This week, we will be discussing branding and online reputations from the vantage point of a military communicator.
As we have discussed numerous times throughout the
life of this blog, military communicators are NOT like regular marketers or
even public relations specialists. Military public affairs does not have the
end goal of generating revenue with sales. It lives and dies by the mantra of
maximum disclosure, minimum delay.
However, you may find yourself sometimes faced with a question
of branding your branch, especially if you are assigned to a unit that deals
with recruitment. While you may not be looking to add generate revenue in the
military, you may be trying to add bodies into a branch of service instead. As
military recruitment lags behind in this country of late, branding your
unique branch of service can be a vital role in solving this issue.
But before we get deep into branding, let’s start by
identifying what exactly it means.
While branding might seem pretty self-explanatory (marketing
a product with advertising), personal branding is a little bit different
– and it is also a newer form of branding in the digital/social media age.
Personal branding is not some elaborate form of branding.
It can be as simple as your social media account, or even blogs! Personal
branding matters in the digital age because it allows you to control your
own narrative. Think of it as a personal or company trying to create their
digital voice. It has to be unique. It has to speak to who you are and what you
stand for. That is why it is so vital to make sure you get it right and really
put a lot of time and effort into identifying your brand.
Forbes recently created a lit of 10
golden rules to making a successful personal brand, with their first rule dealing
with focus. You want to ensure that you are sending a clear-cut message that is
not contradictory to other messages you have put out or competing against multiple
messages at one time. You must decide what your key message is and expand on
it. Put it in front of your target audience as often and strategically as
possible.
Another rule from Forbes’ list is to tell a story. As
military communicators, you will always be trying to tell some form of a story
for your branch or, specifically, your local unit that you are assigned to. It
is crucial that you create a unique story around your brand so that your
audience can engage with it. Social media can be a great friend here. You can
use sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram to creatively tell stories
about your branch. Videos are always a captivating medium of storytelling, but
you can also do so with a written story.
However, in this era of everyone being all about
themselves, it might seem daunting to build a personal brand that stands out.
To build
a personal brand in this era of “me,” try identifying your starting point
and then clearly define you identity. As a military communicator representing
your branch of service, your room for editorializing is thin here. But, you do
need to make it clear to the public that you are a uniformed service and make
it clear what it means to be a military member.
This means you need to clearly identity your values.
As a military member, this may be between your command messaging, which we will
touch on again later in this blog, or your branch’s ethos. For example, while
serving in the Coast Guard, I have heard our higher ups repeat our ethos of
honor, respect, and devotion to duty. These are values that the Coast Guard is
presenting to its internal audience (military community) as well as the public.
Forbes also lists out five
phases that you should consider when making a personal brand:
Phase 1. – Intention (find problem you are trying to
solve)
Phase 2. – Foundation (build your network and drive traffic
to your brand)
Phase 3. – Attention (drive awareness to your brand)
Phase 4. – Conversion (attention turns into revenue)
Phase 5. – Retention (retain your paying audience)
Now, again, you as a military communicator might not
be trying to build a brand in order to gain finical success. But you are trying
to share your branch or unit’s message to the public, and you may also be
trying to help solve the recruitment crisis.
As mentioned, your “brand” in the military sometimes
might be your command message for the unit you are assigned to.
What is a command message in the military?
Great question! We have touched on this a lot throughout
this blog because command messaging is a HUGE facet of military communications.
A command message is a tailored
communication directed at a specific public and aligned with a specific theme,
in support of a specific end state. It can also be defined as a specific
statement of the commander’s intent, which is what your commander wants your audiences
to know about a subject.
Ultimately, the command message represents
the views of your unit or military branch as a whole.
Similar to the civilian world, you need to
be able to identity the command message so you can have a clear identity in
your branding. Being able to identify command messages is essential when
crafting your stories, because you must use these messages to ensure your
commander's intent is being shared.
It is always important to identify your
audience as we have seen with branding. As military communicators, you will tailor
information to your internal audience and your external audience.
Command information is information that is
geared toward your internal audience. This is known as the military community. As
for branding purposes for this type of information, command information creates
an awareness of the organization’s goals and it also informs the audience of
significant developments affecting them and the organization.
As military communicators, you are representing your branch. This should not be treated lightly. You must always be cognizant of the overarching issues that are important to the DoD,
your service and your unit's mission. How well you understand these issues will
help you identify command messages -- which will ultimately help you with personal branding in the military.
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