In today’s technology-driven age, a personal brand is imperative. Your digital footprint tells the world who you are, what you care about, and the value that you bring to your industry. Over time, your personal brand will open doors in your career: by building a social media presence, you’ll have the opportunity to connect with smart, like-minded people from all over the world.

These results will trickle back to your career in the form of more visibility for your work at your company, stronger relationships with vendors and partners, and a reputation as a leader in your space.

But personal brands don’t just happen. They take forethought, practice, and time to build. You need to come up with a strategy that’s built on who you want to to be, what information you want to share, and how you should communicate with the world at large.

We’ve put together a guide with our best actionable tips. You’ll learn the basics of building a personal brand and how the steps you can take can bring a direct benefit to your career growth. Let’s get started.

WHAT YOU’LL GET IN THIS GUIDE

PART I Essential Tips for Building Your Personal BrandBY EMMA SIEMASKO, STORYTELLER FOR EVERYONESOCIAL

INTRO

PART II The Benefits of Becoming a Brand AmbassadorBY CAMERON BRAIN, FOUNDER AT EVERYONESOCIAL

PART III The Psychology of How and Why We ShareBY JESSE BOUMAN, BRAND STORYTELLER FOR EVERYONESOCIAL

PART IV Mastering the Art of Self PromotionBY DANNY WONG, STORYTELLER FOR EVERYONESOCIAL

Essential Tipsfor Building Your

Personal Brand

When team members share company content, everybody wins. Sharing content shows pride,

helps build your brand, and ultimately shows a thriving company culture.

But as a marketing manager, you want your team members to share content because they

want to, not because they have to. You want to create content that your team members will share

without being asked, the type of stuff that supports their personal brands.

When creating content and developing team sharing programs, it’s essential to understand how

people use social sharing to craft their personal brands. What are your team members currently sharing? Why do they share what they do? How can you create assets that they’re excited about

sharing?

Ultimately, social media allows you and your team to build personal brands, crafting the people you

want to be. It’s your job to understand the links between personal branding and sharing on social. In this article, we’ll explain the link between social

sharing and perception, and provide some tips on how you can understand your own brand, and

communicate your findings to your team.

BY EMMA SIEMASKO

PART I

>>

Your team members may not be responsible for the company Twitter handle, but they’re in full control of their own social sharing, whether they prefer to do it on LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Snapchat. What they share says a lot about who they are.

The New York Times Customer Insight Group conducted a study and discovered that there are five key reasons people decide to share something with others on social media:

THE LINK BETWEEN SOCIAL SHARING AND PERCEPTION

Entertainment: People share content to entertain their audiences, whether that audience is made up of friends, family, or colleagues.

Define Ourselves: People share to show the world who they are and define the type of person they want to be.

Relationships: People share content to build relationships with other people, for example sharing a post written by a friend.

Self-Fulfillment: People share to make themselves feel good about who they are, and where they’re going.

Support a Cause: People share to show their support for a particular cause.

Understanding why you and your team members share what you do can help you tap into what will resonate on social, and help you build a personal brand that accurately reflects who you are. It can also help you understand how others perceive what you share. When they see your content, they may have predefined notions about why you’ve shared something.

DECIDE WHO YOU WANT TO BE

Before you can dig deep into your social sharing behavior, you have to decide who you want to be. Do you want to be professional in your social media presence? Would you prefer to be entertaining?

According to the study, 68% of people share to let others know who they are and what they care about. Even if you haven’t thought about how others perceive you before, it will be good to think about it now.

Make sure that the person you wants to be lines up with your professional goals. Does this presence serve your company well? Does it serve your colleagues well, too?

PART I >>

68% of people share to let

others know who they are and what

they care about

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DO A SHARING AUDIT

Start by looking at your Twitter or Facebook page. What have you recently shared? Make a list of your ten most recent shares, and write down your reason for sharing these items. The reasons can be as simple as “thought my audience would like it” or “just thought this was cool.”

