Complimenting Your Own Branding: Developing a Personal Brand that Works with Your Business’s Brand.
What does a personal brand have to do with a business brand? Unfortunately, it can make all the difference. If you are associated with a company, either as employee or owner, and you make a bad choice during work time, that mistake will likely be held against you and the company. Here are five things to keep in mind when developing a personal brand that works with your professional one.
Twice the exposure means twice the views… if you play your cards right. Offering links back and forth between the company website and your own can develop get your name out to more people. However, these people may not be targeted viewers. Generally, your personal blog should be in the same genre as your business or a related one if link sharing is going to be successful.
Build contacts. While this may not be possible, it’s always good to begin building up a list of contacts before you even begin seriously business networking or blogging. This prevents the frustration many new people feel of performing for no audience. On the other hand, it can be difficult to build a following when there is nothing to follow, so don’t let a lack of public interest keep you from making decisions that are good for you and your business.
Build content. Whether your web presence is a fully featured website, a hosted blog, or a few social networking memberships, you will have to work, especially at first, at creating a web presence that is attractive, complimentary in color and style to your business’s branding, and accurate. Often all it takes are a few posts, but this can vary from business to business.
Keep it light. A personal web presence that is linked to your professional one can have much more personal information, but still nothing that you wouldn’t want shared with the world. After all, putting something on the internet is quite literally sharing something with the world. In general, light hearted things like jokes and updates are about as deep as you can go when your professional reputation is at stake.
Keep it clean. Modern consumers are looking to weed out the rats, so don’t embarrass yourself or your company with crude behavior or language. There is no reason to swear on any website, but especially not one that is linked to your professional image.
The five guidelines are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good idea of what kinds of behavior are expected of you and your employees once you begin to make links between your professional brands and your personal ones. By building a personal brand that is strong and respectable, you can bolster your business and make customers feel more at home with you. Building a personal brand that is less than ideal, on the other hand, can have a very negative impact both on you and your small business.
