Executive Branding and Reputation online
There is a lot of buzz about executive branding and reputation. The difficulty in understanding the buzz is that there is a variety of cross-over from dozens of different professional and technical niches: ranging from search engine optimization, social networks, profile creation, video syndication, word of mouth, customer care and personal goals.
We like to take all of those concepts (and a dozen more) and begin with some simple concepts that all revolve around two main points:
Business Best Practices & Business Impact
- Business Best Practices: is the fundamental starting point of building your virtual empire. Best practices revolve around understanding what your business assets currently are and where you can develop worthwhile support mechanisms moving into the future.
- Business Impact: is identified by taking items in your best practices list and identifying what items can be influenced the most by interacting online. It is a common misconception that online communication (social media, etc) is limited to marketing exposure for your brand. In many instances the value of online participation is to present a faster and more effective message to the right people (who could be peers, competitors, industry analysts, investors or consumers.)
These two concepts help business executives understand two radical shifts in online communication that ARE affecting them:
1- Communication is rapidly accelerating and evolving. Twenty years ago it took substantial effort to speak with a hundred people. Today we can have a virtual webinar at the push of a button. This change is happening faster than executives can keep up with.
For visual thinkers:
2- Our lifestyles, networks and communication patterns are being merged on the web and being archived, syndicated and highlighted to everyone we know (and don’t know!) Executives have the opportunity to lead this conversation, rather than follow it.
3- Personal brand requires strategic thought: our brand encompasses intent and professional goals, along with understanding what we want to present to audiences online (not just what they randomly find about us through our inaction.) Failing to present yourself means that someone else will make the introduction (good, bad, indifferent.)
Hopefully this chain of thought sheds light on a few connective points of online executive brand. If you have any questions about some of the additional interaction points please contact us or leave a comment.
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