Episode Summary
Even if you are working for a company, you can still create content on social media and build a personal brand. Today, many people try to build a personal brand on LinkedIn by writing articles and sharing valuable advice and business tips. In this way, they also help to promote their company.
But some organizations don’t allow employees to create and share authentic content and prohibit posting during work time. However, a strong personal brand of even one employee can bring a lot of benefits to the company. So what happens if your company doesn’t support you? How do you balance work and your own brand?
In the new episode of Rep Your Brand, Nick Bennett welcomes Todd Kunsman, the Director of Marketing at EveryoneSocial. Nick and Todd get into the ins and outs of building and promoting a strong personal brand, how to make your content stand out, and discuss why companies should support employees in building their social media profiles.
Guest Profile
- Name: Todd Kunsman
- What he does: Todd is the Director of Marketing at EveryoneSocial.
- Company: EveryoneSocial
- Noteworthy: Besides his role as a digital marketing executive, Todd has worked in various industries, startups, and remote positions. In his spare time, he writes about marketing, tech, and music for multiple publications and about personal finance on Invested Wallet. You can also find him adventuring outdoors and hiking.
Key Insights
- Companies should support their employees' personal brands. It is important to encourage your employees to share and create more content. In the past, if an employee posted something on social media, there was a chance he could be fired. Now, many companies have realized that this can be part of their go-to-market strategy. And Todd explains why. "We've seen it work time and time again. And that's why everyone's social exists — it is to help make this easier. So basically, being the hub centralizes everything, but also, they still allow employees to create and share authentic content. It's not just blasting the same message at the same time. It's putting their voice in it. Or we've seen user-generated content work well for the brand too, where they're suggesting things based on their work culture or things they're working on, or their interests, and that still ties back to the brand."
- The number of followers is not important. The content is important. As a small personal brand, it seems hard to stand out from everyone that's been doing this for years. Todd believes if you have any followers, you have influence somehow. "I never was afraid. Of course, I would love to have 15,000 plus followers like you have. It's awesome, but I'm also not worried if it's not there yet. You just have to start and define what you're going to be about, and people will find you. I still get posts sometimes that have 15,000-20,000 views. I don't have a huge following. It's just the amount of the content, how you're posting it, the way you're writing it, and what kind of hashtags you use 'cause that can help you expand your reach."
- Authenticity is key to building a strong personal brand. Building a personal brand is, sometimes, a long process, and certain elements differentiate between a successful and strong personal brand and one that has not yet managed to become one. Todd explains what makes a strong personal brand, and he notes that defining core topics could be super helpful in building one. "I think authenticity is probably number one. Two is, you can see through when something is marketing jargon or like somebody else wrote it — it's very obvious, especially to your audience. [...] The personalization ties into authenticity, but just personalizing more about who you are as a person, what you represent, and then picking what your interests are specifically. Sometimes, people forget to think about that and just go to posting without any clear direction. I personally like marketing, real work, social media, and personal brands because that's the space I'm in, and plus, that's what I like to talk about. And then EveryoneSocial because that's where I work."
Episode Highlights
What Is the Best Way for a Company to Show Support to Employees’ Personal Brands?
“I always say, ‘Lead by example.’ Executives should be involved in this conversation and/or supportive of it. So if an executive is posting and continually being a part of the social conversation, they know it’s okay. Like, ‘Okay, our executives or managers, or the CEO, are very active in this,’ so it makes it really easy to want to start.
[…] But I think the big challenge too is that companies don’t see what’s in it for employees; they only think about the company’s results. Of course, the company sees the benefit; that’s why they’re doing the strategy. But if employees don’t see the value, why would they get involved? You can’t force them to do it; they have to understand why it’s important.”
EveryoneSocial Is a Social Company
“This is the first company that’s really been all about like, ‘Hey, we’re a social company. This is what we do. This is the platform. We need to live and breathe it to show companies why this matters.’ So it’s really easy to just get involved and have that support. And plus, we’re supporting our side projects too, which also gets more passion because people want to talk about those things. And it’s still related to the company. It shows that the company trusts its employees, which is also good for business. People want to work with companies where their employees are supported or feel trusted.”
Posting Personal Thoughts vs. Company’s Self Promotional Things – What Is the Right Balance?
“I’m probably on an 80:20 split. Unfortunately, the things I talk about are pretty related to the industry I work in, so it’s probably more like 60:40, but generally, I’d probably go with the 80:20 kind of split there. The content stuff that’s from the company can be a little bit hidden. A lot of the things I talk about, I’m not tagging EveryoneSocial or linking to EveryoneSocial, but the concepts are related to the industry. So it’s like bringing awareness without indirectly calling everything out. It’s a unique way for me. But in general, I think 80:20 or the 90:10 split is a pretty accurate statement.”
What is the Right Platform for Promoting a Personal Brand?
“I think LinkedIn and Twitter are the two big ones still; TikTok is definitely growing, Instagram and Facebook are there. They’re still channels. I think it depends where your audience really lies. The Unity example — it’s big for Twitter because a lot of the design, video game, and engineering stuff is on Twitter. So it makes sense they have a lot of success there. They still do great things on LinkedIn, but Twitter has worked for them.
LinkedIn and Twitter have both been good for me. I have more followers on Twitter than I do on LinkedIn, just because I’ve had it for so long and built up this kind of following. I think both channels have their own place. It’s just figuring out and defining your voice and what you want to do where, personally.”
Should Posting be Allowed During Work Time?
“If you’re now on social, you shouldn’t be on social all day. Totally understandable. I’m on 10-15 minutes a day, in the morning, posting and scheduling stuff, and that’s it. It still has this big impact.
You can imagine if you had a thousand employees who have an average of thousand social connections — that’s a million additional reach. Then you have the secondary network seeding it; then you have the growth of those networks. There are huge opportunities for these large organizations that are missed. […]
That already gives me a red flag, and not understanding it, or there’s something else seriously going on in the culture of fear and distrust.”