Once you’ve looked at your most recent shares, consider how these would look to someone else. Would they think you’re obsessed with sports because you’ve only shared content on sports?

Try to categorize each share into one of the five categories above, and see how you’re sharing. If you’re constantly trying to entertain, maybe it’s time to take a step back and share some content that connects with your audience.

SHARE THE RIGHT STUFF

Each time you share something new, ask yourself why you’re sharing it, and how it will look to others. Is the content meant to entertain, or will it help you connect and build relationships? You should have a healthy smattering of different types of content.

This doesn’t mean you have to have a draconian social sharing policy. Instead, the key is to be deliberate with what you share.

INFORM YOUR TEAM

It’s easy to look at your own personal brand in terms of what you’ve shared, and maybe you’ve already done so. It’s your job, however, to make sure your team members understand how their social sharing affects how others perceive them.

Encourage each member of your team to do a social sharing audit, but don’t make it into a punishment. Instead, encourage them to explore why they share what they do, and explain why most people share online.

When people look at what they share and start seeing it from someone else’s perspective, they begin to see how their social media pages contribute to their personal brand, and they begin to feel more ownership over the channel.

PART I >>

Each time you share something new, ask yourself why you’re

sharing it, and how it will look to others.

Once you’ve determined who you’d like to be on social media, as well as completed a mini-sharing audit, you can start sharing the right stuff.

The Benefits of Becoming a Brand

Ambassador

The brand ambassador, historically employed by consumer businesses are beginning to

play an important role in b2b organizations. Who is a brand ambassador, what can they

do for your business, and how to become an ambassador is the focus of this post.

BY CAMERON BRAIN

PART II

A brand ambassador is someone who promotes a brand and its products to their network with the objective of

increasing brand awareness and driving sales.

Historically a brand ambassador was typically a celebrity or someone with a good amount of name recognition who was paid for their efforts. Celebrities and other well-known

personalities are still employed as brand ambassadors (just look at the beauty products industry), however this is typically done by businesses that sell direct to consumers.

For businesses that sell to other businesses, a brand ambassador is usually an employee of that organization. In

the past, noteable ambassadors for b2b businesses have been founders and executives (think Elon Musk), however

in recent years and with the rise of social media, non-executive employees of all types have become effective

brand ambassadors.

WHAT IS A BRAND AMBASSADOR?

>>

Sales: Reduced sales cycle and new opportunity creation

HR: Recruiting and retention

Marketing: Lead generation and brand awareness

Product & Enginerring: Thought leadership

WHY SHOULD YOU BECOME A BRAND AMBASSADOR?

In the year 2016, virtually every employee has a sizeable professional network. Between social media, email, and other services, b2b employees have a significant number of people they can talk to, and with whom they have rapport and trust. Rapport, trust, influence - whatever you want to call it - is the key. These are the currency of business: the more trust and influence you have with someone, the more likely you are to earn their business. This is the value of a brand ambassador.

The relationships your employees have with their networks – which likely include prospective customers, leads, and hires – are stronger than any relationship the people in their networks may have with your brand. Putting a brand ambassador program in place allows you to leverage these relationships for the benefit of the ambassador and the organization.

Generally, employees who regularly communicate with people outside the organization are the ones who will drive the greatest results. On average and given the nature of their roles (e.g., the requirement to network with people outside of their organization), sales, marketing, and management are going to have the largest professional networks and can drive the most bottom-line results.

WHO CAN BE A BRAND AMBASSADOR?

It depends on the objectives of your business (and your ambassador program), however and in our experience most any employee has the potential to be a brand ambassador. Employees in sales, HR, marketing, communications, product, engineering, and management can each serve as effective ambassadors. Here are some examples of the results employees within these teams can drive:

PART II >>

Rapport, trust, influence - whatever you want to call it

- is the key.

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HOW CAN YOU DRIVE RESULTS?

