Branding in this day and age means a lot more than having an advertisement on television or in a magazine. Even when it comes to managing your own brand, the presence of social media has changed the way in which we present ourselves, our messages, and the way in which the world interacts with us. With all of the information transpiring around us, it’s easier than ever to keep up with the quickening pace of correspondence and media-sharing. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easier to maintain our brand’s reputation.
Knowing what’s going on with your own brand isn’t everything, and that’s a two-way street between yourself and your (potential) clients. A white paper from public relations software company dna13 introduces the synchronization factor into brand management. When dealing with your own brand, especially as a PR professional, keeping your principles aligned across the board is the way to go. It seems like a basic approach to managing your brand and your team, but it never hurts to see a simplified version.
dna13 outlines the four aspects of brand management that can be synchronized, with clients and team members. Sync your C-suite (in many regards, that means you), your colleagues, your tools and your messages. Finding a way to sync all of these things translates into a more streamlines management system that saves you time, money and a boatload of mistakes.
I had my own oops moment yesterday, when I used both inaccurate information as well as a mistaken comprehension of an initial source when writing a blog post. Sharing the principles for the work environment, the team itself, and how our brand is portrayed to the public means a great deal, and it was because of this shared vision that everyone’s been able to recover from what could have been a disaster on my part.
Being in the public relations field is something I didn’t expect to do, having gone to college for pre-med and started a career in pharmaceutical and clinical research. But this is where I ended up, after blogger for several years and working both directly and indirectly with the public relations industry ever since.
It’s one of those things that happened slowly and unknowingly for me, as nearly everything I’d been doing online since the age of fifteen turned out to be self-marketing in one way or another. The level of branding that goes into our actions taken within any social media outlet, offline or online, translates into the ways in which we present ourselves to the world. In turn, our branding based on our actions acts as billboard to all of those around us.
Unifying as many aspects of your brand from an internal standpoint will undoubtedly help you maintain your brand’s reputation from the outside looking in. It’s increasingly difficult to do, given the amount of influence the rest of the world can have through social media. Yet taking that new approach to accountability for your brand’s public image means first looking at a new approach for accountability with you as an individual, a team, and a company.