For businesses comprised of free agents working on their own initiative, each team member’s personal brand could be contributing to the power of the team as a whole. The clients they are popular with, the positive comments and reviews each member has attained, can all be leveraged toward greater outreach and prestige for the entire team and company as a whole.
This is a fantastic way to both elevate your team members and draw in new potential client leads in one fell swoop. I believe the popular term is kill two birds with one stone.
Real Estate Agencies
A real estate agency, shared by several independent agents, is a great example of where to use personal branding to benefit everyone involved. Each agent has a personal pool of clients that prefers to work with them and are always happy to offer a positive review. These customers also come to associate the excellent service they get from their favorite agent with the quality work of their agency.
When recommending friends to their real estate service, the friend may then work with a different agent within the same agency, effectively creating agency loyalty across clients. Of course, this only happens to the agencies that invest and pay close attention to all of the agents being highly visible and easily shareable online.
Recruiting Firms
Companies working with a recruiting business may feel they are working with a cohesive unit of recruitment power, but the job seekers they recruit deal with individual people.
They are approached, scheduled, and interviewed with the same recruiter throughout the process, until their interviewing is passed on to company team leads and HR managers.
Recruiters are constantly out on social media, making contacts, and even new friends, in the act of locating and reaching out to new recruits.
Their personal brands build themselves and their reputations are often supported by mountains of positive comments, endorsements on LinkedIn, and mentions on other networks. When they are also clearly associated with their recruiting firm, this looks good for everyone. Companies and job seekers alike are more likely to trust and approach recruiting firms with popular individual recruiters.
IT Support Services
This industry is not one that traditionally advertises individual support admins, but it should!
Most people have had the occasion to know the profound difference between good and bad support techs. The ones that manage to make us laugh, solve our problem, and help us understand the solution are worlds apart from those that follow a script and do their best but simply cannot help.
When you allow your expert admins to build a personal brand, customers can leave public positive ratings and comments, and may even request their personal service in the future.
By creating personal brands, you can then begin to leverage them by showing that your service hosts effective and well-liked support techs and prove to potential customers that they will not only get IT service, but IT service they’ll love. Without personal brands, you might be as bad as the scumbag on the other side of that 1800 number you called while troubleshooting with Comcast.
Technology Founders & New Agency Owners
When people want to know more about a company, they often do a little research on its leaders.
As the founder or owner, you are the captain of your ship and customers (current and future) will directly translate your actions to those of your company.
If you are gregarious and outgoing, they will expect energetic and personal service from your team, while founders who are elegant, poised, and welcoming will create an ambiance of class and concierge service that will permeate the reputation of the entire company.
Whether people ‘want to have a beer with you’ or have a deep respect for your story, your personal brand, the face you show the world, can be easily and enjoyably used to build the acclaim of your business.
A strong personal brand will turn a peak of interest interest hours and hours over months or years of inspiring people you meet and coming to mind each time when they think of your industry.
Using the personal popularity of the company leaders valued team members is a time-honored tradition brought to the new realm of social media through the concept of personal brands. In the same way that famous chefs boost the business of their home restaurants, the skill and appeal of your agents, salespersons, recruiters, or admins can be used to bring more customers to your company.
In a world of online reviews and forum referrals, each and every strong personal brand supporting a company becomes a complete social media channel through which people can find your service through a positive listing. These are all opportunities to see your company and your team at their best.
Want to integrate this strategy into your business? Encourage and even assist your employees to build their personal brands, collect positive feedback, and nurture strong customer relationships.
For more interesting advice on increasing your leads through smart social media, contact us today. Our team of marketing experts is waiting to hear from you.
Originally posted at www.handshakin.com.
