K Srikrishna

The Entrepreneur Life

Tag: branding

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Personal branding and other Sisyphean endeavors

March 17, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Be authentic, we are told. Bring your whole self to work is another exhortation we hear often. What do these mean?

Karthik Srinivasan points out several issues that (Indian) CEOs face, and at times create for themselves, in the pursuit of a personal brand.

One of the big challenges of the ‘always online’ and ‘everything online’ is in figuring out, for ourselves first, what is authentic and what is performative.

One way to not fall into the trap of a social media treadmill and the emotional rollercoaster associated with the (non-)performance of a post, reel or video is to:

Know Thyself
Whilst answering the question “Who am I?” or “What do I want to be known for?” might be a life-long question, its worth attempting to answer it before you invest a lot into “personal branding” or social media.

In important part of knowing yourself, is not just what you want, but how emotionally sensitive you are—are you a dopamine junkie; does one bad comment or rant send you to a dark place? How would you respond?

Why are you on social media?
Also ask yourself WHY are you doing it? As Karthik points out for a corporate CEO likes/engages may not make sense as they would for an ad-revenue driven influencer. And once a quarter or year is worth revisiting if it’s still true.

Corporate vs personal
This is the professional vs social quandary we’ve faced even before social media. How separate do we keep these two spheres—clearly national and local cultures play a part in this. And social media has torn many of these walls down.

This is where the “whole self” problem presents itself. As we’ve seen with the war in the Middle East, being authentic has been a minefield as many a social issue has turned political. Yes there are no definitive right answers but only answers that are right for you, in a set of circumstances.

What are these for you?

Mental & emotional wellbeing
The only thing that matters is your mental & emotional wellbeing. The mental health issues that teen girls face due to social media are well documented. As are issues of YouTubers facing burnout and the mental health challenges of startup founders. Joshua Doležal, Ph.D. and others have written about the pressure writers face to build a personal brand whilst trying to make a living.

Being ‘successful’ whatever that is, whilst not having your health, family or lasting community is a pyrrhic victory at best.

3 Reasons Startups Need PR

April 8, 2014 / / 4 Comments

Public RelationsEvery startup should engage in Public Relations (PR) from day one. Does this mean you hire a PR firm? Absolutely NOT! When you talk about your start up at your local college, a Meetup or a friend’s wedding, you are doing PR.

Of course, as with all such activities, if you do it in a systematic and smart manner it can pay off in a big way. It’s easy (and wrong) to imagine public relations to be a matter of hiring a PR firm and talking to the media. It’s really about letting your stakeholder community know that you exist and shaping their perception of you.

As all-knowing Wikipedia quotes

“The aim of public relations by a company often is to persuade the public, investors, partners, employees, and other stakeholders to maintain a certain point of view about it, its leadership, products, or of political decisions. Common activities include speaking at conferences, winning industry awards, working with the press, and employee communication.”

With that said, here are three reasons for a start up to do PR.

Customers If customer’s haven’t heard of you or know that you exist, it’s hard to get them to buy from you. A well thought-out PR plan, even if executed by one person, usually the founder, can do wonders. This is particularly true for anyone in the B2B business. It’s nice if customers have heard of you before you show up at their doorstep. This can be done in any number of creative and no-money-spent ways from blog posts, contributed articles or op-ed pieces in your local paper, talks at industry bodies or local associations, or newsletters. A side benefit of such PR activity is that you get to practice and refine your company’s story, which is always a good thing. It’s also a great way to figure what resonates with your target audience and in some instances, even refine who your target audience really is!

Employees If you grow, or land that first or tenth customer, you’ll find you’ll want to be attracting employees. Even more importantly, if you’ve hired folks, you’d want to retain them and keep them motivated. Nothing works like seeing your company’s name in the paper, a poster, on the TV or in social media, to both attract and inspire folks. If like most start ups you’re asking them to work hard and make sacrifices then such inspiration is not an option. In time, you can get your team to do the PR, which will help build their own personal brands and bring goodwill and repute to your business.

Investors At some point if you wish to raise money, whether from friends, family or other fools, or professional investors, it helps – much like with customers – if they’ve heard of you. While a lot of ink offers no certainty of raising money, it provides folks the comfort that you’ve been around, survived and hopefully thrived by the time you approach them. The beauty about PR done well is that it allows you to drive the conversation about what your company stands for and sets context, so that you are really not an unknown or worse yet, a . Imisunderstood quantity to prospective investors.

So darn right, as long as you spend a finite amount of time and constantly measure the effectiveness of your activities, I’d assert every start up should invest in public relations from day one!

This post was inspired by a question on Quora

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