Were you a part of the lot who bought the iPhone because Steve Jobs sold it? Did the presence of Richard Branson on the posters made the ‘Virgin Experience’ fun and cool for you? Do you feel that Tesla has a better shot at success because Elon Musk is at the helm of its operations?
If you have answered the above three rhetoric in a Yes, welcome to the world of normal consumers.
People still argue that branding is for organizations with deep pockets, forgetting the age old marketing wisdom: people always do business with people they know, like and trust.
One of the easiest branding strategies that a small business can implement is building a brand out of its CEO. Not only does building a human as a brand helps the customers to connect at a personal level, the CEOs brand also acts as leverage for the company he owns.
The way Quicksprout benefits from Neil Patel’s brand or Moz benefits from Rand Fishkin’s brand is a testimony of the fact.
The importance of building your CEO as a brand has been discussed at length already. Let’s talk about the ways in which you can build your CEO’s brand, especially in a small organization.
- Wear your Passion on your Sleeve: Passion is one of the most viral emotions that I know of. If a person reflects passion and energy, everyone that interacts with him through any medium is bound to feel an impact. (Hint: Steve Jobs)
- Reach out to your audience: Platforms like Twitter and Quora have made it possible even for the high executives of an organization to reach out and voice their opinion on things that matter to them.
Learn how Jeff Bezos, apart from running a retail giant, caters to customers query personally on his email and how did Anthony Hsieh at Zappos has more twitter followers than CBS News or NFL.
I vividly remember the example of Sachin Bansal, flipkart’s CEO replying to a simple customer grief on Quora. That incident may or may not have made the life of the customer any easier but worked wonders for Sachin’s personal brand. - Preach what you Practice: Provide solutions that you have yourself implemented or very closely encountered. This will not only make you open to your audience more but also make your audience relate to you, especially them who have faced something similar. If they would have wanted theoretical solutions, they would have read a book, not your post.
- Avoid Negativity: In the pursuit of fame, we often tend to believe that ‘any publicity is good publicity’. In case you are a CEO and your prime objective is to make fruitful relationships, it is a strict No. You should have a personality and should stand for things you believe in, but at the same time stop yourself from being frivolous and surrounding yourself in uncalled for controversies.
- Be Approachable: Reaching out doesn’t only mean to voice out your opinion on the different mediums but it also means listening to what the people want to say about him or his views. Replying to comments on his blogs and emails is a tedious but an effective way to accomplish this.
- Be Consistent: Building a brand is not about creating a spike but it is about building a solid group of loyalists. You do not want a million people to talk about you and forget you the next hour, you want the loyal thousand to keep on interacting with you forever.
This is not a one sided effort of course. When you want your audience to be regular and interactive, you should be consistent in providing value to them too. - Be humble, always: Exposing yourself to the audience has its vulnerabilities. There will be hate mails, bad tweets and abusing comments. The best way to deal with them is to ignore them. A strong personality is one who is not perturbed by petty remarks. But all other comments and questions must be dealt with humility. It still is one of the most respected human traits.
- Be relevant to your audience: Everybody knows Richard Branson or Jeff Bezos and it is comparatively easy for you to gain fame when you have a consumer interface. What about when you are a B2B company? Let me help you.
Do you know Tim Cook or Mark Zuckerberg? Yes. Does your pizza delivery guy know them? Most probably yes.
Do you know Dharmesh Shah or Rand Fishkin? If you are in the internet industry, I bet yes. Does your pizza delivery guy know them? It doesn’t matter to both the parties.
I guess you got my point. You may not be known to every human on the face of earth and still make your brand. The mantra is to know your audience and be relevant and useful to them.
Lastly, the most important point which I don’t intend to add to the list, mainly because it decides the outcome of all your branding efforts is – Don’t Pretend. Never show what you are not. History has witnessed people who blow their own horns only to be identified, ignored and forgotten by the world in a jiffy.
If you are what you show, your originality is bound to impress people eventually. If you are not one of those personalities who inspire, improve yourself then. Late is never. Impress people, create your own advocates and let them talk your case to the people they know and become famous for what you are.
Is it Practicable?
For a person at the helm of operations of an organization, it is not always practically possible to take out time to write a descriptive blog post or reply to the mails he gets.
The task is more often than not is taken care by a dedicated team. The problem arises when this team starts working in isolation. People forget that the team has to assist the CEO and not impose their view on his name.
To avoid such a situation, the CEO must brief and scrutinize everything that goes out in his name. He is not only responsible for the brand he is but also the organization he runs.
Be cautious. Be vulnerable. Be a Brand!
