There are a ton of arguments and insights on the struggle between personal branding and corporate branding in the blogosphere and through different organizations right now. This might be the hottest topic in this space based on what I’ve read and experienced for myself, being a brand behind a Fortune 200 brand, lately. I’m prone to getting asked “so how does your company let you do all of this” and “how do you have time to build your brand while having a full time job?” The fact is that companies are experimenting and trying to understand how high profile (or more visible) brand can support their practices, while not doing any harm.
Three different situations
1. Your brand has nothing to do with your job
If you want to be known as a model, chef, or the king of business development for startups, but you work as an accountant at a Fortune 500 company, then you are completely safe. There are no conflicts with what you communicate to the world and your day job and what you do outside of work might be interesting or start various conversations at work with your colleagues. Your colleagues will probably not get jealous and your manager won’t be calling you in to dismantle you anytime soon. If you’re a stripper though and you have pictures on the internet with your real name, you’re in trouble, but there’s not many cases of that.
What you should do: Keep building your personal brand and making money at your day job and maybe some day you’re brand will become your day job. You don’t have to mention what you do outside of work and the probability that someone will notice it and bring it to your attention is low, unless your colleagues are your Facebook friends!
2. Your brand is your job
When what you do for work is exactly how you want to be positioned in the marketplace, this is both a good and bad thing. First, if you’re building your online brand relative to your job description, they are mutually supportive of each other. Second, since there is a direct conflict of interest, anything you publish online can really damage your brand offline. The people in your industry and those that work at your company probably subscribe to your blog or notice your social network updates. For instance, if you blog about a dumb corporate policy, you will be called into your managers office the next day because someone complained about it. Also, if you retweet an article that holds a negative press mention for your company, it’s seen as an endorsement and you’re perception will be as negative as that mention!
What you should do: Be extremely careful with everything you publish because you won’t want to get fired from your job and lose that source of income (unless that’s your intent!). Of course, adding your value to the web and promoting your company can’t hurt, as long as you talk to your manager before you do to make sure it’s in compliance.
3. Your brand and your job are aligned but not 100% connected
This is of course my current situation, where I have a social media position at a large company and brand myself as a personal branding expert outside of work. Although personal branding is a large concept and that social media is a huge part of it, it’s not everything. Inside my company, I focus on using social media to build a companies brand and not an individuals like I do on the side. There is, of course, some overlap, so I have to be more mindful of what I say, especially because I’m situated in the PR department. Another example is someone who is trying to get involved in online advertising but they do magazine and TV advertising at their firm.
What you should do: The lines are very blurry now so tell your manager that your online presence is different than your day job and that you promise to keep them separated.
Perception is reality online
What your colleagues and managers see online is what is real and public. You will be judged on everything that is observable by the human eye, as freaky as that may seem. You will probably mess up at some point if your brand identity is in conflict with your companies. It’s happened to me and it will happen to you if you’re really putting yourself out there for the world to see. Feedback is hard to come by, yet it is so important, since companies and people are still experimenting in this space. It’s always better to get feedback early on than months or even years later. It’s hard to understand the impact of our words on other people, unless it’s brought to our attention.
This is just another reminder to be mindful of what you publish.
Have you run into this situation before?
(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)
Loading ...
Very important topic Dan!
Web 2.0 is creating new (2nd) jobs for us and that’s arise a conflict of interest. How to deal with that, its depend on each situation and how the manager will accept our other brand?
The main problem that you didn’t address is the two brands that we will create, the personal and corporate? Should we work on them separately if the job title different or not really close related OR trying to merge them?
Thank You!
That might be the next post
Brand’s online dna counts, what we say may harm or aid the brand effectiveness. Thanks for drawing these thins lines
Good article Dan.
Ok, let’s get real here. For practical purpose, I would assert that there are NOT two brands for each of us, personal and business. Oh yeah, I know those of us that separate it as much as possible act with that intent; but the reality is you are known by what you/ or others put out there in all forms of social media and traditional media as well.
Now for those in the legal arena, operating with the intent of separation will definitely help establish a good legal position, but alas, even that is new uncharted territory.
Let’s face it, WE are blazing new trails here (and now we can say we were in on the ground floor).
I suppose another thing to consider is where business is going from a social point of view. It seems that more and more professions are being opened up to customer scrutiny and dialogue so the people with knowledge in that area will undubtably have an advantage over those without experience. Clearly your day job comes first but learning how to use social media to your professional advantage in your spare time is no bad thing.
Great advice, Dan. I think you need to be totally transparent and tell your supervisor about your blog. Blog about your profession but make no mention of your company, its people, its practices, and your present job. There is enough material out there to blog about there is never a reason to make it about your job or your company. That is bad judgement and defeats the purpose of building a personal brand. Your brand should make you more portable. You want to be able to showcase your knowledge to other potential employers. But if those employers see that you can’t separate your current job from your profession, you won’t even land that job. And frankly, you don’t deserve it. Be smart out there!
Thanks for the comment Bret
Dan,
Can you point out some examples of number 3 for us?
Thanks,
Lem
I liked the article. It is not hiding one’s personality when disclosing infromation online. If someone has photos of wild college parties or something of the sort, and allow the photos to be available for companies to view, it then becomes the responsibility for the individual to defend their photos. If these photos are open for public viewing, then public, as well as any company will view it and develop predetermined ideas about you. The same situation could be reversed; say if you had a picture shaking hands with the president. Your image is what you have to work with and sell, if it is not attractive, you’ll be hard pressed to find any buyers.
Dan,
I enjoyed the article very much. I also agree with Joel’s assertion that we are really one brand, and whether we like it or not, what we present online affects us everywhere.
But, I believe that for the same reason we have a work phone and a home phone we can create a small level of separation by having your business personal destination too. This should be a location where you can leverage your networking abilities for the better of the business that you are part of.
Jeff,
Its not possible to have that separation. Everything we did online will archive to be your online history. Remember how the world knew about the head of UK MI6 personal life in few hours because of Facebook, NO PRIVACY here!
What next is how we are going to tie our online brand with our daily job, whether they related or not … we should try have one brand else we will have two brands but not at the same level I think.
I think the gist of this discussion is that personal branding is a must, but it has to be enacted sensibily and without ruffling your employers’ feathers unnecessarily. Great post.
[...] From Dan Schawbel: How to Brand Yourself Without Alienating Your Company “There are a ton of arguments and insights on the struggle between personal branding and corporate branding in the blogosphere and through different organizations right now. This might be the hottest topic in this space based on what I’ve read and experienced for myself, being a brand behind a Fortune 200 brand, lately. I’m prone to getting asked “so how does your company let you do all of this” and “how do you have time to build your brand while having a full time job?” The fact is that companies are experimenting and trying to understand how high profile (or more visible) brand can support their practices, while not doing any harm.” [...]