Celine Flores Willers_rethink
Dusseldorf “Miss Universe Germany”, “Pamela Reif from LinkedIn”, “Founder and personal branding expert”: Céline Flores Willers has had many titles. The 29-year-old now advises companies on corporate and personal branding and has more than 150,000 followers on LinkedIn.
Her success has made her a credible ambassador for how best to present yourself on social media to create more awareness for yourself and the company.
Her company The People Branding Company, which also works for major customers such as SAP, advises, among other things, on the training of so-called corporate influencers or supports CEOs in writing their posts. “There are those who say: ‘I don’t know anything about person branding and social media, I’ll let go and leave it to the outsiders.’ Others say, ‘Well, maybe I don’t have that much of an idea, but I still want to have a say in every single post.’”
From Willer’s point of view, corporate and personal branding will play an even greater role in the future, especially in recruiting. “If you think about how many positions are open out there that don’t yet use this lever for themselves, it’s a real shame because that’s wasted potential,” says Willers.
As is often the case with jobs that haven’t been around for long, Willer’s career path has taken a few turns. In 2018, the then 25-year-old was elected “Miss Universe Germany” and then also competed in the international Miss Universe beauty pageant in Bangkok.
About this time she says: “This disciplined work towards a goal, I might have had that before. But then it became really clear to me what an impact it can have on your own career if you are so consistent and disciplined with yourself.” Even today, she is very disciplined and works a lot and deliberately put some things on hold for your career.
I really got into it, read it, experimented a lot, wrote all night and thought up the wildest things. Celine Flores Willers
During her studies, Willers worked for a management consultancy and dealt more intensively with social media. “I really got into it, read it, experimented a lot, wrote all night and thought of the wildest things about how to position yourself on LinkedIn.”
And the aha moment? It “actually came when complete strangers pinged me on LinkedIn to ask if I could also cover certain topics for them.” A short time later she was allowed to take over the account of her then CEO.
In the current episode, she explains what role LinkedIn will still play in times of short videos and the metaverse, to what extent it is exhausting to build a corporate strategy on one’s own personality, and how Willers can tell whether someone wrote their post themselves or was commissioned to do so Handelsblatt Rethink Work with Charlotte Haunhorst.
More: You can hear the previous episode of Handelsblatt Rethink Work here