7 Steps to Building a Personal Brand to Support Your Business

From Entrepreneur, Jayson Demers discusses the benefits of combining a corporate brand with a person brand to help the business. Jayson writes:

So, how can you create a personal brand that can support and complement your corporate brand? Seven ways:

1. Identify your key players.

First, you need to decide what people within your organization are the best candidates for personal brands. There’s no necessary rubric for evaluation here, but generally, more experienced people (and those with pre-existing social media followings) are easier to build up.

Many businesses start by designating their CEO, founders, and/or their most experienced account managers, but you can choose anyone with a realm of expertise that will be of interest to your target demographics. You’ll also want to choose people who have a few extra hours a week to manage the development of their own personal brands.

2. Designate expertise and optimize your profiles.

Next, you’ll need to lay the foundation for your growth by claiming and optimizing the social media profiles of each personal brand you choose to develop. The social media platforms will depend on your business and its target audience; generally, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are core necessities, and Instagram is nice to have.

You may also want to separate out the true “personal” social accounts from your personal brand accounts. Either way, you’ll need to optimize your personal brand accounts with professional headshots, wording that reflects each personal brand’s expertise and, of course, links or other ties back to your corporate brand.

3. Create and promote content.

If you want to take personal branding seriously, you can create a professional, separate blog for each of your individual profiles. Otherwise, it’s fine to use your corporate blog with individual author profiles for each of your personal brands.

Take the time to create high-quality content for each personal brand, relevant to that person's respective areas of expertise. Next, make sure to promote that content across the person's social channels. And, while you’re at it, syndicate your core “corporate” content through each of your personal brands.

4. Get involved in groups and conversations.

If you want to grow your personal brand’s visibility, you need to do more than simply write and promote content. You need to get involved with other individuals, so they can see and appreciate your content. The best ways to do this include getting involved with groups, which you can easily find on LinkedIn, or by engaging in conversations, which are easy to find on open public platforms like Twitter.

Look for topics relevant to your area and expertise and get involved with comments, answers to questions and even some questions of your own. It’s a good way to build your presence and reputation at once.

Read the full story at 7 Steps to Building a Personal Brand to Support Your Business