A brand ambassador drives results through their communications, either publicly (e.g., through social media) or privately through email, messaging, phone, and other one-to-one channels. The key to driving results is having an organized ambassador program in place. Like anything, in order to succeed there needs to be a plan, goals need to be clear, and it all needs to be managed and measured.

The CRM (e.g., Salesforce) provides a good corollary. Without a CRM platform, it’s almost impossible to effectively manage a sales team of any size, no matter how many talented reps you have. Having a CRM allows you to manage and measure everyones’ efforts against your plan. Same goes for a brand ambassador program: you need a plan, you need some tools, and someone to manage the program.

WHERE TO START?

In virtually every case, successful brand ambassador programs grow from the bottom up as opposed to top down. Especially in the beginning, focus on attracting employees to your program that actually want to participate and who have experience with social media and other modern communication and networking tools; they’ll require less training and have an inherent understanding of the benefits (to them and the org).

We have a lot of experience helping companies of various types and sizes put brand ambassador programs in place. No matter what stage you’re at - from concept to ready-to-roll - we’d be happy to help. If you’re interested in learning more I would suggest taking a look at some of our case studies, resource materials, or just shoot us a line. We’ll be happy to talk with you about what makes the most sense for your organization.

Ask your company whether an employee ambassador program is already in place at your company. And if there isn’t one? Become your company’s test case to get one off the ground!

PART II >>

Start small, learn, iterate, show success,

grow, and repeat.

The sky’s the limit when it comes to putting an employee ambassador program in place; with time and success it is possible for your program to reach a point where the majority of your company’s employees are participating. However and at the beginning, it’s best to take things one step. Start small, learn, iterate, show success, grow, and repeat.

You scroll through your Facebook feed, skimming post after post, ignoring most, liking a few. After a

couple of swipes on the trackpad, you stop. There’s a video that catches your eye and after watching it, you feel compelled to share it with your friends. Everyday citizens of the internet go through this same routine.

But what makes us stop and share one piece of content when nearly everything else gets ignored?

Is it the type of content? Is it the source of the content? Or totally unrelated to the content?

The psychology of sharing has been studied by academics and marketers alike. New York Times best

selling author Tucker Max boils the psychology of sharing down to one word, “status.”

“Word of mouth is a status play. If you give people something good, something valuable, they want to talk

about it. It benefits them to talk about it...if I share a book with you, it raises my status, it helps me me look

good to my friends that I know this and now I’m sharing it with you.”

Is it that simple? We want to share content that makes

us look good? Or are there deeper psychological reasons why we share?

The Psychology of How and Why

We ShareBY JESSE BOUMAN

PART III

>>

THE GODFATHER OF MODERN SHARING

To really understand the psychology of sharing, we have to go back to 1966. Long before we had the retweet, Austrian psychologist, Ernest Dichter, published the Harvard Business Review article “How Word-of-Mouth Advertising Works.”

In his article, Dichter outlined four reasons that motivate people to talk about brands and products.

WHY WE SHARE AND WHO DOES THE SHARING?

Fast forward fifty years from Dichter’s breakthrough research and we have a whole new set of tools that help facilitate the spread of communication. The fundamentals of word-of-mouth are the same. But now people are sharing on so many different channels. The content they share on different channels differs. What people share on Instagram is different than Facebook, which is different than Twitter.

The New York Times Customer Insight Group published the study, “The Psychology of Sharing” which divided why we share into five categories and further broke down the personas of people who share into six profiles.

PART III >>

Product Involvement (33%) - The customer’s experience is so pleasurable, it has to be shared.

Self-Involvement (24%) - You, as the sharer, gain attention, feel special, like you have inside information or are the first to know.

Other Involvement (20%) - The sharer wants to help others.

Message - Involvement (20%) - The message is so valuable that it has to be shared.

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He concluded that “When the consumer feels that the advertiser speaks to him as a friend...the consumer will relax and tend to accept the recommendation.”

