What’s the most important aspect of your business?
If your answer is your company’s brand . . . you’re almost there.
Sure, a good brand with good branding can lead to memorable marketing, a trustworthy buying experience, and customer loyalty – but what’s even more important is that the personal brand of the founder & executives within a company aligns with the business’s brand itself.
This day in age, a company that isn't supported by the personal brand of its stakeholders is going to miss the mark.
On this episode of Evolved Sales LIVE, host Jonathan Fischer sits down with Izzy Prior, founder of Spark Social Media, to dig into the exact method founders and executives can use to powerfully align their personal and business brands in order to create heightened credibility and effectiveness in their digital marketing and outreach.
Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more engaging sales insights and discussions! Happy watching!
Meet Izzy:
Izzy Prior is part of a growing segment of young entrepreneurs who bring a unique savvy to online branding and outreach. As the founder of Spark, based in London, England, Izzy works with business founders and executives to powerfully align their personal and business brands to create heightened credibility and greater effectiveness in their online marketing and outreach.
Check out the transcription of this webinar episode below!
Jonathan Fischer 0:04
Welcome back. Thanks for joining us. I'm Jonathan Fisher, your company brand isn't the most important aspects of your business. A good brand can engender trust, make marketing more memorable. It can even customer loyalty. What if your brand for your company and your personal brand and do not align? We're here to talk with us about that is Izzy price is a part of a young group of young entrepreneurs via online branding and outreach. And she's a LinkedIn top voice. Voice. As the founder for media based in London, England, is he worked with business founders and executives to powerfully align their personal and business brands create heightened credibility and greater effectiveness and their online marketing and outreach. And our conversation today is he will share some ways you can dramatically boost your results by tackling this hidden risk to your business and sales. This is he is fantastic to have you on the show today. Well.
Izzy Prior 1:01
Hi, Jonathan, thank you for having me on the show very excited for our conversation today
Jonathan Fischer 1:07
as our wheat. But as I mentioned, you are one of the whole crop of younger entrepreneurs coming up. LinkedIn has recognized you as a top voice. What's made this issue of branding such a kind of almost obsession for you.
Izzy Prior 1:22
An obsession? Yep, I would say that to be honest. Um, I think what's really important is when you start out in business, there is a lot of competition out there. So when I started my business two years ago, I joined the marketing space. And I saw that there were so many people who had significant years of experience on top of me. And I had to find a way to position myself and stand away from the crowd. And I didn't want to walk into a networking room being a young person has just come out of education. And I found my way through networking on LinkedIn, and creating and cultivating a personal brand for myself. Over the last few years, I've grown my platform to over 50,000 followers, and as you mentioned a moment ago, LinkedIn top voice, and it's significantly helped my business as a personal brand, but with the business brand to
Jonathan Fischer 2:16
Well, that's excellent. Well, it is a very important issue to kind of start us off by putting us to define terms. I mean, it may seem obvious, but many people may think of it okay, brand is a corporate thing. And okay, personal branding is if you're trying to generate sales, and maybe for the salespeople, that's the thing, maybe you could help us out with that and define terms for us.
Izzy Prior 2:36
Sure. So when we look at building a business, we look at marketing strategies, and the business brand is a significant part. It's the first part before we even get started with marketing, no company or organization or business. And a lot of people look at the business brand first. And they create a tone of voice a mission statement, so many things for this business brand. And what they forget as a founder is that in 2023, we are talking to each other and such a more human approach. And the trust that is required. Now when we're working with an agency in the b2b space, even the b2c space, a personal brand is necessary. So what is a personal brand so the essence of personal branding is essentially, where we are intentionally shaping and managing how others perceive us in our professional life. This can be online and offline. So for instance, when you turn up at a networking event, what you wear, how you greet people, the things that you talk about the values and beliefs that you uphold, but equally, this is also your online reputation. So LinkedIn, if you're on Instagram on Tik Tok the newsletters that you're creating even a podcast, perhaps that you're creating this podcast, Jonathan, your personal brand is emulated through him. So by crafting a unique identity and showcasing that consistently online, you're able to stand away from your competitors, and also establish some credibility for your name and your company brand. Equally through LinkedIn, which I'm sure majority of people watching this have come from, you can make meaningful connections with people knowing these people's values that you align with. And then you share trust with these people. So you're my presence is constantly under scrutiny on here, you're being watched with eagle eyes, by your competitors, by investors if you're looking down that route, but also by your future prospects and your future customers and also your current customers. So if you're not looking at cultivating your personal brand, currently, it leaves a void and others will use that void and fill it with their own narrative. So I think it's really important in this day and age, that you're making meaningful actions, to cultivate that personal brand for yourself with the values that you share, rather than letting other people make up their own idea of you making up their own narrative of who you are.
