A Selfie-Assessment: How Your Personal Image Is Affecting Your Company's Growth

Even if you do everything you can to keep your work life and your personal life completely separate, your life outside of work can still affect your career. That is, if you are a business leader and manager, your personal image can have a huge effect on your company’s growth and development. 

According to Business Insider’s “9 Reasons Why Your Image Is Everything”, personal image is inextricably tied to your professional image, and can have a huge impact on your company. When you think of your company’s brand is most likely the first thing that comes to mind. Your company’s brand is essentially your company’s image and reputation, so you understand how important it is for your company’s brand to be positive and likeable. But your personal brand, or how you present yourself outside of work, is just as important, and is irrevocably entwined with your company. Basically, your personal image has a profound impact on your company and career. 

Thanks to the Internet, your personal image is no longer confined to your body language and fashion sense. There are countless new ways in which you can bolster and strengthen your personal brand (and therefore your company’s brand) and countless new ways in which you can taint and destroy it. Thanks to social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, video platforms like Youtube, blogging sites, and many other online tools, people are now capable of easily fashioning and projecting one’s own image out onto the world, as well as viewing others’ images and forming impressions and judgments from those images. While this makes it easier for companies to develop their brand online and reach a wider audience, the flip side is that it is now easier for that audience to see what you are like outside of work. Everyone from potential customers to business partners to even your own employees can see how you look and act outside of work with a click of a button, making it much easier for them to judge you by your cover. 

People are not going to consciously separate the personal you from the business you when they are forming these judgments. Psychologically, their personal judgements on your personal image are going to significantly affect their professional judgments on your professional image. Psychologists have found that it takes about 0.1 seconds for someone to form a lasting impression of a stranger, proving that first impressions really do matter so they better be good ones, especially if you are a business leader. If people see that you do a lot of charity outside of work, or that you are a loving and dedicated member of your family, this positive image will make people think highly of you and therefore the business that you run. But if people see that you are out drinking and partying a lot, or that you have hateful and prejudiced views that you express online, then this negative image will make people think poorly of you and therefore the business that you run.

It doesn’t matter if you are the nicest and most responsible and competent person when you are at work. If your personal image is one that evokes indecency and irresponsibility, or anything else that’s negative, then people will think of you as a poor businessperson. This will, in turn, seriously hurt your company’s brand, reputation, and even its growth. 

 The Internet has greatly diminished the lines between personal and professional images. The Internet is also permanent. Deleting bad and embarrassing pictures of yourself or posts that you shared does not necessarily mean that they’re gone forever or that people can’t still see them. How one presents oneself outside of work is going to have severe and lasting impacts on their professional lives and how they are viewed and judged at work. Studies have shown that 45% of employers said they use social media networks to screen potential job candidates, and 8% of companies said they have fired employees for their behavior on social media networks. Your personal life outside of work may even affect family members who share your last name, which is especially important if you run a family business. 

So if you are worried about your personal image and how it can affect your company, don’t worry too much. According to Business News Daily’s “6 Tips for Perfecting Your Personal Brand”, there are many ways in which you can protect and strengthen your personal image and, as a result, your company’s growth and overall success. The Internet can be used as a tool against your personal image and your company’s reputation, but it can also be used as a shield against that ruination. In other words, the Internet can help you defend your personal image (and your company) just as much as it can destroy it, so use it wisely. 

Try Searching for Yourself on Google

Double-checking your online reputation through a simple search on Google is a great first step to cleaning up your personal image and seeing how your personal image affects your company’s image. Take some time searching your name on Google and digging into what comes up. What is out there on the Internet for all to see already? Is any important stuff missing and, if so, what? What needs to be taken down? The search results you’ll find won’t be limited to current stuff like recent social media postings or active accounts, though.

Stuff from the past will also come up, such as an old Myspace account that you may have forgotten about, or old records and articles from decades past. It doesn’t matter to other people if this content were from ages ago and you have grown and changed since then. If it contains content you don’t want other people to see, it could harm your reputation and your company’s ability to grow and succeed. 

Check Your Privacy Settings on All Your Social Media Accounts

It doesn’t matter if the account is for personal use or professional promotion. Again, these kind of work and life distinctions don’t really exist in the age of the Internet anymore, and what you post on your personal accounts could come back to haunt you on your professional accounts, so be aware of your privacy settings on both. Become familiar with the different privacy settings for different social media sites (the ones on Facebook may not be the same as the ones on Twitter, for example) and make sure to stay up to date on any privacy policy changes that the platforms you use announce, which happens pretty regularly.

Privacy settings are infallible. Every social media site changes their privacy policies and settings frequently, so make sure that everything is kept private. Even better, and this should go without saying, exercise extreme caution and judgment when you post on any social media site. Think about if what you are posting could hurt or help your image, and if it could benefit you and your company or come back to bite you as a businessperson. 

Be Consistent

Anytime you post anything online, think about how it can contribute to your personal image and company’s growth. Think about the overall message you want to convey both as yourself and as the face and leader of your company. Consistently keeping a strong and positive personal image means consistently maintaining a strong and positive image for your company, which will continuously support its growth and development. 

Actively Promote Yourself and Your Company

Support your personal image and your company through active and positive promotion, whether it be the content you post on social media sites or committing good acts, like charity, in the name of your company. Use your personal image as a force for good not just for the health of your company but for the benefit of your employees, customers, markets, and business partners. Make valuable connections to form deeper relationships that can strengthen both your personal image and your company’s own growth and development. Essentially, when it comes to your personal image and your company’s success, do everything you can to minimize the bad and maximize the good. 

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Gabe Arnold creates affordable, long-term marketing and technology solutions for businesses of all sizes. He has over 15 years of experience in writing, technology, and marketing campaign creation, and management.

Gabe has worked with over 1,000 startups as well as hundreds of established businesses over the past decade to help them achieve their goals. He is passionate about connecting businesses with the best possible solutions in marketing and automation. Gabe helps business owners like you reach their full potential. Contact Gabe here, or follow him on Twitter.