The future of company branding is personal: How to leverage employee personal brands to gain a competitive business advantage

People don’t trust brand marketing. Because brands lie. 92% of people trust the opinion of a stranger over a company brand online, it’s why TripAdvisor exists. It’s why Amazon reviews exist… It's why GlassDoor exists. And yet, brands don’t realise the solution to their untrustworthiness is already sitting on their payroll. People buy from people, but more importantly they buy from people they trust. That is the power of personal branding, building trust with customers, candidates and existing employees, at scale. 

Content shared from a personal brand social media receives 8x more engagement than company brands. It also has 561% more reach than a company brand. But this isn’t just about vanity metrics, it has a real, bottom line impact on the business. Leads that come through a personal social media account convert 7x more frequently than any. other. channel. Personal branding is not an ego-driven activity designed to self-promote, it’s a strategic marketing imperative. It’s not about saying ‘look at me’, it’s about saying ‘look what I can do for you’.

It’s about leveraging human beings to solve other human’s problems. Sell them their dreams. About leveraging real people to connect with and influence other people - people to fall in love with them, and your brand. 70% of the buying decision in any capacity, whether it be b2b, b2c or employee-to-employer hiring is based on emotion. By the end of this talk, you will understand why and how you can build executive, founder and employee personal brands to tap into that human emotion and position your business as the choice, not just a choice amongst many.