Never before has the phrase people trust people been more relevant than it is today – so how’s your work on your personal on-line profile and reputation going?
Consumers today – whether B2B or B2C – want to buy from businesses that have values that align with their own, run by people like them. Increased visibility of the CEO, the managing director and the senior team builds trust and familiarity.
In fact, according to Forbes, 77 per cent of consumers are more likely to buy from brands whose CEOs are visible on social media.
Personal brands and individual posting consistently outperform corporate or company page content on platforms like LinkedIn.
We all know that people have always been more interested in hearing from Richard Branson than Virgin, from Steve Jobs rather than Apple, and from Bill Gates rather than Microsoft.
A lot of us have our own business icons that we look up to, learn from and trust. Maybe it’s Steven Bartlett – but does anyone know what his company is even called, never mind what it might have been posting about recently?
Here’s four really strong reasons why you need to do more with your personal brand content on socials:
Engagement
A study by Refine Labs found that posts from personal LinkedIn profiles get nearly three times as many impressions and five times as much engagement when compared with identical posts on company pages.
For example, global business consultancy Deloitte had around 30 likes per corporate post on Linkedin, despite having around 16 million followers. Meanwhile, Deloitte’s corporate influencer Lara Sophie Bothur, with around 300,000 followers, routinely gets around 2,700 likes per post.
Generally speaking, personal posts will average 0.54 per cent engagement rate, while company posts generally average 0.05 per cent – that’s about ten times difference.
Reach and Re-sharing
Global data from PR agency Weber-Shandwick showed that brand messages shared via employee accounts get 561 per cent more reach, are 24 times more likely to be reshared and earn eight times more engagement.
Crucially, leads from employee-shared posts are seven times more likely to convert.
People Trust People
Edelman’s Trust Barometer shows that 76 per cent of people trust content from “people like themselves” over branded content.
LinkedIn profiles with personal, authentic content see 27 per cent more engagement than those leaning on corporate messaging.
And Forbes found that 92 per cent of consumers trust recommendations from individuals – even strangers – while only 42 per cent trust brands, while 82 per cent are likelier to trust companies whose executives are active on social media.
CEO and C-Suite Content Impact
The Financial Times has reported that CEO and C-suite content gets four times as much engagement when compared with average member posts, executives gain 39 per cent more followers while corporate pipelines see much lower interaction.
Conclusion
The obvious question to ask when faced with this data is – why? Why is this important?
- Algorithms – algorithms on all social media channels, and especially Linkedin, favour personal content.
- Human Connection – people resonate with stories, faces, opinions – not corporate gobbledegook.
- Trust and Authenticity – executives and individuals are viewed as more trustworthy than brands.
- Less Noise and Competition -0 fewer people actively build personal brands to run alongside their corporate channels.
- Network Leverage – employee and leader profiles lead to more sharing and visibility.
It is not difficult to grow your personal brand and reputation on-line if you know what to post and have the time to do it – but it is tricky to maintain the quality of your content and remain consistent. Consider outsourcing this work to an agency.
If you want to know more about our personal brand work for chief execs and directors get in touch.