Don’t miss on the best co-branding opportunity and let your personal and employer brands marry in harmony. True, your employer brand is one thing and your personal brand is the other. But as a top level executive, your personal brand can either be a promoter or detractor of your employer brand. What talent perceives about you as a leader has a strong impact on your company’s image. You need to think yourself as a brand and a brand ambassador to strengthen your corporate and employer brand.

Until a few years ago, organizations just had corporate brands and they did not need to worry about their employer brand and employees’ brands. The c-suite executives operated from behind the scenes and rarely interacted with the public or their customers. But with the advent of internet and social media and unexpected success of startups, the c-suite of even the most traditional organizations felt the need to be in the limelight and interact with their customers. Personal branding has become ubiquitous. It represents a corporate brand. It is an extension to an employer brand.

Examples of Personal Brand Positively Affecting Employer Brand

Let’s launch into some examples where personal branding has a positive impact on employer brand:

• Apple and Steve Jobs are synonymous to each other. Steve was a brand in himself. And his own vision, dedication and extraordinary life made Apple the most valuable technology company in the world. The organization attracts techies, who are not fond of rules and want to change things, from across the globe. Steve was the driving force behind Apple and represented a generation of techies who always wanted to create iconic products.

• Can you imagine Microsoft without Bill Gates? His individuality and personality eventually drive the ‘brand Microsoft’, positively influencing how talent thinks of the company as an employer. Techies from around the world find themselves fortunate, if they get an opportunity to associate with Microsoft. Even in today’s dog-eat-dog, the organization has maintained a large pool of talent.

• Richard Branson is one of the most iconic living CEOs. He went on to successfully crafting a highly recognizable brand. In fact, Branson himself has been the most convincing representation of his brand ‘Virgin’. His own vision, flamboyance and willingness to explore the unexplored and take risks have almost made the word ‘Virgin’ his copyright. Wherever brand ‘Virgin’ is seen or talked about, Richard Branson automatically comes to mind. And the company has managed to maintain a large pool of talent around the world.

Personal Branding is More Than Self Promotion

Personal branding can literally make or break an employer brand. This is because potential employees Google about an organization and its founders and leaders before applying to a job opening. Also, how they connect with general public makes a lot of difference. Organizations nowadays aren’t viewed as emotionless business units. Rather each organization has a personality and bears a reputation. And employees become the public faces of their brands.

However, personal branding has to be much more than self promotion to work in the right direction. In fact, a whole lot of things are associated with it. It takes a complete gamut of meticulously planned strategies to establish a positive relationship between personal and employer branding. Because sometimes personal branding can offend organizations’ employer brand and turn off customers, the two need to be carefully blended.

Personal Branding Trends That Impact an Organization’s Employer Brand

• Social Journalism: It’s a participatory and collective dissemination and analysis of information by the employees of a company, by means of internet. It involves publishing information on the internet through blog, social media and other open publishing platforms. Previously, major media companies adopted social journalism but nowadays, most companies make use of it, in order to connect with their audience.

  Social journalism has proved its efficacy in establishing a personal and employer brand. Potential talent is always interested in sneak peeks and behind the scenes clips to know about the culture of an organization. Both C-suite executives and employees can share updates in the form of text and videos to establish personal and employer brand.

• Personal Websites: Imagine how you feel when you cannot find information about a company’s founders and top employees. Potential talent and customers want to know more about top notch executives of an organization and news related to their personal and professional lives.

  Personal websites make it possible for viewers, readers and public in general to access required information. Nowadays, LinkedIn has replaced the need for personal websites. In fact, most professionals prefer to visit LinkedIn profiles of hiring managers and other employees of an organization.

  In such a scenario, employees must complete their profiles on LinkedIn to establish a strong personal brand. The business social networking site also allows them to share news about their company as well as their own views and opinions.

• Outsourcing: Giving talent a chance to associate with the company and experience how it is like working with your organization is a sure shot way to strengthen your image. As your offshore team comes to know more about your work ethics and values, they seek to remain in touch with you for future endeavors. What they perceive about you depends on their experience with you. The trend of outsourcing will increase in the coming years. Therefore, working towards building a reputation as a trusted employer makes sense. And when top employees are known for their values, principles and willingness to help people, it obviously attracts a wider talent pool. It’s essential to establish yourself as a trusted employer for freelancers in a 24/7 connected open economy.

• First Impression on Digital: Gone are the days when first impressions were formed in real-world connections. But now a personal meeting forms a second impression. In the digital world, first impression is based on your online image. It is true for both individuals and employers.

  The way you present yourself online, the content you have on your website and the messages you roll out on the internet account for the most first impressions. Both individuals and employers need to meticulously plan their communication and choose a specific approach that complements their personality. Your online image speaks volumes about you.

Personal branding and employer branding go hand-in-hand. In fact, both pull each other. However, there is a delicate balance between them. One shouldn’t overshadow the other. And this is why it requires a careful approach.

In an increasingly competitive world, employees must have skills, understanding, tools and strategies to better execute their personal brand and help accelerate the employer brand of their organization.