How important is personal brand in B2B marketing?

Developing a strong personal brand is no longer optional for B2B marketing success. Studies show LinkedIn employee networks have 10x more connections than company pages. But only 3% share company content. So there is a huge opportunity to fill this gap.

Myself, Emma Drake and Eimear Strong went on LinkedIn Live to talk about Personal brands in B2B.

We chose this topic as it's becoming quite popular in b2b and more, broadly. It’s more popular with consumer brands as steam ahead of B2B when it comes to content and personality-related thing and the use of influencers to build brand profiles. what is a personal brand. You can watch the Live or read the summary blog below.

Here’s a summary of a three main questions

What is a personal brand?

Eimear Strong

A personal brand is an impression you create for your target audience. And that's quite often built on a set of stories that you tell or about you giving the audience a view of your values and that's where the authenticity comes.

Ayo Abbas 

It's what people say about you when you're out of the room and what you're known for. It's like company brand, but for you as an individual. You can't always control it all the time, but you can build it, but ultimately it’s what others think of you.

Emma Drake

If you're a business, you need credibility. If you work in a business, you need credibility to get your point across in meetings and to build brand fans where you work who speak highly of you. But it's also key if you're building a new business, you've got to build a track record that's about credibility.

What are the opportunities of using a personal brand?

Emma Drake 

There are lots of opportunities around thought leadership. But I think often the focus is about getting the message out not on helping the individual build a personal brand. It can be seen as higher risk for business, if an opinion appears too strong, it could be tapered a bit and then that takes the wind out of it. It just turns into a boring bit of B2B content, rather than something really compelling.  

I think there are lots of opportunities. You want someone to have an opinion. You've got to support their opinion.

Ayo Abbas

LinkedIn employee advocacy research shows that employee networks have 10 times more connections than their company page. The Edelman Trust Barometer said people were 3 times more likely to trust company information given by their employees. That's why personal brand works and why we need to get our people infused and understanding how to use LinkedIn as they're going to get far more traction than sharing as a company. And only 3% of an employer’s employees share their content about their company, or any, and that's a huge opportunity to start embracing and start supporting their employees’ personal brand.

Eimear Strong 

I visited UK Construction Week where we've been talking about recruitment and getting people into the sector and that affecting construction now like diversity. And I think a really decent personal brand is beneficial for the wider sector, because people will talk about issues from recruitment to the race-to-the-bottom culture you sometimes find. These people get traction via social media and their posts get shared. If you see someone with a really strong personal brand, talking about how great it is to work in our sector, it will make people want to work in our sector and we desperately need that at the moment. 

How to build your personal brand?

Emma Drake 

If you’re going to have an opinion and share your views, just make sure that you respect other people who may not agree with you and be able to have constructive discussions. That’s what it’s really about, having an opinion and a way of thinking. I think it’s a skill, some people have it naturally, but it can be learned. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and have an opinion but make sure you show empathy.

Eimear Strong 

Allow yourself to grow into it. So, I’ve always had the same sort of personality, but I've actually allowed my personality to come out and shine since I have been self-employed. And I found that people prefer to work with me because I'm just me and I'm trying to be collaborative. That goes back to authenticity and you need to surround yourself with people that are a good influence when it comes to your personal brand. Some people that you might want to be yourself. I've got a really good network within our sector of women that I completely admire and completely trust. I feel like we all lift each other up. Some of my personal brand centres around people looking after each other, lifting each other up, supporting each other and being influenced by each other.

Ayo Abbas 

It's things like doing free challenges like Helen Pritchard does a free LinkedIn five-day challenge. Not everything is completely applicable to our sector, but it gets you out of your comfort zone to try new things, and just learning tactics that work. Some of the other LinkedIn experts to follow include John Espirian, Brenda Meller and Lea Turner, Ella Orr and Michelle J Raymond.  Follow them and they'll give me lots of different tips on what to post, what to do what's working, because everything changes all the time on this platform. And there are also free resources such as the LinkedIn guides by Brandable. When you start out, don't be afraid just to go in and comment and engage and support others that's a nice way to begin even if you don't feel confident enough, posting yourself.

 

Tips to Build Your B2B Personal Brand

Here are some tips to build a strong and authentic personal brand:

1. Identify your goals and target audience

Be clear about what you want to achieve through your brand and who you want to connect with. And make sure it aligns with your company goals.

2. Audit your existing personal brand

Google yourself to see what comes up. Go through your social profiles and online presence to evaluate current brand perception.

3. Choose your social platforms wisely

Focus on 1-2 platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter rather than spreading yourself thin.

4. Craft your own narrative

What makes you special? Share your story, values, personality, and areas of expertise and use storytelling to draw people in.

5. Create content consistently

Blogs, share articles, create videos etc. to provide value and build authority.

6. Use visuals to make things engaging

Leverage images, videos, slides etc. to make content more engaging. Canva is a great free tool.

7. Interact and engage

Comment on others' posts, share advice, join discussions to expand reach and get noticed.

8. Monitor and learn

Use Google Analytics and analytics tools on social platforms to see what content performs best. Learn from influencers too understand what’s working now.

9. Be authentic

Find your own unique voice and style. Don't try to be someone else and be your true authentic slef

Other personal brand content

Ep 58: Growing and marketing your profile online with Chris Simmons

Ep 46: Brand It's Personal, Dominique Staindl, Christopher Moore & Ayo Abbas


 
 


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