Personal Branding Blog – Dan Schawbel

Since this blog is specifically tied to the concept of personal branding, I fail to explain what my day job is. A lot of people think all I do is this blog, the magazine, the TV show, the awards, the articles and the upcoming book. I actually spent a lot of time figuring out, experimenting and executing social media programs at EMC Corporation, where I’m a social media specialist. When I was first hired in November of 2007, I was one of the first Fortune 500 employees tasks with bringing social media to the enterprise. I obtained my job because of my work outside of EMC and have never been more happy. A lot of my learnings have been applied to EMC, specifically the PR and HR areas. Today, I want to showcase my work at EMC, explain why it’s significant and then compare/contrast it to my work with personal branding.

In the beginning

When I first started out, one of my main objectives was to help build social media proficiency within the company and then to evolve the PR practice. We issued 3 social media releases (SMR) for major product and thought leadership announcements, through wire services. A very special shout out to Brian Solis, Todd Defren and Chris Heur, who evangelized and inspired SMR’s. Each release had a podcast, a few product pictures and sharing utilities.

At the same time, we were building an internal social network, under the leadership of Len Devanna(Director) and Chuck Hollis(VP), and with help from Jamie Johnson, Chris Britt and a few others. Chuck catalogs the journey in his other blog here. The purpose of the network was to connect employees based on professional and personal interests in a single forum, while allowing anyone to create a blog, wiki or conversation (thread). Special thanks to Kevin Kempskie, Steve Todd, Gina Minks, Hadley Weinzierl, Michael Gallant, Bill Petro, Dave Donohue, Heather Milne, Barry Burke, Mark Twomey and Polly Pearson for all their hard work spreading social media throughout EMC.

EMC’s social media releases (Wire)

• CLARiiON AX4 – PR Newswire
• Symmetrix DMX4 – PR Newswire
• Digital Universe 2008 – MarketWire

EMC World 2008 and beyond

Anyone who truly understands this space knows that in order to succeed it’s a team effort. It’s now 2008 and a lot has changed with respect to social media at my company. The most exciting part is that everyone is working as a team and we can get more done in less time. Every year, thousands of EMC employees gather at EMC World, which is our largest event by far. This year, I was tasked, with forming a social media program around the event for over 9,000 people. With the combined energy and enthusiasm, we were able to launch EMC into the social media galaxy.

Joe Tucci (CEO/Chairman of EMC) presenting our social media newsroom

Special thanks to the web team for pulling this off. This was probably one of the highlights of my career.

Social media breakdown

• Social media newsroom: A compilation of content for the media and attendees, including a YouTube, Twitter and Flickr widget, as well as product information and relevant links.
• Social media release: Instead of using a wire service, our web team developed an SMR wrap-up of the entire event, with podcasts, pictures, and the ability to share the release using del.icio.us and digg.
• Twitter: We currently have two accounts, both of which I’ve been supervising lately. The first is a 1-way press release distribution account (@EMCCorp) and the second was specifically designed for EMC World (@EMCWorld), as a tool to direct people to content or places on-site.
• YouTube – Included keynote presentations, such as Joe Tucci’s keynote, as well as daily wrap-up’s each day and man-on-the-street customer interviews on-site.
• Facebook – We set up a Facebook event page, where people could register and it linked directly to our EMC World website.
• Flickr - This was used for the media specifically, so they could pull pictures and bio’s of executives, as well as view pictures LIVE from the event and product pictures.
• Communities – These were for all registered participants and gave them the ability to talk amongst each other before, during and after the event.

Aside from this accomplishment, we have converted many in-house bloggers to external EMC “blog champions.” There is a lot to look forward in the future, as we expand into the B2C realm. Other companies have used social media, such as Zappos, Cisco, Microsoft, Home Depot and Ernst & Young. I can only see more companies adopting this in the future, but do feel right now is the best time. I say this because it costs very little to get involved and marketing budgets have been cut, due to the economy.

Tying it back to personal branding

When it comes to corporate social media programs, it’s not just about “the grand vision” or the “tools used.” It’s about the people that execute it. The conversations employees have with customers and partners through these tools is what’s important because their personal brand is on the line, as well as the company’s. The more voices you have participating in conversations where they can lend expertise or interact to get feedback the better. At this stage, companies need to accept the important of social media, as a channel to communicate, get feedback, learn and build brand. Your employees can’t sit back anymore or they will be left out. This is similar to being the person in the corner at a party and no one wants that.

Compared to corporate branding with social media, personal branding is much easier. The more people that get involved, the harder it is to control the message and the medium. A single individual can “publish-on-demand”, yet a group of individuals might have to check with each other pre-post. It’s easy for an A-list blogger to spread a message than a less-known blogger, unless you have many corporate bloggers as spokespeople working together to spread it. The same strategies can be used in both corporate and personal branding.