Jonathan Fischer 4:58
That makes a lot of sense. Well, and Quick reminder to our live audience, we always love to have q&a After our main conversation. So go ahead, no need to wait. But those additional questions right there in chat, we'll bank those and circle back here at the bottom of the half hour. So is he, I wonder, before we jump into some of the benefits of cultivating a more full fledged personal brand, and talking about the benefits for your business goals. In so doing, I wonder if you could share with us some of the other side of the spectrum? What are some of the real risks involved, and what examples of that one personal brand maybe has some black marks or negatives involved in it?
Izzy Prior 5:38
Okay, of course, with everything, there are benefits benefits, there are advantages and disadvantages to going down this route. So a lot of people go, Wow, a personal brand, I'm having to put myself on a pedestal here, be out in the spotlight, and people are judging me, there is a lot of fear that comes with that, and immediately for a lot of founders, because not only is that business being put on a pedestal, but also them as a person. I see on the platform with the clients, sometimes we've worked with that some people are afraid to upload images of themselves or take beliefs and sit, get off the fence and have an opinion, there was an affair behind that because of canceled culture, but also the idea of disagreement and hate. Even though LinkedIn is a professional work platform, still, you know, over the last eight, over the last 21 years. There are still trolls on this platform on every social media platform nowadays. So there's a lot of fear behind it. And I think that stops a lot of people from getting started. What I've seen over the last few years on the platform is personal branding has increased, but also so has hatred and disagreements in the comment section. Now, don't let this fear you from starting your personal brand. It's just something to be wary of some mistakes that I've seen have been where people take such a controversial opinion on purpose to create engagement in that industry. So there have been people who bring the whole gender conversation on the platform in a way of hate and engagement. And it leads to a lot of hateful discussions and disagreements. Because obviously everyone has their own discussions, but it leaves that person being put on a pedestal, and some bad responses in their name. So for instance, One really good example, and I'm sure a lot of people would have seen this last year as the essence of the crying CEO. This was an individual, a CEO at a marketing agency, I won't name the agency. But I'm sure there are so many PR articles in the internet about this, he had made some of his staff redundant. And after that, he uploaded an image of himself crying on LinkedIn and spoke about this. Now it went viral, I can't remember how many reactions but millions and millions of views and impressions to this person's post. And instead of him hoping for, you know, some support and perhaps a different reaction, he received a lot of hate even death threats. Yeah, it was very interesting sort of reaction got to his company brand, not only his personal brand, a lot of people were trying to find out who these three employees were to help them find a job. And it was a very interesting experience on the platform. Now, that's a great example of if you're posting something without purpose, and without real thought behind it, it can backfire on you and your business brand.
Jonathan Fischer 8:40
Yeah, that makes sense. Well, and the old adage was you don't bring up certain topics among, you know, in social gatherings, right, like politics and religion, or to be left for private conversation. But I wonder is that maybe he's a little bit that kind of a good rule of thumb in terms of branding any public format, like on the LinkedIn platform? Or what are some rules of thumb that can help you avoid a pitfall like that? I mean, the guy does seem I know the case you're talking about seems like he was just personally kind of kind of tone deaf. And it wasn't a joke. Maybe that's a lie in that regard. But for like regular people, could they avoid missteps by just not getting into religion or politics at all? Was that a good rule of thumb?
