The coming battle over content: employee vs boss

Steve,
Personal brand versus company brand is a very interesting question. In fact, I recently sent a note to Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff, Jeremy Owyang and Peter Kim, suggesting they tackle this issue in their own analysis calendar. It's an issue they deal with, for sure.

Here's how I unpacked it:

How should employees manage their unofficial versus official company identities and reputations in the marketplace? This is not an online-only challenge, but online has festered it — and especially blogging. For example, I have my own brand equity in the online advertising and research industry as an analyst, MediaPost oped columnist and independent blogger. I’m passionate about my industry, so I tend to listen, and speak and write about it a lot. My expression vehicles are personal, but they also bleed into the domain of the company where I work, of which I also am a shareholder and am deeply committed to. This phenomenon holds risks for my company, and liabilities for me, but it also includes huge benefits — like association, awareness and a far more willing ear among many market stakeholders. Most of all TRUST among my personal stakeholders extends to my company. Additionally, I’ve been building and enforcing social-media programs and infrastructure in my own company which are growing and will be more to manage. What’s the right strategy for balancing personal brands with your company brand in the marketplace. What’s the right strategy for companies to leverage employees who have personal brands?

To be sure, Steve, this hits home for you. I've said it before: I read Blogspotting because of you and Heather. Businessweek is a very fine business-content brand for the general, mass audience, but I'd leave Businessweek in a second to follow you -- should you ever decide take your brand elsewhere. I trust and know you -- I don't necessarily know or trust Businessweek the institution.

I think the future is very much about small, local, more personal brands, and big institutions and businesses must learn how to cultivate and manage them. Smaller, individual people brands represent the ultimate opportunity to connect with customers, prospects and stakeholders. It's competitive advantage and as luring to customers as the notion of free. There's no going back.

Twitter me if you want to talk further. I'm sure my boss/CEO would be willing to offer comment.

Regards,
Max

As someone who spent several years developing a personal brand while working for other companies, I'm going to be a little biased, but I'd agree that it is a tough question. However, ultimately a brand is just an expectation of quality. A promise, if you will.

While personal brands may be more tangible now with blogs and similar outlets, I'd argue that the "personal brand" has existed forever. However, we used to call it a resume.

So, deciding to "cash in on that brand" is, in my opinion, not any different than gaining experience and switching jobs as one continues to develop in their skills and career. The primary difference is that it's much more visible and public now than ever.

Of course, the personal brand shouldn't infringe on the company's rights in terms of intellectual property, legal, or other similar issues. However, if an individual's reputation grows because of the scope, quality, and visibility of their contribution, that should belong to the individual not the company.

Long-time listener, first time caller...

Albert's comments (and your post) couldn't be more aptly put. I'm in that boat, myself. It seems almost impossible to grow a blog without having a sense of personal identity. As the founder of my company's blog network, I've fought more than one battle to allow personality to push the blog off of the company line. Now that I'm getting traffic, I'm getting credibility with the higher ups, but I have to constantly be aware that I'm no inextricably intertwined with our brand.

Good-bye, Scott Hepburn. Hello, "Scott Hepburn...Marketing. Simplified."

This is why companies need to head this off. Organizations need to include blogging as a tool for every employee. People who want to blog will blog and if their company doesn't provide this outlet then the blogger will go outside the organization and create their own blog...one where the company gets no benefit yet still has risk and potential liability.

Yes there will be some in your company that choose to have multiple blogs but that will be the minority.

What's great about employee powered corporate blogging is the very idea that you value the employees thoughts and contributions, you have the opportunity to manage and control the content and the employee still get's to build their personal brand.

All of our employees blog within our network. A couple have personal blogs as well...but all win a google search on their names.

Chris Baggott
CEO Compendium Blogware
www.compendiumblogware.com

Like others here, I developed personal brand independently (but related to) my work as an employee in a number of places. I agree with Garrett's notion that the resume is the 20th Century's personal brand. The issue there is that visibility wasn't nearly so high and people usually needed to be given your resume before being able to assess brand value.

Today, there's a world of difference. As an employee, I remain virtually hidden, unless the organisation I work for is forward thinking enough to afford me the opportunity to build brand as "Stephen Collins, valued employee". So what do I do? I go out and build my own brand, fully in the public eye - on my blog, through participation in expert communities, on LinkedIn.

The risk comes with the legal frameworks in each country. Here in Australia, IP you produce on company time definitely belongs to the company unless explicitly granted to you. My understanding is that this is generally the case in most countries but that actual implementation may vary. It's why, when I was building my brand, I was very deliberate in rarely mentioning specific employers or clients on my blog and in other forums where I was establishing my reputation and expertise.

If you're going to build personal brand by building tangible IP it's important that the work you do is on your own time and related to but not the same as you do at work. If the brand value is about "stuff you know", you're in a good position. It's probably harder for a disgruntled ex-employer to proved that your brand value is because of them.

Personally, I'd absolutely encourage anyone who want to establish a personal brand for themselves around their expertise to get out there and do it - blog, participate, grow your reputation. Don't let Desperate Housewives be a cognitive heatsink for your unexpended brain power.

Steve Collins
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Stephen Collins
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Shalom Steve,

Brand is just another name for reputation.

A company owns your work product, but not your reputation.

I don't see why this is so complicated.

B'shalom,

Jeff