15 Reasons Why Every Executive Should Build Their Personal Brand Right Now

If you’re an executive who read that title and thought, “Great, just another thing I need to do in addition to the myriad responsibilities I have both personally and professionally!” I want to start by acknowledging that fear. But you opened this article because chances are, you have seen your peers or competitors building their personal brand online, and you know it’s something you probably *should* do even if you have no idea how to begin. 

Deep breaths, please! Over the next few weeks, we will cover how to build an executive brand in bite-sized pieces so you know exactly what to do. But first, we need to start with WHY.

Many of the enterprise executives we work with have a desire to build their personal brand, but they can’t pinpoint exactly why they’re doing it other than they know they should be doing it. So, the first thing we address on a discovery call is to outline what constitutes success in a personal branding campaign. After all, when you know what success looks like, you can assign key performance indicators to your personal brand program and track how well you are doing. One of my favorite quotes is, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” This applies to your personal brand, even if it feels unwieldy or ambiguous to measure. 

Of course, every personal brand campaign’s goals are just as unique as the person who is building the brand. You need to pick and choose what outcomes you are hoping for, so when you hit the eventual slump right before your brand takes off (trust me, this will happen), you know why you’re exerting this time, energy, and effort.

Here are a few ways we help executives define a successful LinkedIn personal branding campaign: 

1. Board Positions

Many experienced executives are at a point in their careers where they have both the time and desire to join a board. Whether the board position is paid or not, there is no better place to let people know you’re willing to take on a position than LinkedIn. This is also a great time to build your personal brand around this goal, as boards are looking to diversify. According to Susan Muck in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, “Research continues to show that increased diversity in the boardroom is connected to stronger corporate performance. And diversity isn’t just about gender and ethnicity—candidates with disparate ages, experience levels, and professional or economic backgrounds offer valuable insights and skills that are particularly welcome, if not critical, in today’s business environment.”

2. Freedom & Power

Make no mistakes about it; having an engaged following around your personal brand is valuable currency in today’s marketplace. Companies rightfully know that corporate brand equity and performance often correlate to the equity of the personal brands that comprise it. That gives you, the executive, more leverage and bargaining power when you’re negotiating opportunities. 

3. Corporate Brand Equity

As outlined above, personal brand equity can drive a corporation’s brand equity. Forbes backs this, with studies showing 82% of people are more likely to trust a company when their senior executives are active on social media, and 77% of consumers are more likely to buy when the CEO of the business uses social media. So, if you’re in charge of driving results for your company, don’t think for a second that building your brand is a wasted pursuit.

4. Networking

The need to network online has become even more apparent due to COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions. We see a trend in public relationships departments shifting budgets formerly reserved for in-person conferences to build networks and opportunities to the online space. It makes sense. At a conference, you are limited to the people present in the room. With a digital platform like LinkedIn, time and space don’t dictate the size of your network. 

5. A Strengthened Workforce

Leading “out in front” in a world of remote working and Zoom team building helps fortify company culture and your brand’s ethos. When executives thoughtfully produce content and communication online that reinforces a company’s values, it’s easier for a workforce that isn’t physically present to feel the strength of their corporate culture. 

6. Recruiting

Expanding on the above, this also makes it easier to hire the best and the brightest. Driven professionals want to work with other driven professionals. When you set the bar for the type of talent your company employs by creating content online that builds thought leadership, you will attract dedicated individuals. Case in point: people don’t want to work for Tesla because of the technology alone. They want to work for Tesla because Elon Musk seems to tilt the Earth’s axis by launching one Tweet. Like it or not, it works. People flock to his passionate rebel spirit that is constantly on display online. 

7. Lead Generation

Often we are hired to fix a corporate LinkedIn marketing campaign gone wrong. After wasting hundreds of dollars on paid advertising, companies turn to us to see how they can optimize LinkedIn marketing for lead generation. The first thing we say? Stop focusing so much on the corporate brand’s page and start building the brands of your top salespeople. Nearly every time this strategy outperforms the centralized campaign in as little as thirty days. Why? Because people like to buy from people, not companies. Responsible for onboarding new business? Build your personal brand. 

