Media Vision Online Branding Frances Vdb

How Personal Branding Online is Different from Corporate Branding

In a nutshell: what is corporate and personal branding and how is it applied online?
Personal Branding is “all about you”.
You have a personal brand even if you don’t choose to have one.
It’s about how you appear to the world and what (or what company and values) you represent.
What you can choose is how you maintain and present your personal brand.
Personal branding is very important for a company to give a personal touch to the company because a personal brand is the reflection of a person’s identity and values behind the company.
More generally, Richard Branson used personal branding very successfully to foster loyalty for his companies.

Corporate Branding , on the other hand, is fostering recognition and appreciation of your company as a whole.
One way to do this is by applying your company’s name to its products to generate recognition and trust in your company by its brands.
For example Disney attaches its company name to all new products which helps easy acceptance of new products and makes umbrella advertising possible.
Don’t confuse it with corporate identity which involves fostering recognition and company loyalty by the use of logos and mottos.

Both personal and corporate branding online happens via:
Websites
Social media sites
Blogs
Viral marketing campaigns
Basically all online PR either has a corporate or personal brand as its driving force.
In SEO we mainly focus on corporate branding but personal branding plays a role in this, especially with the use of social media sites.

“ Rules” for online Personal Branding
Develop a brand marketing plan. Do you want a certain number of responses to your blogs? How many responses are you aiming for and what type of responses do you want?
Stand out and speak up.
Learn to write well but also be wary of everything that is published.
Develop your personal image and advertise your best personal attributes such as qualifications and experience.
Build your network intelligently. Engaging with the right people will open many doors.
Communicate a strong, consistent brand message. Consider what you stand for and what your field of expertise is.
Be prepared to lead and to shine.

Benefits of online Personal Branding
It gives a company a personal touch. An example of this is when I received a viral message from ‘Helen Ziller’. It turns out it was just a viral message from the DA, but they cleverly used Helen Ziller’s personal brand to drive their campaign.

“ Rules” for online Corporate Branding
Develop a company brand marketing campaign. What do you want to achieve? Increased traffic? Increased sales? How much?
Have a unique position and a clear identity as a company. Ultimately, you want to stand out.
Have a good and appropriate company name.
Have the best corporate image to fit your identity and name.
Give the best delivery of the message. This involves having the perfect URL and the perfect website and, of course, compelling content.
Tread carefully with politics but have strong company values.
Consider your customers. Who are they? What do they want?
It’s the old adage – work on meaningful content.
Make sure your site is ‘social media friendly’.

Be Modern : When someone visits your website, it’s the online version of visiting your offices, and elegance and ease of access sells a company like nothing else.
Be Hospitable : Avoid pop-ups and distractions and allow for ease of reading.
Provide Social Media Buttons : Your visitors must be allowed to share and vote for your content if you want to improve your corporate branding strategy.
Here are some tips on how to make your site ‘social media friendly’ from search engine land.

Downplay ads : They can be really annoying and distracting especially if they refuse to go away.
Serve quickly : It’s imperative that your content loads quickly otherwise visitors will get frustrated and leave.
Save the sales pitch for someone who cares . Don’t be too salesy in your content. Interesting information sells.
Don’t be ‘the man’ unless you can. Don’t speak like you are ‘the man’ in your line of business unless you really are ‘the man’ and have a respected reputation.
Don’t spam.
Be sure you know what sites your target audience spends time on.

Benefits of online Corporate Branding
It fosters loyalty for the company’s particular products and services and you don’t want to detract from these as this is where the profit lies.
People are engaging with the company, not the individual, so the individual’s circumstances won't negatively impact on the company.

Similarities of Online Corporate and Personal Branding
For both personal and corporate branding online:
you need to be present .
you need to have a good image (be it the company image or personal image) .
you need to provide quality content.
For both a personal and corporate brand it’s important to speak out and have a unique standpoint and stand out.
But be careful of getting people’s backs up and making enemies.
You need strong values and consistent brand strategies either way.

Differences
Corporate marketing is for the company, so quality of service and products is the central focus.
Personal marketing can be used to enhance corporate marketing and gives a face to the business, but at the end of the day it’s about your opinions and credentials.
Personal marketing can be in danger of removing the focus from the company. If you are sick, it means the company is sick too. The same does not apply to corporate branding.

Using Social Media for Corporate Branding
Case Study: how social media techniques were successfully applied to corporate branding for the company, EMC.
Dan Schawbel from Personal Branding blog used social networking strategies for EMC’s corporate branding. In this particular case study, Schawbel used social media to give coverage to the annual staff event. This was the project outline:

Social media newsroom:
They used various content, including product information and links and YouTube, Twitter and Flickr widgets.
Social media release:
The web team used podcasts and pictures to give a wrap-up of the event, and users were given the option to share the release using del.icio.us and digg.
Twitter:
Schawbel runs two twitter accounts for EMC.
The first is a 1-way press release distribution account and the second was specifically designed for EMC World, as a tool to direct people to content or places on-site.
Social Networks Used

Social Networks Used
YouTube :
They posted a keynote presentation by the CEO, Joe Tucci, as well as interviews with customers.
Facebook :
They set up a Facebook events page, where people could register and it linked directly to the EMC World website.
Flickr
Event pictures and bios of executives and products were posted up on the site.
Communities
Communities were set up for registered participants on the event so they could engage with each other over the event, before and afterwards.

To conclude:
I called it a corporate marketing strategy because most of the social media sites were used for advertising the company and its products
But they also used the faces of executives, the CEO and even interviewees so there was a large element of personal branding used in the corporate branding strategy
So, the two are not entirely separate. Maintaining a personal brand online is a lot easier than maintaining a corporate brand online
To enter social media sites, you do so a lot more successfully as an individual. Setting up a facebook profile for a company, for instance, can look very spammy. While, an individual maintaining a profile on behalf of a company is more convincing

Using Social Media Platforms for Personal Branding
Use your real name and a picture, especially if unique
It needs to be personal so use your own name, and a good head shot picture, if possible. If your name is unique, so much the better, people will remember it.
It needs to be memorable so people can search for it. Pseudonyms can make a person harder to find.
Pseudonyms are needed for privacy reasons but if you are consistent and professional your social media profiles shouldn’t infringe too much on your privacy.
Use the same photo across all social networks so that people can recognise you.

Using Social Media Platforms for Personal Branding
If you have an established brand, stick with it
If you tend to use a particular colour and logo on your website, use the same colours and logos in your social media profiles. The same applies to user names and email addresses. One again, be consistent.
Create various profiles and maintain them.
Rather have fewer profile that you regularly check than many profiles that you ignore. But in general, the more, the better.
Be careful with what personal information you give out . Personally I don’t publish my cell phone details, for instance, but an email address might be important to provide for business reasons.

LASTLY: Check your visibility
Check your brand visibility on http://www.howsociable.com
It checks for the keyword across all social networks and search engines.
Media vision scored 62 (out of a possible 1000 which one of the world’s biggest brands such as coca cola scores).
Note: The scoring system is experimental at present and many of the results are not relevant.

Media Vision Online Branding Frances Vdb

by francesannevandenberg on Mar 11, 2009

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Media Vision Online Branding Frances Vdb — Presentation Transcript