Excerpt #1: Balancing Corporate & Personal Brands

The following is an excerpt from "Walking the Wire: Striking a Balance Between Corporate and Personal Brands" as presented by Mike McDougall at the Ragan Communications / Southwest Airlines conference in October 2011.

Here's your first tip when trying to balance your corporate brand with your employees' personal brand efforts: establish mutual expectations.

For you Star Trek fans in the room, there are no mind melds. Assuming your people know what's right is... well... wrong. Without guidelines -- whether a written policy or even a conversation -- you're asking for trouble, especially with the evolution of digital outreach.

Leave some room for the gray areas -- you don't want to handcuff yourself via policy when markets change or opportunities arise. Consider incorporating the guidelines into an existing corporate code of conduct on business and ethical behavior, which should be broad enough to cover most scenarios, whether in the physical or digital worlds.

Then reinforce those guidelines with action and recognition -- highlight members of your team who themselves are achieving balance. This will go much further than simply asking employees to read and sign a 20-page policy document (which they'll promptly forget in less than a week, if they read it at all).

To glean additional insights from the discussion, bookmark the PR Schism or follow our Twitter feed (@McDougallTC). For a copy of the presentation slides, contact us at info@McDougallTC.com.