Ernest Dichter’s research made him a pioneer in marketing. He took his studies of human motivation and applied them to marketing for big companies like Procter & Gamble, and General Mills. Many of the strategies and tactics we use today for sharing is based on Dichter’s research.

WHY WE SHARE

To bring valuable and entertaining content to others.

To define ourselves to others.

To grow and nourish our relationships.

Self-fulfillment.

To get the word out about causes or brands.

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PERSONAS OF SHARERS (PREFERRED CHANNELS)

Altruists - share content to be helpful. (Facebook, Email)

Careerists - share to build a professional reputation. (Linkedin, Email)

Hipsters - share cutting edge and creative content that builds their identity. (Facebook, Twitter)

Boomerangs - share content to get reaction from audience, seeks validation. (Facebook, Twitter)

Connectors - share content to stay connected with others and make plans. (Facebook, Email)

Selectives - put more thought into what they share and with whom they share it. (Email)

While looking at the findings, it’s remarkably similar to Dichter’s original findings and back up Max’s assertion that it’s all about status. Whether it’s to entertain friends or build professional relationships, we want to share for our own self-interests.

But the last reason why we share, spread the word about causes or brands, touches on another major reason why we share: emotion.

PART III >>

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JONAH BERGER AND EMOTION

Social Currency: We share things that make us look good

Triggers: Easily memorable information means it’s top of mind and tip of the tongue

Emotion : When we care, we share

Public: Built to show, built to grow

Practical Value: News people can use

Stories: People are inherent storytellers, and all great brands also learn to tell stories. Information travels under the guise of idle chatter.

Jonah Berger is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of the New York Times bestseller, “Contagious: Why Things Catch On”.

Berger’s research focuses on six principles that cause something to be wildly shared and go viral:

Berger’s findings have similarities with Dichter and the New York Times, but he digs deeper into the role emotion plays in our social sharing.

After analyzing seven thousand articles on the New York Times, Berger and his colleague discovered there were two primary factors that lead an article to be one of the newspaper’s most emailed articles: how positive the article was and how excited it made the reader.

These studies into the psychology of sharing aren’t just theoretical musings of academics. New media and content companies have taken this research and built big businesses around the factors that compel us to share.

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HOW COMPANIES LEVERAGE THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SHARING

Joe Matsushima is the co-founder of Denizen Company and part of the creative team behind the viral hit, Tiny Hamster Eats Tiny Burritos. His videos have been viewed by millions of people across the globe. When asked what he think causes people to share something online, he answered with a mix of status and emotion.

“Sharing is a fascinating phenomenon because liking--or even loving something doesn’t necessarily lead to sharing it with your peers. Typically what leads a person to share something on social media is when it has a connection to them as an individual, be it political, emotional, cute or funny. People want to share with other how they perceive the world and reflect the their tastes and how they define themselves.”

Joe has made a career of tapping into audience’s’ emotion through video content. Similarly, Buzzfeed is a highly trafficked website that also uses reader emotion to spread its content.

Buzzfeed has done this particularly well, by creating content that taps into our nostalgia for ‘90s related content and quizzes about TV shows that have long been off the air. But they also balance this content with timely content that tugs at our heart strings and make us feel good. And cats. There’s always cats.

PART III >>

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU

Before you create your next piece of content, ask yourself who the content is for and if it really satisfies status or emotion? Will sharing make someone seem smarter to their friends? Does it elicit so much happiness that you have to share? Remember, liking something isn’t enough. You must strike a chord with your audience that triggers such a strong response, they have to share.

Emotion is a two-sided coin and not everything is hugs and kittens. Negative emotion can ignite social sharing just as much as positive emotion. Outrage is a feeling that can cause people to share just as much as a funny video. Stories like this waitress being left a $0 tip set off a firestorm of social sharing. Emotion is a huge part of sharing, the key is to hit one end of the positive or negative spectrum. Anything that falls between gets lost with the rest of the average content.