Izzy Prior 9:25
I suppose. So I have seen a lot of political conversations. In the UK, where I'm based, there are a lot of MPs and even the Prime Minister has LinkedIn himself. So there are a lot of conversation of politics on the platform. And obviously, you know, you have everyone has difficult different political opinions. So I don't think rolling it out is is the issue here, I think is when you're sitting down and typing out a LinkedIn post and planning to upload something rather than just an article or blog post. You really have to sit back before clicking that publish button and saying, Is this helping my Online Reputation, is this helping the business really sit down and consider is this going to benefit my business or benefit the brand that I'm creating for myself because people have different reasons for posts on LinkedIn. For myself, I'm posting for Spark in order to, you know, build brand awareness game leads, generate leads, but also building a brand for myself in the young, young entrepreneurship space to Gen Z space. So I have different reasons for being on the platform. But ultimately, every time I click publish, I am very aware of what the outcome or the reactions are, that post can be, I think it's definitely important to be emotionally aware and emotionally intelligent, intelligent, of what you're uploading, or even getting someone else if you have a VA or a marketing manager to check what you're posting to avoid any criticism or any feedback on what your post could be.
Jonathan Fischer 10:53
Yeah, well, in other instances that have been in the popular media recently, it feels like there was a misalignment between a very distinct advocacy of a political stance that were in counter to the core buying customer base of said products is a couple areas here in the US has even been by boycotts. And I wonder if maybe that does bring up the there's a difference between getting involved in the conversation and taking an advocacy stance, maybe better understand your buyer, understand your audience understand what the risks are on that. Is that fair?
Izzy Prior 11:28
Yeah, definitely. I think like a great example that comes to mind when you say that is perhaps I think it was last year at some point Cristiano Ronaldo, very famous footballer I will sit in after a game being spoken to and being interviewed. And there were Coca Cola bottles, standing right there being advertised whilst he was talking. And he actually actively slid them away from the camera view and brought water into the scene and said drink water. Now what this meant was, it significantly impacted the market value of Coca Cola overnight in an instant, I think away from LinkedIn, if we're considering personal brand in Christiana, Cristiano Ronaldo is such a big figure all over the world globally, that the fact that someone can have influence over their actions like that, it has detrimental impact to businesses. Now, if we put this into the LinkedIn space, your conversations and the posts that you upload can have significant impact on your business, on your sales on your pipeline, on your employees. But also, if you're currently hiring or trying to attract talent, the posts that you've put up can be good and bad. So for instance, if you're talking about yourself, being an employer, and you're trying to hire people, you need to position yourself as employer to work with, you need to talk about the healthy culture that you're building, the leadership that your team is creating. I think this is a great advantage to the platform beings who are going organic and widespread in its reach, you can create a brand for yourself and the benefit is in your hands. But equally, also the disadvantages if you're not careful enough, and I think that's what we really need to be aware of here, Jonathan?
Jonathan Fischer 13:11
Yeah, so some of the pitfalls had been mentioned. So let's segue more deeply into what you just alluding to some of the benefits of really capital, just guessing, but my guess is that if you had the range of where you are on the spectrum, majority, people just aren't probably maximizing their personal brand, just by a few outliers who are making some big goofs a few people who are doing a great job. Hey, probably most of our listenership is going to be somewhere in that middle category I'll bet for you would agree as as an expert, they haven't maximized their personal brand to align with corporate for better success. Talk to us about what that means? What are some of the ways that people can better leverage their personal profile? And what are some results you've seen in the real world from doing that?
Izzy Prior 13:55
Okay, so for a little bit of context, I actually came from the corporate finance sector before delving into the creative agencies and industry. And what I saw there was, my timeline was a lot different in terms of personal branding did not exist. It was an essence of sharing blog posts, sharing articles celebrating certifications being being awarded, and the sort of more corporate posts going up that one really benefiting one's business or benefiting position in a company of success and one to work at. So as soon as I moved into the more creative industry, my timeline was flooded with people who were having healthy conversations and really building up a business that I wanted to be a part of, or I was I was becoming an ambassador without even being an employee. I wanted this company to thrive and I enjoyed seeing the posting. So some benefits of one. Taking that personal brand approach rather than the outdated LinkedIn approach is one as I just mentioned, that attract same talent, but also retaining talent. So let's have the conversation of attracting talent first, if you're posting and talking about your leadership and culture, people will be wanting to apply to your jobs without you even having to put a vacancy apple, a, we're hiring up. Now with some of the clients that we have, some of them are growing very quickly to the point where they're having to hire multiple people at once. What we're doing is uploading posts for them, that celebrates the culture they've created and celebrates the leadership values that they share. And it's making hiring the hiring process so much more fluid and easy for both parties here. But also, if we talk about retaining your talent and retaining your employees, if you're taking a personal brand new approach, not only for you, but also for the team that you're managing, or for the company wide, there are so many benefits for that. So if you if you've started building your personal brand, imagine the impact that your whole team