5 Reasons Why CEOs and Founders Should Build A Personal Brand

Whose name pops up in your mind when you hear the word Tesla? What about Apple? Amazon? Facebook? Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg all brought a lot of attention to their companies by building a strong personal brand and positioning themselves as visionary leaders. 

Similarly, here in France, a few CEOs of French multinational companies have powerful executive brands. We connect AXA with Thomas Buberl, Engie with Isabelle Kocher, and Schneider Electric with Jean-Pascal Tricoire. In the same logic, Criteo's name gets instantly associated with Jean-Baptiste Rudelle.

Here's what a powerful executive brand can do for your company or startup (the promised 5 reasons):

• In today's over-saturated marketplace, CEOs, senior executives and founders are best placed to serve as brand champions and ambassadors, by positioning themselves as industry leaders and influencers. Brand awareness is achieved faster and more easily through executive branding.
• A strong executive reputation and brand has definitely helped all the companies mentioned above acquire more credibility in the eyes of stakeholders and the wider audience because...
• As humans, we can relate and feel an emotional connection to other people, and not corporate entities. That's why biographies of CEOs and founders make bestselling books: people love to hear the business leaders' stories of failure and success. 
• If your company’s CEO lacks a strong personal brand, it is definitely affecting your bottom line. Global executives estimate that 44 percent of a company’s market value is attributable to the CEO's reputation. And 95 percent of financial and industry analysts said they would purchase a company's stock based on the CEO’s reputation. Just think about what Elon Musk was able to do for Tesla.
• Talent acquisition becomes easier when your CEO has a strong personal brand. 80 percent of corporate stakeholders say the CEO’s reputation would influence whether or not they would recommend a company as a good place to work. This is especially relevant for startup founders.

Now we've established that positioning yourself as a visionary leader with a strong personal brand is one of the top ways to positively impact corporate reputation, recruitment, stakeholders' confidence and growth opportunities, why do most CEOs and founders avoid building it? 

Founders and CEOs of small and medium companies are particularly guilty of hiding as "behind-the-scenes" leaders. The same goes for startup founders, with a few exceptions.

The most common obstacles we have seen are:

• No time. This is by far the biggest obstacle and the reason why agencies like Visionary Voices PR are mushrooming. Most CEOs, senior executives and founders simply do not have the time to put in the work.
• No clue. Often CEOs, senior executives and founders simply don't know where to start, what steps to follow, or how to build their personal brand. Some business leaders will make an ad-hoc effort but since building one's brand requires a strategy and consistence, they will not see tangible results and give up just as fast.
• Modesty. Many CEOs and founders feel uncomfortable about blowing their own trumpet. Many feel shy or too humble to put themselves out there. I call this inner block "the false modesty" because by choosing to stay in the shadows or behind the scenes, those senior executives deprive their companies of the growth and visibility they deserve. 

Whatever your block is, there is no way around it: if you want to augment your company's visibility and credibility and improve your business bottom line, you've got to build your personal brand and be seen as a visionary leader.

Before you do anything else, work out a strategy with clear goals, target audience, preferred delivery forms and timeline. The most effective methods that we've designed and implemented have some of these elements: thought leadership content, media placements, speaking engagements, social media presence, strategic partnerships and book deals.

In a nutshell, building one's personal brand is about a clear PR strategy, consistency and thought leadership.

1. Thought Leadership. This is the core of a powerful executive brand, and by far the best and fastest way to boost your company's credibility and position your business as an industry leader. Our clients who use this strategy improve their sales significantly and significantly shorten the sales process. The most common challenges in producing thought leadership pieces are not knowing what to write about, for which platform and how to find the time. 

What to write about? Start with a content strategy. Focus on topics that you feel strongly about and those that showcase your company's value proposition. Speak about latest wins, challenges, opportunities and trends in your company and industry. News-jacking is a very powerful method that you should absolutely master: follow the news and use a relevant news development to share your expertise and views. You can also trend-jack, as we help our clients to do. Take a stand, and produce provocative and thought-provoking content. Lastly, make sure to incorporate strategic CEO storytelling with its five critical elements (the Origin story, the Vision story, the Differentiation story, the Vulnerability Story, and the Success story.)

Where to publish? You have a wide choice: a corporate blog, a personal website, third party publications, and LinkedIn's publishing platform. Make sure to share on social media and update the content regularly. 

How to write? The quality of the writing is super important. Make sure to produce well-structured, succinct and easy-to-read content. We suggest that you get it proofread and enriched by visuals by a PR professional. Mistakes and jumping fonts are off-putting and the tell-tale signs of an amateur writer. If you prefer speaking to writing, use videos. Jean-Pascal Tricoire, the CEO of Shneider Electric, the world leader in energy management, uses both articles and videos in his thought leadership. If you opt for videos, make sure to use the help of professionals for high-quality content. It is important if you don't want your content to drown in the ocean of mediocre content online.

When to write? Yes, I know, you're already swamped up to your ears! Hiring an external agency that specializes in thought leadership and can help you flesh out your ideas, produce high-quality content and promote it can be the right solution. If you choose to do it on your own, make sure to have an editorial calendar and stick to it. Thought leadership is not about one-off article; it's about producing outstanding thought-provoking material consistently and regularly.

2. Media interviews and placements. Despite the prevalence of social media in our lives, earned media exposure remains instrumental in building your brand's visibility and augmenting the company's credibility. 

Securing an interview on a reputed international TV channel, or an article published in a top-tier publication is a powerful way to reach more people and get new opportunities for your business. Yet you need to develop your thought leadership first and polish off your best ideas before going for media exposure. You also need to get media trained, so you make the best out of every interview.

Once you start developing relationships with editors and journalists, you'll discover that they're constantly looking for experts like you. In fact, media coverage often works like a cascade, leading to speaking engagements, partnership opportunities and book deals.

3. Social Media, including stellar LinkedIn profile. To rise above all the noise and stand out, you need to have impressive online presence as a CEO, senior executive or founder. There is no way around it. And both your offline and online image matter. 

Let's say you have a meeting scheduled with a potential new client, partner or stakeholder. You should definitely expect to be Googled prior the meeting. 

With this in mind, you need to make sure that your company's About page and your LinkedIn profile comes up first in Google searches for your name. To achieve that, make sure your LinkedIn profile is fully optimized. It should nail all critical elements of an All-Star profile, conveying a powerful positive image of you that is aligned with the corporate brand. You will also want to remove any unflattering information and images that pop up in Google Search. 

Social media in general is an invaluable tool to communicate your brand, build and engage with the community, drive awareness and nurture leads. Social media will help you maximise the desired impact from thought leadership and PR, but only if you invest time to grow your following. A few hundred followers are not enough for building a powerful brand.

Finally, to make sure that it doesn’t backfire as it happens to a few famous CEOs who tweet in the heat of emotions, design a social media strategy and think before posting. Remember, you're on your way to becoming a public figure and influencer, building your personal brand one "brick", i.e. one social media post at a time. 

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