12 Formidable Ways Marketers Help Build Personal Brands

Partners and Staff Need Your Marketing Expertise!

Does your accounting, consulting or law firm have a strong personal brand development program for your partners and staff? As the firm’s marketer, are you playing a key role in helping them build a personal brand, or are you just offering guidance and suggestions? 

There’s really no cogent argument that can be made against the benefits of personal branding and there’s plenty of articles that talk about the value of personal brands, like “Developing Your Personal Brand Equity” in The Journal of Accountancy. So, I’m not going to belabor the point.

A moment of truth or honesty:  it’s highly likely that personal branding is not very high on the “to do” list of your partners. It’s also likely that even if they’ve seized the initiative, there’s a lot of room for improvement and additional opportunities to promote their personal brand that go untapped.

Personal Branding Must be the Responsibility of the Marketing Department

I know. I know. It’s not as if you don’t already have plenty on your plate that you need to put another huge task on your to do list, right? But personal branding is at the very core of marketing, and requires skills and expertise that marketers own. The payoff: more traffic to your website, more leads, more new business and more points that you’ll be able to put up on your personal scoreboard.

Here are 12 action items that you, as the firm’s marketer, can take to build the personal brand of a partner or staffer:

1. Help them identify a niche where they can build their brand – an industry or service where they’re passionate and willing to make a commitment
2. Write a strong, current up to date bio for them that is built for search engine optimization, and also post it to their LinkedIn profile … assuming they have one. Ahem.
3. Put together an inventory of both online and traditional resources to help them keep abreast of relevant news, trends and opportunities
4. Find relevant trade local, state and national trade associations in their field of choice and help them identify options for participating and getting visibility
5. If your firm has a blog – and it should – help them develop and execute a blogging strategy even if it means that you become the ghost writer. This is one of the best and quickest ways to build a personal brand and here’s a formula to  follow: > blogging = > results
6. Create an online profile for your partner and get it published throughout the social mediasphere. Take a look at a website called Brandyourself.com that can be of great assistance to this end
7. Help them find and participate in relevant LinkedIn Groups through provocative comments that start conversations, or by participating in existing conversations
8. Take a look at the editorial calendars of trade publications and find an opportunity to submit an article on their behalf. Once published, you can help them leverage the time and resources they committed by promoting the piece in social media forums, with a link to a place on your website where they can request a download
9. Assuming you have the ability to use your website for lead generation – and you should – help them write a whitepaper, and then create call to action and landing pages to capture leads from this activity
10. Check out the upcoming conferences or meetings in their field of interest and find opportunities to make presentations or to deliver a speech. Again, once published, you can help them leverage the time and resources they committed by promoting the piece in social media forums
11. Identify relevant contacts in the media and send them links to your partners’ bios and thought leadership pieces, along with a note indicating that the partner is available to answer their questions or provide subject matter expertise
12. Do a search for key influencers in their niche of choice and help them reach out, make a contact, and if at all possible, get a guest spot on their blog.

About now you might be saying, “Vitberg, what are you nuts? I can’t do this for X number of people in my firm!! It’s just too much!”

My response: DON’T do it for everyone – just do it for those that truly want to build their personal brand and who are willing to step up to the plate and share in the responsibility, particularly by committing time to writing content that you can run with.

The Role of Inbound Marketing in Personal Branding

Inbound marketing is one of the keys to developing and executing a personal branding strategy. (BTW, if you don’t know what inbound marketing is all about, then get The 2013 Partner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing here.)

Optimizing website bios, posting profiles to a wide variety of social media sites, and most of all – consistent and copious blogging- are all fundamental to getting found first. Writing and publishing whitepapers, articles, presentations or speeches are the fuel that drives onsite lead generation; and social media accounts are drivers to landing pages for these thought leadership offers. These offers can also be used in nurturing strategies and activities, for example, in drip email marketing campaigns.

And finally, the more exposure of the partners thought leadership on the firm’s website, the greater their personal brand grows and the more delighted visitors become. Instead of getting an online brochure with sales messages, they’ll get information, insight, and exposure to what makes your firm really tick …. It’s people.