building their personal brand would have. So myself and my employee, we both are building our personal brand actively in the field and creative industry that we run. And it means that not only are people my timeline, getting eyes on me, the founder of my company, but also the people around me and the people that also complete the work. So not only am I getting more eyes, but there's also trust in the fact that people know what we're doing and what we're capable of. And I think, obviously, there is a lot of precaution here having to be take pace. For instance, with social media policy, like that's a whole different conversation, we could go through Jonathan, you really need to be wary of there being a line here of you should not be strict with your employees on the things that they're posting, if you're encouraging them going down this route, do not do templated ideas, forcing the employee to share company posts or blog posts, you want to give them freedom. So they want to be part of that company and want to celebrate the mission publicly on LinkedIn, for instance, there should be that healthy encouragement to have a voice become a brand ambassador for that company, but also have their own identity. This is your employees career just as much as their job, their job role at the company, I think you need to take a mindset of they're more than just a name on your long LinkedIn company page employee list. This is an actual person. And if you take a mindset and reframe this, as my employee building their brand on LinkedIn could have so many benefits for our company just as much as the employee and themselves. They can demonstrate the expertise and value they have, they can talk about the culture and leadership of the company itself, they can be become the employee brand, there are so many benefits to this. But equally, if your company does not have a healthy culture, or healthy leadership, or it's not an enjoyable place to work at, then you need to go back to root one and and sort out these and fix these problems. Because you cannot stop your employees from posting on LinkedIn that's toxic in itself. So if your company has a poor culture, that's not a branding problem, that is an organizational problem. And that's a whole can of worms that we could go through Jonathan, but I think is a healthy conversation to have.
Jonathan Fischer 18:18
Well, I definitely think you're, you're making a very important point there that there needs to be been a move to democratize the corporate space over the last couple of decades, which I think we all can agree is a really good thing. A lot of organization is functioning far more flat man. Of course, you're still as a call for liability. But with that authenticity, and some transparency, so those are all really great words like II words. Maybe you could talk to us about how we would begin let's say I'm in a bunny and I see a gal have some leadership role. What are some steps I could take with my team or teams to maybe get begin to marshal all of our resources and leverage that because on the other side of what you're saying, is probably just most folks just doing whatever they're doing. There, there is no cohesion behind it. So if one extreme is, is over the corporate dies, it's all templated and kind of boring and too controlling side there's not enough initiative or intentionality. How do we start?
Izzy Prior 19:19
That's a great question, Jonathan. I think the first thing that I would advocate is having an internal workshop or a meeting or a day dedicated to this. I think when you prioritize social media post him and the whole team's personal brands, they will see this as Oh, our manager is investing into us. They care about our personal brand and our voices, and we want to listen, we want to hear what their plan is what they have to say. So starting off with a whole workshop would be a great idea for someone who wants to, perhaps leverage leverage the personal brands and voices and expertise of their team. You Do a link in the marketing team within your company, if it's big enough can do this sort of thing. Or you can bring an agency in who are specialized in personal branding, to do workshops to really educate the team on what is right and what is wrong. So, as you said that there's one end of templated posts a lot of strict, you know, there's not even, there's there's not even a personal brand is it's like the company brand. And I've seen this with a lot of companies in the UK just as much as America where employees are copying and pasting from their managers, LinkedIn posts and saying something and then the next day and employees saying the exact same thing. And it's so evident, there is no personality or personal branding going on here. So I will have a really healthy conversation on what is right and what is wrong. What is wrong in terms of something that could damage the company's reputation, and a lot of education needs to go on here, because I think some people would be oblivious to the fact that some words would be impacting the business overall, I think I've seen some companies where employees are talking about work life balance, and the fact that burn tau and you know, they're working X amount of hours. Now, to them, they're just saying this to be authentic with their community. And you know, rightfully so you can be authentic. But there's a line of vulnerability here, where it's impacting the company brand. Now, I've seen posts from one marketing company where they're talking about burnout, and working overworking, almost long hours, and all of them are having breakdowns and their mental health is very poor. Now, from the outside, the thoughts that I'm having is the culture within this team is poor. Now, what does that mean? Does it reflect in their work as well. So I think we have to be really cautious here of the idea of vulnerability and authenticity on a platform with personal branding involved. But equally, if you shut down your team's voices, where they can't have any sort of input or personality injection, then you're causing probably some resentment in the team. So it's very much like a unique approach in terms of every team or every company is going to have a different measure, especially on the industry. Like if we're talking about finance, recruitment, some of these more corporate industries, tack, these people naturally are working a lot more, whilst if we're talking about creativity and sort of, you know, I don't like to spread and analyze each industry differently. But I think there are going to be different mindsets towards work and and that will reflect in the personal brands of the employees.
