to social media use by trying to stifle it. Billions of people are active on social media every day. Your employees, customers, prospects, partners, and competitors are all browsing, posting, and interacting. Stop trying to stifle social media use. A much more productive goal is to leverage all that activity to benefit your company and employees.

2.    Employee personal brands personalize your company.

If your employees are posting about their positive experiences at the company and enthusiasm for their professional life, prospects will notice. Your company will no longer be a somewhat distant, anonymous entity. Your people will give it a unique voice. In addition, if you encourage employees to post company content and add their perspectives, you greatly extend the reach of your valuable company content.

3.    Yes, employees sometimes leave. Focus on the ones you can attract.

Turnover is part of running a business. Always has been. But there are so many talented people out there who may not know much about your company. By encouraging your employees to develop their personal brand, you show the world that you are an employer committed to employee development and success. Allow your amazing employees to impress and attract clients, prospects, and potential candidates.

4.    Limited resources? Personal branding matters even more.

It can feel like you have no time to focus on your personal brand or the personal branding of your employees. Flip the script. You don’t have the time NOT to. Investing some time connecting your company and personal branding pays off in exponentially broader visibility for your business. The network of your company contacts is smaller than the combined network of your employees’ contacts. Reach for that larger network. Opportunities will follow and you’ll be continually developing an audience and building credibility for new products or services that may just be a concept in your imagination today.

5.    Your company is awesome.  Share it.

You have great products, services, and people. But does everyone know it?  Your employees can dramatically enhance your organization’s visibility. Invest in LinkedIn education so your team’s profiles become a marketing magnet. Coach everyone to connect to the company’s LinkedIn page, website, and social media channels to draw visitors into your wider communications and content. Suggest that your team show their commitment to local communities and industry organizations on their pages. Provide company-branded assets and media so your team’s profiles sparkle and impress visitors with how unified you are.

Encourage everyone to interact with each other’s original content. Some may even take the next step and embrace the opportunity to become thought leaders on LinkedIn. They’ll start posting content and interacting with wider and wider groups of people. All of whom will notice that they are part of your team. Their success is your success and vice versa.

6.    It’s fun and inspiring for your employees.

Working on personal branding together as a group is an energizing experience. Employees embrace not only the professional development benefit but the powerful realization that they are part of the company brand. It’s also a great way to learn more about each other as you serve as sounding boards and editors for each other’s profile content and posts.

There are tremendous opportunities every day on LinkedIn for companies and individuals who choose to pursue them. Don’t be a wallflower, shyly standing apart and coming up with reasons not to go out on the floor. Get your team out there and dance.

Are you ready?

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Learn more - Extend the conversation:

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3. Special Offer: Let us do a LinkedIn brand audit of your team! Find out if your team has opportunities to shine a bit brighter for clients, prospects, and candidates!

3.    Read my book: LinkedIn for Personal Branding: The Ultimate Guide. Here are a few Amazon links to make it easy. 🇺🇸 USA Amazon.com 🇨🇦 Canada Amazon.ca 🇬🇧 UK Amazon.co.uk 🇦🇺 Australia Amazon.com.au 🇮🇳India Amazon 🇮🇹 Italy Amazon.it

 Please connect with me to discuss opportunities at YOUR company. 

 I look forward to all your comments