Personal Branding and Startups: 3 keys to success
Entrepreneurship is all about toughness, capacity and persistence. When you create your own company you must be able to handle multiple business branches as Marketing, Accountancy, Sales and HR. Especially in the tech industry, a success factor for your startup can be represented by your personal branding and online reputation.
“All of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.”
Tom Peters in Fast Company
Today, I am glad to meet Riccardo Scandellari, one of the greatest Italian expert in Personal Branding, who will answer a few questions about how fundamental could be a founder’s online reputation to grow a startup visibility and success. ( *R is for Riccardo’s replies)
Hi, Riccardo, the world of startups is extremely tough today: How important do you think could founders’ reputation and influence be for the success of their startup?
R: As for many others businesses, who is directly involved in it, could open an alternative communication channel on behalf of the company. Doing that, he will create a personal reputation which will also benefit the company itself. I remember that, many startups and successful enterprises in the digital industry, owe the success gained to their innovative creators and business designers.
There are many success cases in the US, as Dr. Dre with Beats and Ashton Kutcher with Aplus, who jumped in the tech business, leveraging their reputation with great results. Do you think that, involving people from the show business, or VIP in other industries, as co-founder and partner in a tech company, could also help a startup to be known faster and worldwide?
R: Startups need high visibility as soon as possibile. And gaining it, should be in the pipeline. See the app Yo, for example: a silly mobile application you can use to send a two letters message, “yo” precisely, to anyone in your friends’ list. The initial success was mainly due to its usage by many famous influencers as Pete Cashmere, the founder of Mashable. What does it mean? You can have the best app on this planet but if you cannot spread the word properly, opening a communicative flow, you won’t succeed.
Joel Gascogne (Buffer), Neil Patel (Quicksprout) but also the Italians Paolo Privitera (Pick1) and Armando Biondi (AdEspresso). They all are startups founders successfully managing their personal branding and online reputation. Which are, according to you, the three most important elements to consider for your own personal branding?
R: To me, the most important components are: personal image, content and conversation. Through a well defined personal image we appear solid, with innovative and influential content we’ll appear respected and though conversation we’ll look more human and accessible. This last element will be less manageable with the increase of conversations involving us. It’s our duty reply to many people as possibile.
The online communities are hungry and curious to know what people they follow and estimate are doing during the day. Basically the reason is because they want to know why they are so successful and what they’re doing different in a job or life routine from other people. What do you think we should share and what not about our private life? Or there’s not a real limit?
R: We should avoid complains: everybody has a client who doesn’t pay or bills and taxes to pay off. Complain daily is not the right way to deal with problems, especially when we share those problems on social media. Another thing I would avoid is to publish too many posts about your private life not related to your business. The idea behind all of this is trying to comunicate a positive attitude to appear reliable and productive.
Great! I hope these questions helped you figure out a little bit more about personal branding and online reputation for your business. If you like this post and you think could be interesting for a friend, share it! And don’t forget to subscribe to the Newsletter to get fresh new posts!
