First, a slideshare moment to set the mood ...
The internet is changing the way we manage and share our lives.
More and more people are sharing information about themselves online in new and creative ways. As a result, organizations are wrestling with the emerging methods for managing their online space.
- OLD: Managing staff content within organizational websites.
- EMERGING: Staff personal branding with feeds back to organizational websites.
Moving toward the emerging style may be difficult for some.
- Often experts with the strongest personal brands offline are not ready to shift their focus to devote the time and energy necessary to implement a personal brand online.
- It is easier and time/cost-effective to leverage the organizational brand rather than trying to build your own brand online.
But as the workforce changes and more social media savvy individuals move into our organizations, the way we connect personal branding efforts to the organization's branding efforts will need to be explored.
I'm not advocating a big-brother approach, but an opportunity to leverage the multitude of tools out there so that the exchange of online information among individuals and their companies is meaningful and supportive.
Chris Brogan is looking for examples of people who work for companies but manage their own personal brands at the same time. I'm looking forward to his forthcoming post on this topic.
For more on this topic visit A Corporate View of Personal Branding with Pros and Cons.
All of this debate makes you think:
- Does the emergence of personal branding open the door for organizations to shift FROM hiring people to push one corporate brand TO organizations building reputation based on the ability to draw together a group of people based on their personal brands?
- Might this lead to a shift from a structured relationship between the individual and the organization to a more informal network of individuals supporting the same goals?
- If a staff member manages their brand through an organization, what happens to that brand when the staff member leaves?