At the end of the day, the psychology of sharing is much simpler than one might anticipate. Status and emotion are the two driving forces behind sharing. It doesn’t matter which sharing persona you fit, everyone is motivated by these two factors when they share something online.

At the end of the day, the psychology of sharing is much

simpler than one might anticipate.

On average, companies post 1-2 times a day on Facebook, 4-15 times a day on Twitter and 20 times a month on LinkedIn. And while the expectation is that

our social media feeds would be filled with interesting stories, many uninspired brands consistently flood news feeds with self-promotional content.

For Ad Age, Curtis Hougland explains this trend as a failure among brands. He writes, “The emergence of social media carried the promise of a new social

contract between brands and marketers. A contract based on more reciprocal one-to-one communications. But brands remained self-centered. Brands

scheduled the communications. Brands pushed the same content to everyone, with the vast majority of content irrelevant to a consumer at any given time.

Worst of all, brands talked mostly about themselves, and always expected consumers to come over to their place.”

People, similarly, spend most of their time exclusively sharing content about themselves, but when they do take a break from posting selfies and pictures of

what they ate for lunch, a status update about their employer -- a deviation from normal routine -- can feel just as awkward and inauthentic as a brand shamelessly

promoting its products and services.

For many, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have become so-called “link-dumps.” As a result, companies abuse the privilege of appearing in fan and follower news

feeds. Absent empathy, their approach to social media engagement is purely self-serving. And it is no different when team members are the ones blindly resharing

branded content.

To get audiences to listen, brands and their employees must share content covering topics their customers care about. Any attempts at self-promotion need to be done

tastefully to attract consumers and encourage deeper brand engagement.

Mastering the Art of Self

PromotionBY DANNY WONG

PART IV

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THE SUBTLETY OF GOOD SELF-PROMOTION

According to data from HubSpot, the number one reason why people unfollow brands on social media is due to excessive self-promotion. Brands that constantly brag about themselves or incessantly pitch their products and services lose credibility among consumers.

Marketing writer Scott McKelvey describes bad self-promotion as brazen, insensitive, offensive, unlikeable, and unwelcome. Good self-promotion, on the other hand, focuses on offering customers value first and aims to develop positive brand associations.

As social media expert Kevan Lee explains, “You can be self-promotional and still provide value. Self-promotion can be a good thing if your content is outstandingly useful and always adds value. This is how we think of our social sharing at Buffer. If we share the best content we have and do so in a helpful, actionable, high-utility way, we believe we are doing right by our audience. Value takes a front seat, and self-promotion sits in the back. Both elements are there, but the high value of outstanding content is what matters most.”

Companies that do manage to successfully promote themselves and encourage their team members to share their content too, benefit from a 561% increase in social reach and earn 24 times more reshares on social media, suggests research from communications company MSLGROUP.

ALIGNING BRAND MESSAGES WITH EMPLOYEE BELIEFS AND AUDIENCE INTERESTS

But to convert employees into active social advocates, brands must primarily share stories that align with employee beliefs and the interests of their team members’ social audience.

In 2011, The New York Times Consumer Insight Group published a study titled, “The Psychology of Sharing.” The report listed five reasons why people share content:

“To bring valuable and educating content to others”

“To define ourselves and others”

“To grow and nourish our relationships”

“Self-fulfillment”

“To get the word out about causes and brands”

People are more likely to engage with branded content when it is help-ful, promotes strong values or is an accurate representation of one’s self. Knowing this, companies can prioritize posting company news and content that their team members and their second degree audience might enjoy.

PART IV >>

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You can be self-promotional and

still provide value

Ready toBuild Your

Personal Brand?Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us! We’re here

to help. Email us at info@everyonesocial.com with any questions. We’ve worked with lots of teams to build their personal brands and would be happy to

do the same for you and your people.