What’s your brand worth to you?

0 CommentsFriday • May 28, 2010 • by Paul Letourneau

Is it just me or do some companies not understand how important their brand is?

Let me paint you a picture. Company ABC is falling behind in the ‘social media’ race. All of their competitors have active Facebook and Twitter accounts and blog on a regular basis. Their customers love and appreciate the business to consumer interaction.

Company ABC has decided that instead of asking themselves why social media is working for their competitors, they’re going to take a reactionary approach and hire someone to ‘build their own position’ and ‘take care of all the online stuff’. Better yet, their going to give this new position a swanky title and post it on all the online job boards.

Company ABC is going to ask for some of the following ‘desired qualifications’:

• Post secondary education with a degree in a web and/or marketing related program.
• 5-7 years professional experience working with web programs such as Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop and Illustrator as well as knowledge in HTML, CSS, PHP, XML, Javascript and E-Commerce.
• A strong working knowledge of Social Media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn, Buzz as well as experience developing progressive eMarketing strategies.
• Experience developing and managing large email marketing list and campaigns.
• The ability to work as an individual as well as balance the requests from a team environment by utilizing strong organizational, time management and communication skills.
• A strong sense of professionalism and the ability to act in a Management role and work co-operatively with company Executives.

In the interview Company ABC is going to talk about their global client base and how they need the new hire to be able to manage those relationships using social media tools. Their going to tell you that the job requires you to coordinate the third re-development of the company website, make sure everything that is posted is properly SEO’d and lastly be able to work with international clients when asked.

Sounds pretty good hey?

The problem comes when you ask what the salary for this position will be. First, they ask you what you think it should be. Which, if there are any HR people out there reading this, that is an irrelevant and ridiculous question to ask. When you, Company ABC, are only prepared to pay a certain amount for the position, don’t mess around with people by making them put a monetary value on their work.

Regardless, you think to yourself. A degree, 5-7 years experience, management, international work, essentially managing the online brand and reputation of an international company a multi-billion dollar organization… 75K/year and up sound about right?

Would you guess that this position was being offered for 45K/year?????

In my opinion, if companies continue to undervalue their brand and it’s relationship with the online world they may as well stay out of the game all together. I honestly don’t know anyone that would take a position with this much responsibility and expectations for that little amount of money. Do you?

Ask yourself this:

If you had to hire someone that represented your brand, your identity and the future of your company online, what would you be willing to pay them?

Posted in: Business Development, Consulting, Entrepreneurialism, Tools, Work