8. Customer Retention

Customer loyalty is one of my favorite benefits of personal branding. We all know that sales rep that sold you something, and then you never hear from them over the course of the contract. Building a personal brand helps you provide thoughtful resources and content to your current and former customers, reducing your customer attrition rate while increasing referrals. However, this is incumbent on you actually adding your current customers to your network and then driving value through your content. 

9. Acquisitions & Fundraising

If your company is priming itself for an acquisition event or looking for capital infusion, building your personal brand will attract investors and potential partners. We’ve worked with a number of executives who wanted to show the strength of their firm’s culture and intellectual property with the aim of getting acquired. In some cases, they were courted by potential acquirers within two weeks. (Note: building a personal brand is not a fast endeavor. While quick, exciting wins can come in the beginning, the mindset should be that this is a long play, or you won’t reach your brand’s potential equity.)

10. Speaking Opportunities

If you’re looking for speaking gigs, building a personal brand is one of the fastest ways to book them. Oftentimes, the very first indication we see a personal brand is firing is that the podcast hosts come flocking asking you to “guest” on their podcast. This, in turn, increases your equity even more as you gain access to their audience of loyal listeners. 

11. Book Deals

Are you thinking of finally writing that book? Many executives-turned-authors come to us because publishers and agents told them they need a marketing plan in place to sell their book (yes, they expect you to do that). If you’re investing in your personal brand, you’re in an excellent position to let them know you have an engaged audience who is excited to back your next project. Engaged followers quickly convert to readers once you have a book in place to offer them. This will greatly help your path to publishing. 

12. Documenting Success

Your personal brand is also your personal portfolio. Many times, executives give talks at conferences, lead special projects, and publish research papers. Sadly, after the initial event or publication, they have nowhere to publicly house these projects so they can capitalize on them months and years later. Building your personal brand online gives you a place to store these assets to build momentum, so something like a speaking opportunity turns into five more.

13. Personal Confidence

I loathe the term “fake it ‘till you make it” because it invalidates your story and contributes to the imposter syndrome that lurks inside of all of us. Instead, we say, “State it until you create it!” There’s a reason affirmations work so well; they positively rewire your brain to overcome false beliefs. Building a personal brand is like saying those affirmations to yourself, then having thousands of people root for you and validate these positive sentiments. One of the unintended but pleasant outcomes of a personal brand campaign is seeing professionals start to speak with more conviction and confidence. It’s such a beautiful thing to witness. You really begin to grow into the persona and potential you crafted online (which, spoiler alert, was there all along).    

14. Authenticity

Yes, I know this phrase has now turned into everyone’s favorite corporate buzzword, but it’s true. We see it all the time with authors and executives. So many of us are saddled with the weight of the outdated paradigm that when you go to work, you are a buttoned-up corporate robot who should lack any personality or quirkiness. The good and bad thing about building a brand online is sometimes we have a bit more willingness to present things because it’s less intimidating than staring someone in the eyes while we say it. In the worst instances of this, it turns into vitriolic, divisive comments on Twitter feeds. Still, if we wield the “I feel emboldened because I’m behind a screen” powers for good, we can see it actually frees us up to be a bit more vulnerable, which spills into offline conversations. 

15. Raise Awareness for a Cause

A few years ago, I created a campaign called “This is Anxiety,” where I showcased entrepreneurs with high-functioning anxiety. I wanted to shed light on this, as I saw so many young founders who, like me, appeared to have it all together while secretly grappling with panic attacks and insomnia. I ended up raising hundreds of dollars for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, all because my following on Facebook generously donated as I published research and films on the matter. This example is not to glorify me; it’s to show you what’s possible in improving the lives of others by intentionally using your personal brand. So, please, stop thinking that building a personal brand is simply a narcissistic pursuit. 

Final Thoughts

Building a personal brand is a worthwhile initiative, but as I shared before, it’s important to get clear on why you’re investing in this initiative. It will help provide clarity as you gauge the success of your efforts, and it will provide the necessary motivation to keep going as you grow your audience.

Stuck on where to start?

I’ll be diving into this over the next few weeks, but you can also set up a 30-minute executive brand builder discovery session here.

If you are clear on your personal brand but want to spike your engagement, you can grab our "LinkedIn Posting Guide: 13 Proven Strategies to Spike Your LinkedIn Engagement & Following" here.