Is Your Personal Brand Disappearing During Covid-19?

Do you switch off your camera during MS Teams or Zoom meetings? If so, you run the risk of becoming a “no-name brand” post Covid. In the presentations I’ve been doing since March, the lack of visibility is one of the biggest career management mistakes I’m observing.

Most people associate supermarket  “no-name brands” with a cheaper price. They have no emotional attachment to the brand. If you transfer the retail “no-name brand” purchasing behaviour to you as a personal brand, the same perceptions exist. You would not want your personal brand (Pty) Ltd to be associated with cheap prices and no emotional engagement. People who are no-name brands don’t get promoted or receive the increases or bonuses they deserve.

I worked at Wits Business School many years ago and I took over a job that no-one had worked in for over a year. I decided I was going to churn out as much work as possible to deal with the backlog, and I didn’t have time to join the academics for tea at 10.30am every day. During this twenty minute tea time, the academics and support staff gathered to chat about their projects and what they were busy with. The result of me missing the daily tea gathering was that I became invisible at Wits Business School.  People started asking “What does Helen do at WBS?”I had a direct report to the Director so he knew what I was up to, but because I wasn’t present at the tea time, none of my colleagues knew about my projects - I had become part of the wallpaper.

I learned a key lesson in personal branding from my Wits Business School experience – never underestimate how important visibility is in building your brand. If you relate this to our new virtual world where all your meetings are happening online, the same visibility law applies. The bar is really low on raising your visibility right now, as very few people are managing their brand optimally. Turn on your cameras, dress the part, ensure your laptop is eye height so you’re looking directly at your camera. I can’t tell you how many bad camera angles I’ve been observing – looking up someone’s nose or down at their bald spot are not good looks! 

Also ensure that you’re setting up virtual coffees / drinks sessions to touch base with your network at the end of the day. Ideally, you should be attending these stakeholder catch-up sessions twice a week. These sessions have no agenda - they serve two purposes – you keep in touch with market developments amongst your power brokers, and also find out how they are. People are taking big strain as a result of Covid-19 right now, and your stakeholders will remember how you acted during this time. It’s much harder to build relationships virtually, so these virtual catch up “coffee or drinks” sessions have never been as important as they are right now. We want to emerge post Covid–19 with our careers intact and developing from both a personal branding and networking perspective.

If you’re interested in Helen Nicholson’s presentation “How to Covid-proof your career”, email [email protected].