Jonathan Fischer 22:42
Do you think that a large part then of the result of workshop, as you propose, would need to be to be built a best practices document, like here's some do's and don'ts, here's some things we're not going to talk about, because, hey, we're not trying to give a blow to the brand and say, hey, that's authenticity. But it needs to be real needs to be human. That seems like there's a little bit of a balancing act on that front, what advice do you give.
Izzy Prior 23:06
So the first thing that I would advise is making, making it clear to everyone in the team who's been part of this and involved in this as the mission and the values that the company brand has, because that's the thing that you want to align with. Now, there are some brands that we see all over, you know, at the moment, McDonald's, or something very big in the branding space right now, where there's a lot of thing about grimaces birthday and all this all over social media at the moment, they have a very snarky, quirky, innovative tone of voice. And there are a lot of smaller startup companies taking on these approaches. Would you expect the founder or the employees? Are these brands to have a very corporate tone? No, you wouldn't, because they are sharing and aligning with the company brand values. So first of all, I would say, to educate your team and educate the company on what the mission is of the business and what and what the ultimate tone of voice is of the business, because I think this is a great stepping stone. And then next, as you mentioned there, John, Jonathan, some do's and don'ts. I think it's really important sort of, if you're talking about the finance industry, there is obviously a lot of things with regulations. whatever country you're in, there are things you can and can't talk about. And I think educating your team, especially if they don't come to them from the marketing space, or perhaps the due diligence space. There needs to be education for everyone on this front if they really want to get on board. But also I think there needs to be a healthy balance between the individual's personal journey and what they want to talk about, and sort of how do I word this? The person versus the brand is very important, but there is a line here of how much personality and vulnerability What can I bring into this? And also does it align with the company that I'm standing behind? I'm essentially a brand ambassador, am I projecting the company in a positive light through my personality? And I think that's a conversation you have to have with yourself of how, how much personality you do inject.
Jonathan Fischer 25:20
So, I wonder if there are other ways we can mitigate risks of shop, we get together, we have sort of best practices, we create a culture? Do we maybe get somewhat structured in terms of Hey, guys, we got some of these things going on the company? Or do we leave a little more loose than that? Maybe that's another balancing act there, right? Because if it seems too, we could we could circle right back where to where it seems too templated? If we do too much of that, but what much guidance and direction do you recommend should come from either marketing or other leadership within that company?
Izzy Prior 25:53
I think the workshop is a great star in terms of getting people understanding what personal branding is, because it's something that has been around for a few years now. But in terms of the professional sense, is very new, especially with LinkedIn, people still see this platform, as you know, very corporate and business networking, where they're using Sales Navigator and logging off. And that's all they're doing. And I think the organic side of things is increasing more and more. So the workshops a great place to start. It depends obviously, what you include in that and how long it is, I think, when we talk about templates, I think they're not an evil thing to talk about, it can be really helpful in terms of people who aren't so social media savvy, in how to address the company, they're working out, if they're in the sales sector, if they're in HR, it depends what sort of department they're in, in the company, how they address certain sales techniques, or how they talk about different things going on in the company, I think a template is great for myself, I wouldn't have necessarily needed them because I had that social media savvy background, whilst perhaps someone who's in the HR space who very used to documents, sort of meetings and interviews, they would have no way no idea where to start. So I think providing these templates and teaching someone on perhaps what the company's tone of voice is, and all these other resources will provide a lot of help. Another thing about mitigating risk here is perhaps having check ins monthly or quarterly on how an individual's personal brand is going. Now, obviously, this sort of becomes part of their job description when they get involved with it, because they're taking on the brand ambassador ship of their company when they decided to get started with a personal brand. So I think it is right to involve this in perhaps a quarterly review of, of how are things going have you generated leads for us because that might be an objective of someone starting their personal brand, and then perhaps receiving a commission out of it. But equally, I think we have to also take another approach of a personal brand isn't just because you're part of a company, it's also something for you to jump throughout your career path in your personal brand is your own, it's not the company brand. And I think we really have to distinguish that here. As