Executive Branding in a Digital World
A company’s executives can be a marketer’s greatest tool for moving the needle on your business objectives. Studies show that when an executive has a strong personal brand, it impacts everything from the company’s ability to recruit and retain talent, to the generation of new business to the company’s market value.
Personal and executive branding is all about developing a reputation for oneself that aligns with your goals of how you’d like to be perceived. Seasoned executives might say that reputations are earned through hard work, handshakes, promises delivered and quality time with others. But today, executives are challenged to find the digital equivalent of these things. Social networking, blogging, livestreams and podcasts are the cocktail hours and radio interviews of yesterday.
Yet a 2019 study by Influential Executive showed that 46% of Fortune 500 CEO have no social media presence whatsoever. With a down economy, we need our CEOs to pull out every tool they’ve got to keep businesses alive - including the development of a strong personal brand on and offline.
In this webinar, moderated by Kane’s President and CEO, Kimberly Kane, we heard experts who shared practical tips on how you can define and develop your executive brand.
Speakers included:
Moderator - Kimberly Kane, President & CEO, Kane Communications Group
Paul M. Neuberger, Founder & CEO, The Cold Call Coach, LLC.
Morgan Burns, Director of Marketing & Brand Strategy, Kane Communications Group
Following are a few other key takeaways from each of our experts in this webinar:
From Paul M. Neuberger, Founder & CEO, The Cold Call Coach, LLC.:
“I think there is a stark difference between ‘busy’ and ‘priority’. When someone says ‘I’m too busy.’ what they are really saying is ‘This is not a priority.’ It has nothing to do with ‘busy’, but everything to do with ‘priority’. Ask yourself what your priority is. People don’t buy companies first, they buy people first. And people are the brand. How are they going to buy you if they don’t know you? How are they going to buy you if they aren’t exposed to you? If you can post meaningful content on social media and if you can establish meaningful relationships on social media that starts the chain reaction that checks all of the boxes.”
From Morgan Burns, Director of Marketing & Brand Strategy, Kane Communications Group
“Trust and credibility allow you to build ‘reputation capital’. Reputation capital is one of your most important and valuable assets as an executive. You’ve gotten to where you are because you’ve built a reputation as a strong leader—because people trust you at the helm of the organization. Developing and defining your strong brand is an investment in that reputation capital. The more people you know and the more people know you and develop a perception of who you are, the stronger you develop a connection to people who want to invest in you. Much like good capital, you want to build it on your own terms. By telling your stories the way you want to tell them and creating a strong following amongst the people who want to invest in you, it helps you build that capital up. When you build that capital, that allows you to spend it where you need it (i.e. a new innovation you feel strongly about that others are skeptical about; invest in people up who share similar values, purposes or objectives as you and hope for a good ROI; use as a safety next in times of crisis).
You can watch the full webinar by clicking play on the video above!