The importance of personal brand
When you're a founder, your personal brand can add significantly to your company's credibility. It can help you to engage more effectively with potential customers, investors, partners, and the media.
You can think of it as the sum of your professional reputation, what you stand for, what you're an expert at, and what your mission is. Essentially, the sum of what you did before, what you're doing right now, and where you're going in the future.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos describes personal brand as "what people say about you when you're not in the room."
Having a strong personal brand can be a critical factor in whether others buy into the mission and vision of your company. Whether they talk about it with friends and colleagues, recommend it to others, or trust you. People are naturally more inclined to trust a business when they can see who owns it and what they're passionate about.
It can also be a major factor in whether the media views you as a competent and noteworthy spokesperson on topics that are relevant to your company. When you become recognized as a subject matter expert or thought leader in the domain in which your company operates. You increase the chances of journalists approaching you for comment, or to talk about what your company is doing.
You can think of increased visibility as a way to increase your surface area for luck. It's not always possible to predict what opportunities might come your way, but by being visible and authentic, you can greatly increase the volume of inbound opportunities.
One way to evaluate your personal brand is to do an online search for yourself and see what you find. Imagine that someone else is doing the search and they currently know nothing about you. If they do find information, does it strengthen their trust in you as a person, and by connection, in your company?
You can also do a reverse search by using keywords that describe your core areas of expertise, just as a journalist might search for an expert to interview on a particular topic. When you do the search, does your name appear in the first few results? If not, how can you change that outcome?
By the time you're working full time on your startup, you should expect that a web search for you delivers at least the following results:
- A LinkedIn profile page.
- Your biography and photo on the team page of your company website.
- Social media accounts.
- Photos of you in a business context (as opposed to holiday pictures you posted on a social site).
- A couple of blog posts on topics relevant to your company or industry.
- Links to any of your talks, webinars, or interviews.
- Some media coverage, even if it's in a small publication or contains a brief mention of you and your company as part of a larger article.
If you're a startup founder at the beginning of building a company, here are some practical things you can do to establish and grow your personal brand. They start with basic steps that you can take immediately.
Create a professional LinkedIn profile
LinkedIn is the online business directory that more than 600 million people use worldwide. Not having a LinkedIn profile makes you look amateurish. It's essential that you have one and that it's professional and up to date.
Unless your startup is in stealth mode, your LinkedIn profile should list your role as founder of your company. If you're a full-time founder, your role should be the only current professional role listed, and should be the first listing.
Besides a professional-looking photo, your profile should include a summary that says something about who you are and what you did before. It should also provide a glimpse into where you're going. Make sure your profile doesn't read like you're looking for a job!
The About section of your LinkedIn profile is also a great place to mention the kinds of opportunities for which you're looking. People are naturally inclined to try to help, so you might as well make it easy for them. Think about your business objectives. What opportunities do you want more of, and how can you articulate these opportunities to make it easy for the right people to connect with you?
Important
For practical tips on getting the most out of LinkedIn, review the LinkedIn Learning course Rock Your LinkedIn Profile.
Get some decent photos
It's important to have high-quality photos for LinkedIn, social media accounts, your website, and any other communications that mention you as a founder.
A good photo has the following attributes:
- Current (no more than a couple of years old)
- Friendly and engaging (you're smiling and looking at the camera)
- Confident in expression and body language
- High quality (ideally taken with a professional camera and available in high resolution when needed)
- Well lit (not backlit or shadowy, and not in bright sunlight that makes you squint)
- Free of distractions or other people in the background
It's also a good idea to have various photos available for different uses.
Have your biography on the company website
Increasingly, website visitors expect to be able to see who's behind the company.
When you list the founders on your website, be sure to describe:
- Why they're the right people to build this business.
- Why they felt compelled to solve whatever problem your company is focused on.
If you have a personal connection to the problem, your biography is a great place to talk about it. What is your most significant strength, and how does that help you deliver better results for your customers?
After you write your biography, send it to a few friends and ask them for feedback. Is it an authentic representation of who you are? Does it instill trust and confidence in you as a business leader?
Have a presence on social media
Take the time to create personal social media accounts on whichever platforms are most relevant to your audience. If you're a founder of a business-to-consumer (B2C) company, you might want to focus on Facebook and Instagram. If you have a business-to-business (B2B) company, LinkedIn might be a priority.
Keep your public-facing personal accounts separate from any existing social media accounts that you have for private use.
Take the time to post informative content. Do it frequently enough that people can see you really care about engaging with your customers and other stakeholders.
Be authentic, instead of posting content that looks like a social media agency created it. This approach is the only way to meaningfully engage on social media these days.
Write blog posts relevant to your company or industry
Short blog posts are an excellent way to show that you're genuinely passionate about the domain in which your company operates. They can also demonstrate your expertise as a thought leader in your field.
It's a good idea to write blog posts with a Create once, publish many times philosophy. You might choose to publish the full version of a post on your website, use a snippet of it in your email marketing campaigns or newsletter, and release a shorter version as a LinkedIn post or on Medium.
By establishing a regular cadence of creating and releasing authentic content, you can rapidly become recognized as a subject matter expert. This recognition strengthens the credibility of your company's brand. It can also lead to opportunities such as requests for comment from media outlets, and even inbound inquiries from potential recruits, customers, and investors.
Become a great storyteller
One of your most important roles as a startup founder is to tell and retell the story of your company. Why does it exist? What important problem are you solving for your customers? What's your vision for the future of the company, and what impact can it have in the world?
By including anecdotes of how you helped customers and what benefits they received from using your product, you can connect with future customers in an authentic way. That connection might be in person, online, or in prerecorded videos.
Storytelling is also an important part of delivering investor pitches. The more you practice telling your story, the better you get at engaging your audience and explaining why your company really matters.
Seek out media opportunities
Broadly speaking, there are two types of media opportunities that startup founders should seek out:
- Opinion pieces in which you comment as a voice of authority on a topic. These pieces aren't about your company, but might provide an opportunity for a brief mention of your company and what it does.
- Pieces about your company. These pieces tend to be tied to important milestones such as closing a funding round, announcing a notable hire, or signing an important brand-name customer. Unless you're doing something unusual, it's uncommon for the mainstream media to write about your company simply because it launched. You might, however, be able to attract the attention of startup-focused media if you can provide an interesting story about why your company exists.
Get media training if you need it
Not all first-time startup founders have experience in public speaking. Relatively few are experienced in doing media interviews or talking on camera.
These skills can be daunting to learn. It's not advisable to learn by trial and error.
There are many sources of media training, including group and individual coaching for how to perform well in a TV or radio interview. Also, training in how to talk on camera, or simply how to present confidently to an audience.