you could build a great personal brand for yourself in the HR space, and be educating your audience. I just use HR there as an example. There are so many other sectors obviously over LinkedIn that we could talk about here. But if you're considering yourself a thought leader in gaining engagement because of that, you could go into another career in a few months time a lot easier than someone who's not posting at all so again, there are many other benefits and I think we also have to consider as employers that our employees personal brands aren't ours we don't own them they can definitely be a benefit to us for the company in terms of lead generation attracting talent everything I mentioned earlier, but equally that personal brand is their own and we can't control that completely because that's their voice and you know it could lead them to getting a promotion within the company but also leaving the company and finding a better job that's more suited to their talent
Jonathan Fischer 29:17
Yeah, I love that and maybe we can even talk further on that in our our q&a setting up that your the use of your personal referral beyond the company you're with at this wow we blown through our half hour conversation is he has been great I think it's definitely food for thought a lot of business leaders and for business professionals are not actually leveraging and I think you put us on track to do a better job on that much for adding so much value to the show return and give me more thing to it but first let's get into our we do have some questions lined up here for us. And yeah, let's see here. Let's go Josh was got one to start us off with here. What are some base Six Steps for someone who wants to define their narrative for a personal brand or company brand. So that's a good one like their define their narrative. That's something we could impact further for sure.
Izzy Prior 30:10
Okay, so that's a great stepping stone is that definition because I think I'm seeing a lot of people at the moment jumping straight into the personal brand new space with no strategy. They're just going, Hey, my name is Izzy. Let's Take me for example, here. My name is Izzy. And, you know, I'm a founder, this is did it, I did it. And they don't sit back and go, What is the purpose behind me starting my brand here today. So I think, you know, what I get a lot of clients to do when they get started when we do consultancy, is to get a, you know, a piece of paper out or if you use something like figma, or torn online and mind map out who you are as an individual. And this is if we're going for the personal brand approach here is look at what your values are as an individual and look at who you are. Because very much in your personal life, your professional life will overlap. And the values you share will go all throughout you your life, you know, we work 4050 hours a week, if not more, depending on what your job position is, who you are, as a person shows up in your professional career. So that's what I do, I'd start off by mapping out who you are. And then perhaps looking at what you're passionate about, or what you're you talk about and know a lot about. Now, don't you know, for me, and I'm sure for many other people, what your job is, is something that you'd be able to talk about for hours, because that's what you do day in, day out. So that would be a content endeavor you talk about and you want to educate people, perhaps you want to entertain people for your content. But ultimately, a lot of us want to get sales because that's why we're on this podcast. That's why we're listening to this. So I think a great way is going, how can I turn what I do for my clients, what I do for our customers, what we do for our associates on a daily basis? How can I turn that into actionable bite sized content that would make people and future prospects trust us? Well, we would do social proof, we would share social proof on how we did x for this client, how we achieve this for x client. But also, you want to build trust to the point where you're giving out free value to people, and therefore they build trust with you and go, Oh, Joshua shared this much with me. I think imagine what it would be like if I was paying him to do X, I'm sure I would get a lot a great deal out of that. So thinking about your content areas, providing value is a great basic step to start with.
Jonathan Fischer 32:38
Good stuff, good stuff. One is asking this question. Would you recommend brand advocacy when your team is virtual? And you know, how does it maybe different differ from your classic on site team,
Izzy Prior 32:53
I don't think it really has a great deal of difference. I am a virtual team, I have a virtual team were a remote team. And personal branding has not been inhibited, or stalled because of the fact that we're remote. I think perhaps if you were in person, you would be able to collaborate a lot more within the team on brainstorming your personal brand and be aligned because you're literally sitting next to that person when you've got to meet him room. However, after the pandemic and being able to work from home and having virtual calls, zoom, Google me everything. I think that we're able to do that online now. And we're able to brainstorm and my employee and I did this just last week, we booked out two hours in our diary and asked each other questions very similar to what you're doing today with me, Jonathan, on on what personal branding is. And then we're repurposing that into content. And we can do that just as much as in person as online. So I think encouraging brand advocacy is possible just as much when you're virtual.
