Branding - Personal vs Corporate
Gerald Bauer, organizer of the Vancouver Blogger Meetup Group and o-organizer of the Vancouver Web 2.0 Forum (Van2) told subscribers to the Van2 e-mail(!)list about a Boris Mann post to the Bryght Blog. Under the heading of “Web 2.0 and
Personal Brand Development Presentation” Boris passes on some good advice to the people at Sunaptic Solutions.
Boris writes: My take on Personal Brand Development? A respected, well-know employee is a credit to their employer, just as working for a high-profile company reflects well on the employee. Forward thinking companies should encourage and reward personal brand development.
Boris also points us to a post on “Personal vs. Professional Identity” by Francois Nonnenmacher who concludes: “The message: Guard your identity and don’t mix it up with your company’s identity. Otherwise, you risk being “disappeared” if you leave your job or get fired.“.
Both Boris and Francois have some good points. For an individual it is very important to keep a focus on your professional brand. Having a brand makes it much easier to make employment changes when you like. It also helps should you prefer to become a self-employed “consultant”.
Their analysis is not complete though. If you are THE BRAND, then any company you start might die with you. Since you are the only valuable element, you’ll have nothing to pass on, nothing to sell should you so wish to. While I have not read the E-Myth book I believe one of their conclusions is that you need to work ON your business, not only IN it.
Developing a personal brand is important for those that want to better control their careers. It is important though, for most entrepreneurs that one day would like to retire and see an ongoing return on their investment, that the Corporate Brand is developed as well.
Boris goes on and lists some good advice about getting domain names (I’ve been happy with MyDomain) and hosted blogging services (I’m still using Blogger and are very ready to move on. I want a tool where I can use categories for my postings!).
I’d like to add another piece of advice to the Sunaptic folks: To make me believe you know what is going on you will need to keep your corporate web site up to date! January 2004 news should not be your latest piece now in November of 2005!!
In fairness, it’s easy to end up as Sunatic with old content. My old web site, which has not been updated since I shut my consulting practise down to take “a job”, currently shows 2004 news as latest entry as well. I must update it one of these days. Funny, in my first go as a blogger I wrote an article on keeping your image up to date.
roar at roarweb dot com
Note: This post moved from Blogger on Decemebr 6, 2005