When it comes to recruitment, having a strong personal brand is one of the best ways to gain credibility and build your network of candidates. Despite that, it’s often difficult to get consultants to put time in their personal brands or the marketing campaigns of the wider company. Here are our tips for getting more consultants into personal branding:
Set goals
Are you looking to grow your network? Increase engagement? Boost brand awareness? Establish clear targets before you start so you can demonstrate to the people involved that your efforts have been successful afterwards.
Plan out the project
Write out exactly what you need from people before you start. Approaching colleagues with a fully-developed idea of what you need from them is far more likely to end in success than pitching a vague idea that sounds like a lot of mental work for them.
Get people involved
Start by finding the influencers in your company. Who’s already posting on LinkedIn? Who’s up for doing new things? These people are ideal for testing your strategy, and when people see their colleagues succeed, they’ll want in.
Start small
When someone is used to saying yes to small favours, they’re more inclined to agree to bigger ones down the line. Start by asking people to be in a picture of the office to go on LinkedIn. Move to suggesting them starring in a video for the company’s page. This will boost their ego and set you up for a win.
Be open to their ideas
If the aim is to get people excited about building their own online presence, encouraging their input is a great way to build confidence.
Keep them updated
Get enthusiastic consent from people before you post anything that they’re in. Let them know when it goes live and where it is too, as that’ll encourage them to interact with and take pride in the content they helped produce. Be sure to share its progress and celebrate your wins together!
Offer support
Being online comes with a host of challenges. It’s easy to get sucked into vanity metrics or succumb to the taunts of online trolls, so offering support to people who are venturing online is an essential part of encouraging your consultants to utilise their personal brand. This can be as simple as showing up for them if they’re having a hard time.
Say thank you
Once you’ve gotten people involved, it’s important to show your appreciation for their time and effort. Shout about who’s helped you and share the wins that your consultants have as a result of their personal branding work.
Translate your success
Once you’ve got your trendsetters creating, posting and sharing great content, it’s time to get everyone else involved. Ask your first consultants to act as advocates for personal branding amongst their colleagues. You can use those metrics from the beginning to show people the impact an online presence can create, or you can let your wins speak for themselves. People don’t want to be left behind.
Still need some help getting started? Reach out to see how we can help you build your own marketing strategy and promote your personal branding strategy.