Jonathan Fischer 33:56
No Limit limitations in our increasingly new virtual lipo pack is asking you to statistics or research to show that personal profiles get more traffic than a company profile. Is that borne out in the data as far as you can see?
Izzy Prior 34:14
Yes, I actually did a, a piece of content on exactly this question, which I have not got up with me today. So apologies for that lady. But I'll have to try and find that and perhaps reshare on a future post what the statistics will be. But I did this test with a client who had freshly started their personal brand and their company brand. And I think that the personal brand one overall, it was, you know, superior here in the conversation. And the whole point of that is LinkedIn is a networking site. You have so many more analytics and tools and things to use on LinkedIn in comparison to a company page. So for instance, the better 80 to check who's viewing your profile. And being able to have DMS means that the whole networking conversation and building your personal brand, through private DM conversations, comments sections, there's so much more availability for a personal user rather than a company page. And I think this all comes down to, when you go to a networking event in person, you're not meeting a company logo, you're not meeting a business, you're meeting someone who is a brand advocate for that business and ambassador for that business. And in the same way online, you're not meeting a company or logo, you're having a genuine, meaningful conversation with someone who has something to say about their business, they have value to share. And I think that is why LinkedIn personal profile is getting more traffic. But I can't share the statistic because I haven't brought it up with me. But great idea, I will share that in a future post to anyone who is currently following me. Thank you for bringing that up. Yeah, I will, I will do.
Jonathan Fischer 36:07
So here's a good one as well, from Ken. He's asking how can the corporate brand recover or rehabilitate when there's been some damage done? And I'm thinking it could be from anyone at any level in the company, right? And maybe it differs, you know, if it's somebody who's a founder, or sea level leader versus an employee, maybe talk to us about that.
Izzy Prior 36:31
Okay, so I actually saw this happen last year. And I'm not going to mention the person's name, because I don't feel like it's fair to, you know, talk about individuals when this is their past. And also, you know, the things that I could say in this podcast today could further damage someone's reputation. But, you know, let's take this as a hypothetical scenario, although it is true. I saw an individual create a lot of controversy through their content online last year. And they were generating millions of views through their content, millions 1000s of likes, because the content that they were creating was so purposefully controversial, that it was getting arguments and sub comments, and so many conversations were being comments on their content. Now, they had realized perhaps six to eight months later that this strategy, yes, it was getting them to use it was generating them followers, I think they increased to you know, 50 60,000 followers, however, it was not benefiting that business, because their ideal customer would be put off by the controversy, they will create him, especially when they were sort of offering a marketing service, if their approach for their brand was controversy, why would a customer buy in from them? Why would they even want to do that? So they stood back and look to their strategy, and when this isn't working for us. And I think the you know, recovery there is stepping away from the platform for you know, a short period of time, and coming back to it with a strategy that makes amends. So perhaps you would have you know, her a group of people as impacted a group of people on the platform, a demographic, or even like, a personal, you know, direct attack on someone, it depends, whatever it was, you know, make apologies and, and build bridges and make amendments here. But ultimately, I think with your digital products, products, or your digital footprint, these things stay around, there are going to be PR articles, there are going to be screenshots. There's a LinkedIn subreddit, called LinkedIn lunatics, and a lot of you know, people who have made interesting controversial, controversial posts have landed themselves on there. And although you know, it's quite difficult to find this subreddit, it's still online, these screenshots are places and I think ultimately, everything is gonna be on social media, but it doesn't have to have the necessary damage that you think it would have. So you can make amendments, you can build your brand up again, as long as it hasn't been such an impact wherever that damage was, I think a good example here of bridges not being amended would be probably BrewDog. Quite an interesting scenario last year in terms of all the employees coming out and although the CEO I think his name was James, I can't remember To be honest, but um, he although his, you know, making making actions with his personal brand and putting out content, people still have in the back of their minds this damage that had been made. So it really depends on how intense and how extreme that damage was, because if it's a silly error or mistake, I think it can be brushed away. But if it's something detrimental to the business, culture and business tokenisation then, you know, it perhaps is something to worry about
Jonathan Fischer 40:07
BrewDog built their first North American operation 15 minutes from my house. So you're, you're, you're speaking close to home. And I love Elvis juice in the summertime, but
Izzy Prior 40:19
in the fridge to be honest. So I do apologize if that didn't answer your question Can because I think the individual can recover. But it really depends on how extreme that personal brand damage is. Ultimately, that's the bracket I have it.
