Social Media Spin

The con­cept of employees/​etc. pro­mot­ing them­selves as a per­sonal brand has been a much-​​debated topic in social media net­works for months. As an inde­pen­dent con­sul­tant, I’ve vac­il­lated between the value of each indi­vid­ual in an orga­ni­za­tion devel­op­ing a thriv­ing per­sonal brand, all the way to the other end of the spec­trum — not encour­ag­ing indi­vid­u­als to build their per­sonal brand on their company’s dime, when espe­cially in this econ­omy, no job is entirely secure and the per­son may get pulled out of the com­pany, tak­ing val­ue­able brand col­lat­eral with them.

I hap­pen to love the atten­tion I get from per­sonal brands. There’s noth­ing like feel­ing that you’ve been sin­gled out to be chat­ted up by a Tony Hsieh — CEO of Zappos.com, or Gavy Vayn­er­chuk from WineLibrary.tv, or any of the many per­sonal brands who are active on social networks.

That’s just one upside…and for me, it’s all personal.

Well, actu­ally, as smart com­pa­nies know, it’s not all per­sonal. Good one-​​on-​​one inter­ac­tion is good business.

It makes it easy for con­sumers to choose that company’s prod­ucts and ser­vice offer­ings. So much beauty in social net­work­ing — com­pa­nies engage in online con­ver­sa­tions and cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ties to boost busi­ness! Who doesn’t love to feel like they’re get­ting per­son­ally heard from a com­pany rep­re­sen­ta­tive? It’s so Mom & Pop, but with much bet­ter, faster ser­vice due to the internet.

So what’s the downside?

The sole per­son behind a per­sonal brand sim­ply can­not main­tain the same level of per­sonal inter­ac­tion a team who is rep­re­sent­ing a com­pany can. So, one day a ‘lone cow­boy’ per­sonal brand may inter­act heav­ily with cus­tomers and prospects. The next day, busi­ness oblig­a­tions may pre­vent any inter­ac­tion at all.

For some cus­tomers, this is just enough for them to loudly pro­claim to their social net­work that Com­pany X sucks because Per­sonal Brand at Com­pany X ignored their pleas for prod­uct sup­port, or what­ever. You get the idea.

From a cus­tomer stand­point, per­sonal brands can poten­tially cause more brand dam­age than good for the com­pany. Cus­tomers demand atten­tion when they want it, and don’t give a fly­ing flip about any­thing else that may be more press­ing to per­sonal brand resp­re­sen­ta­tive. Upset cus­tomers vent all over the inter­net. The rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment fall­out is a lot more expen­sive for com­pa­nies than sim­ply hir­ing a team to help man­age their brand online.

This is all just com­mon sense. Com­pa­nies, if one of your star employ­ees is look­ing to become a star on the inter­net, seri­ously con­sider whether it’s in your company’s best inter­ests to sup­port that dur­ing work hours. If you decide that your busi­ness will thrive by hav­ing one shin­ing star out of your employ­ees rep­re­sent it, def­i­nitely develop a con­tin­gency plan — a Social Media Brand Man­age­ment Plan B, if you will, in the unfor­tu­nate event of that employee’s exit from the company.

Con­sid­er­ing the pre­car­i­ous nature of man­ag­ing your brand via Social Media in the first place, what should your Social Media Brand Man­age­ment Plan B entail? Here’s a few, for starters:

• Imme­di­ate team brand deploy­ment to regain con­trol of con­ver­sa­tions regard­ing your brand.
• Com­pany branded Twit­ter, Face­book, etc, social net­work accounts.
• Full access to con­ver­sa­tions and con­tacts made by your pre­vi­ous social media star