Employee Brands Are The Unique Fingerprints of Corporate Brands

Personal brand.  Employer brand. These phrases are commonly heard today.

I am not a branding expert, guru, or maven.  I won’t even try to tell you how to build your brand from the ground up nor how to use social media platforms to promote your brand.  What I am interested in is the way that personal branding is affecting me as a consumer.

As someone who is an active user of social media, I have learned a bit about how to build my own brand online.  I set about to be myself, the “real” me in all I write online, and that in itself has helped to create my brand.  It’s also given me the perspective to look at how other people build their brands.  Some are purely annoying- trying to “sell” me something. Anything.  Some people build a false brand and it can be disappointing to learn that they are not who they appear to be. But, for the most part, I think there are many people like me.  People who are being genuine with who they are and what they represent.

The importance of an individuals brand goes beyond just who they are.  It can be a strong connection to the employer brand.  Each employee who creates a brand online is like a unique fingerprint of the hand of the corporation.  I find myself beginning to make purchasing decisions based on some of the individuals out there who do such a good job of showing who they really are.  It makes me want to do business with their companies and, in tough economic times, this can be a very important business advantage for the company.  Subconsciously I think I have been gravitating to brands I didn’t use before because if they can hire such great people, surely they must be a good company.

Are you changing your purchasing habits based on the employees of a company that you encounter online?  Have you stopped purchasing from certain companies based on their employee’s online presence?  Let me know in the comments.  I’d love to see which way the pendulum is swinging…