Jonathan Fischer 40:32
Well, I'm probably if you've already built up a lot of loyalty or if your product is just that good. You might weather the storm if you're in a cutthroat competition where they can, if you're already not strong. And I think we're seeing that with some brands, the product is already weak to begin with. You make a misstep, it may not be recoverable in some cases, perhaps.
Izzy Prior 40:51
I think we're seeing this right now with the whole threads and Twitter conversation between Zack and Elon Musk. You know, personal brands definitely come into the conversation there in terms of people have seen Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, their personalities and decided that they'd like that person for the the values they uphold. And regardless if they like the new threads, platform, or if they want to stick with Twitter, I think the brand loyalty there is actually an element of personal brand loyalty here. So in a similar way to when you go shopping and you buy that same product every time even though there might be a new better one come out you always sticks that brand brand loyal item. I think it's there's a similar approach here with personal brands loyalty of you will always stay loyal to someone because the values align with your own.
Jonathan Fischer 41:42
Yeah, yeah. If you watch the social network, movie, you might have an more negative opinion. If you didn't, anyway, yeah. Is it the lizard versus the maverick? I don't know. But yeah, the different. They both have their pros and cons, right? It is interesting when you really when you really become the face of your company, Papa John's another instance years ago, right? It there's, there's a risk there. So yeah, gotta tread lightly. However, I think you've made the case in the course of our conversation today is that there's a lot to be gained by getting your people enthused and activated to be evangelists for your brand online and in so during they can better their own their own professional prospects and their own future advancement as well. So if folks want to follow up with you and go deeper with the expertise that you bring to the table, is he how would they best do that.
Izzy Prior 42:37
So currently, we're actually getting our website revamped. So I'm not going to plug that here. But you can connect with me on LinkedIn, my employee, Jamie and I have just launched a new offering within the company that really helps people who are in a situation like I've spoken today, where they haven't got direction, they're a little bit unsure on what their personal brand should be, or what they do, they should talk about, especially if they have so many different things going on, you know, a side hustle, being an employee having a business or multiple businesses. So what we've launched is the Personal Brand Catalyst where we sit with our clients and really guide them with our expertise in making a purposeful personal brand, but one that mitigates the risks that I've spoken about today. So you're generating leads to your company, and building brand awareness or thought leadership, whatever your objective is. So that is something that we've launched, but um, I just I share content that helps people build their personal brand for free on my on my profile, and I'm always happy for someone to send me a DM if they have a question after day after today.
Jonathan Fischer 43:45
It looks like you put an initial consultation link on the site that there's now would it be good to share that with listeners as well to get on your calendar for a consult? Yeah, of
Izzy Prior 43:53
course, that's on that I actually need to update that. So I thank you for reminding me.
Jonathan Fischer 43:59
Okay, and we can give us your updated version. We'll put that in the show notes for future listeners to this podcast episode. Well, excellent. A well, it's definitely been a fantastic conversation today is he want to thank you again, so much for coming on the show and adding tremendous value to our listener.
Izzy Prior 44:14
Shop. Thank you, Jonathan. I really enjoyed it. See you later. All right,
Jonathan Fischer 44:18
well, and speaking of our listeners, you make our show possible. We're so happy to have you here with us. By the way, as always, we are proudly as you probably already know, if you're a regular we are powered by Overpass, they are the number one solution for finding talent quickly if you need a group of STRS or maybe you need some virtual assistants anybody that can help you grow your company that you need quickly and you can know that they're top notch talent right now go create your free account as a hiring manager and see just how easy quickly quick and economical can be to get top talent helping you grow your company. By the way if you love the content on the show, you can always go and check out our podcast episodes wherever you like to go and get podcasts we are the evolved to sales leader check us out and put your drive time workout time or cleaning time to good use. Well, that's gonna do it for today's episode. I'm wrapping it up for now but I'm gonna be excited to be right back here same time, same station to see you on our next episode of the Evolve sales leader live right here on LinkedIn. We'll see you then take care everybody
