Personal and business branding are two very important yet different concepts to identity. Your business brand is commonly your shopfront, your recognisable characteristics, your identifiable mission as a company. This far, business branding has played a large part in overarching marketing goals.
Yet, as industries are changing, as customers are now more than ever controlling the market, personal branding and its value is coming to light. Personal branding is empowering, it’s known to develop trust, it humanises offerings; all of which customers, future customers, associates, employees and future employees are looking for.
Are you harnessing the benefits of personal branding? Are you providing your employees with the freedom to utilise personal branding? If you’re new to this concept, or unsure how it can offer similar benefits to business branding, here’s everything you need to know about this effective and highly utilised marketing tactic.
Keep reading for our Maxweb Solutions guide on personal branding – how can it benefit your business?
What is personal branding?
Business brands are identifiable. Everyone, from business owners to customers appreciate the importance of business branding. However, personal branding is a newer concept.
Personal branding is where employees and associates have the scope to develop their own professional brand images. Known to encourage empowered and development, personal branding also stands as an advocacy strategy.
Many business owners will argue that investment, focus and energy should be devoted to business branding. Yet, by embracing personal branding, there are many mutual benefits for both employees and companies. From a greater ability to develop trust through humanisation, to greater credibility and industry expertise, you can capitalise as a business by encouraging the circulation of appropriate content and online socialisation.
We now live in a world where brands are viewed as cold, as robotic, as automated. Human contact and associations are strived for. You can tap into this desired form of communication, of engagement by building trust between people, by placing your employees as the face of your company, through personal branding.
Personal branding – how can it benefit your business?
Are you sceptical over the purpose of personal branding? Do you believe that greater time and effort should be injected into business branded content? What if we told you that personal branding has an important purpose, sometimes benefiting businesses even more than business branding?
Personal branding – how can it benefit your business? Here’s exactly how…
It can develop trust
Trust is very important when hoping to attract and retain customers or clients. Depending on your experience and exposure in the market, it can be difficult to build significant trust. Yet, by utilising personal branding, you can benefit your business by developing trust through human recommendations.
If you have a group of employees, promoting your business, seen as credible individuals of society, it is likely that you’ll develop legitimate and positive opinions about your business.
It can increase your reach and visibility
Over the likes of social media, it is probable that you will have a following. However, this following will only reach so far. Through personal branding, your employee’s networks will become aware of your brand identity through this clever marketing tactic.
For example, imagine that one of your employees harnessed the power of personal branding. They begin to develop their credibility in the industry, soon invited to host an event. It’s likely that your company’s name will show up at some point, increasing the reach of your visibility.
It can improve engagement
If you’re making a lot of noise about your business, you’ll likely increase your engagement levels. By multiplying this noise, through personal branding, you will have the chance to engage and convert audiences to consumers, to convert followers to supporters.
It can elevate credibility
Personal branding is an invaluable tool to elevate credibility. Not only will this benefit your employees and their careers, it will strengthen your offering as a business; whether that’s your commercial offering or your employment packages.
It can empower your employees
Employee empowerment is very important, especially if you are looking to retain your current workforce. Personal branding can benefit your business by acknowledging your employees, by recognising their value to your company, by supporting who they are and their attributes, in and outside of work.
It can humanise your offering
Humanisation is very important in today’s world. Whether you’re selling a product, service or simply offering support, as a brand, you need to come across as empathetic, as understanding, as supportive.
By highlighting the people of your company, by adding in a human touch, your connections will strengthen, your engagement levels will increase, your trust will advance; all benefiting your company through personal branding.
It can strengthen your employer brand
Employer branding is a contemporary concept. Yet, it is detrimental that you now have a positive and honest employer brand, in order to attract, hire and retain top candidates. Through strong personal branding, through an advocacy strategy, you can showcase candidates what it’s like to work for you, the benefits of being employed by you and the ability to set expectations.
By combining the benefits of personal branding, it is easy to see why so many companies are embracing this throughout their workforce. Are you missing out? Here’s some easy steps to promote personal branding, in place to benefit your business…
Personal branding to-dos
If you’re looking to promote personal branding throughout your company, there are some to-dos to follow.
- To start off, it’s important that you understand what differentiates you. What is your USP? Why will audiences follow and invest into your personal brand? Here is where you’ll want to tap into who you are as a company, who individual employees are, promoting honesty and humble messages.
- Next up, you’ll need to create and share content which reflects this message. Here is where your credibility will increase over time, down to your investment into personal branding. Through this step, it’s important to ensure that your content brings value to your readers; it goes further than simply advertising your company or products. By providing value through your content, you’ll likely engage supporters.
- Continue to elevate your personal brand. As you would a business brand, continue to invest, to evaluate, to grow, to be who you are.
By following these steps, you’ll have the chance to embrace and benefit from personal branding. Overtime, great results can be achieved by promoting both personal and business brands.
We hope that our ‘personal branding – how can it benefit your business?’ guide has helped. If you require support with your brand strategy, contact our team of specialists here at Maxweb Solutions.
Posted on Friday, July 24th, 2020 in Branding.
