I spotted an insightful article in The Drum called Why brand building is brain training for your customers. The article made some key points, which I've helpfully highlighted in bold text or images (you're welcome!). These points are worth knowing if you're a professional who is focused on building your leadership brand.
The Intersection of Personal and Professional
When it comes to people-brands, emotive content will always serve you well. We are human beings, with stories, experiences and insights worth sharing. When you show up as strictly 'professional' you lose your edge, reduce engagement and miss opportunities to connect on a deeper level. You'll find your word-of-mouth sweet spot at the intersection of personal and professional.
"Simply put — the more that your audience hears and talks about you, the more you will grow. That sounds simple, right? Well, it is — and despite the rise of digital marketing, this is still true, so why aren't we doing it?"
There are many leaders and people in business who aren't doing this and the answer to 'why?' can be found rooted in the realms of 'confidence'. It could be a lack of confidence because you don't know how to balance business and personal, maybe you've spent so long being 'professional' that you've lost your 'self' when it comes to work comms, or you have fears around getting it wrong and damaging your reputation. Maybe it's none of these things and something connected to a long list of other unhelpful emotional responses that arise when you're faced with to the concept of 'putting yourself out there'.
Meaning vs. The Metrics
"While these short-term, quick-win ad-funded campaigns contribute strongly to the bottom line, they also have such a fast decay that revenue will literally dry up overnight if the campaign is switched off. That means they rarely deliver meaningful long-term effects. Instead, brands must combine the power of performance marketing with the long-term effects of brand building for maximum efficiency"
Analytics, data and measuring results are a great addition to the KPI suite but you won't find meaning in the metrics when it comes to long-term career and leadership success. The key to that particular door of career advancement is more of a combination lock of strategic thinking and deeper human relationships.
"Our emotional brains are much smarter and faster than your logical brain thinks it is — without realising it, you make decisions even when you unconsciously think you are choosing not to decide. It's a hard-wired fact of human nature — and one that we often overlook as marketers, despite the evidence and research to prove otherwise"
When you weave human emotion into your social media posts, presentations, pitches and talks, you give people a reason to connect, you stand out amongst your peers (who could well be sticking with the professional robot approach to marketing themselves) and you instantly become 'more human'. This can be downright terrifying at first but if you slowly start to shift your communication style, you'll find that not only do you see measurable results, you'll feel the difference because you will finally be bringing yourself to work rather than wheeling out the professional persona every Monday to Friday.
Balance Yields Better Results
"The power lies in balancing short-term activation campaigns with long-term brand building that will build brand salience, reduce price sensitivity and deliver much stronger long-term success than either approach in isolation.
With all good relationships, the longer you know someone the more comfortable you become. You're likely to trust them more (this depends on the person of course! Disappointingly, even the most shady of characters seem to be able to gain public trust!), support them more and introduce them to your friends. This is the same for leaders and their audiences. The longer the timeline of you showing up as balance of; work and personal, facts and emotions, professional and human, the more likely you are to see sustainable increases in commercial and brand value.
"Emotional engagement and storytelling creates long-term memory, which is a critical part of brand building. How people feel about your brand matters more than what they think about it — which is why human interest content, emotional responses and even humour (this will obviously depend on the type of brand you are) can have a powerful effect on your audience that is impossible to achieve through rational messaging only"
How you leave people feeling should be the ultimate focus. It isn't all about you. In fact, it's rarely about you at all! As a leader, it's about the people who look to you within your organisation, industry or wider-society so getting hung up on not wanting to put a more human version of yourself out there, isn't serving the same people that your leadership role is.
As human-brands, leadership brands, career brands, personal brands or whichever label you opt to put on it, you have a responsibility to represent yourself as well as you strive to do for others.
It's likely that you're looking at business and your career beyond the next 12 months, so if you're not taking a strategic approach to building and growing your personal brand for intentional, sustainable long-term growth, you're missing a valuable opportunity!