How to Lay the Brand Foundation for a Consulting Business
ningcontentA Q & A with Dan Schwabel
Reader question
“I have recently gone solo and started a consulting business (with a handful of employees)… from a social networking branding perspective (i.e. twitter, blog etc.) should I concentrate on building myself or my company brand. I know the answer is both, but which one first and foremost would you recommend, for example should my blog, facebook page, twitter names be me or my company. What would you suggest?” – Joe Newbert
My analysis
General branding thoughts
When it comes to consulting, your customers want to deal directly with an individual that they must know, like and trust. They are paying to work with a company, whose reputation is attached to each individual. This means that, depending on how the consulting business is laid out, you’ll need each consultant to have the necessary skills (and/or complimentary skills if there are group projects) in order to provide value for each customer. Hopefully, you’ll be able to over-deliver and get repeat business. With consulting, you are offering up your expertise, as well as the consultants you hire, and they become your best salespeople for your corporate brand.
Brand strategy recommendations
There are two main things you need to know. First, you want to protect your personal brand, your corporate brand and the brands of everyone who is working for your consulting company. Second, you want to focus on personal brands over the corporate brand because, in consulting, transactions and relationships are 100% between people. Below are some strategies that will help you achieve both of these:
- Reserve your name, all of your consultants names’ and your corporate name on Twitter.
- Ensure that everyone you work with has a Facebook page and a LinkedIn profile.
- Purchase your corporate domain name, as well as your personal domain name (yourname.com) and tell your team to purchase their own as well.
- Start a team blog under your corporate domain name, while positioning yourself as the top contributor because you are the CEO. Allow each of your fellow consultants to blog on behalf of your company, while giving them the freedom to start developing their own blogs for individual use.
- Get a camera and film personal introductions with you and your fellow consultants. Use these video intros to send to potential clients. You can even do a holiday greeting video as well!
- Splatter your pictures across all social media sites and make sure to list your corporate brand name and the area of expertise you/they have.
Verdict
A personal brand is more important than the corporate brand in consulting businesses. Since your company has more than one personal brand, you have to ensure that each consultant you hire aligns with your corporate brand in order to be successful. From a social media branding perspective, you should demand that each consultant establishes themself using the tools mentioned above (including you), while tying everything together into a cohesive and impactful website.
How would you handle this situation?
Now is your chance to respond to Joe’s question. Do you think he should start with the corporate brand first and then work on his personal brand?
Article by, Dan Schawbel, the leading personal branding expert for Gen-Y. He authors the Personal Branding Blog and publishes Personal Branding Magazine and authored the upcoming book, Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success (Kaplan, Spring 2009). Dan has been called a “personal branding force of nature” by Fast Company and his work has been published in BrandWeek Magazine, Advertising Age and countless other publications.
