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Posts Tagged ‘Thought Leadership’

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What the Thought Leaders Have to Say About Pinterest

May 18th, 2012 ::

Rise of Pinterest

Pinterest continues to get plenty of buzz as marketers learn how to leverage the trendy social network to generate business. But what do the thought leaders of our industry think about the Pinterest potential?

After watching a video featuring some of the best marketers out there, I came up with six ways Pinterest is proving it is a game-changing social network with staying power.

1.  Accessible Content Sharing

According to Social Media Club Chairman and Founder Chris Heuer, Pinterest will stick around because it isn’t as geeky as previous social bookmarking sites. The Pinterest community is large and varied because the site makes collecting and sharing content more accessible to audiences. All users have to do is find an interest, and dive in. Finding new content and sharing with others is instantaneous, and Pinners can accumulate both pins and followers very quickly.

2.  A Lasting Impression

Ogilvy’s SVP of Global Strategy and Planning Rohit Bhargava believes the instant in which we can absorb information from an image makes all the difference. Because we are inundated with so much information, and we have immediate access to just about everything, visual content makes a more lasting impression on us. Images convey messages quickly and make concepts easy to understand.

3.  Targeted Audience

The CEO and Founder/President of Content Launch, Jon Wuebben, thinks Pinterest is so successful because it understands its biggest target audience: women. Pinterest gives women everything they want in a social network because it is so friendly to join and creating a niche community on the site is easy. As Pinterest has grown to appeal to other audiences, this growth has been organic.  But it’s hard to deny that Pinterest started as a major hub for the ladies.

4.  Merchant-Friendly

NetBase’s CMO Lisa Joy Rosner notes the trend of merchants moving their products from Facebook over to Pinterest. Not only is Pinterest an ideal network to showcase products, but it helps merchants understand what customers like. Successful product development and merchandising require an understanding of what will become popular next, and Pinterest is chock-full of new trends and hot items.

5.  Emphasis on Visual

Radian 6 Social Strategist Jeff Cohen stresses Pinterest’s emphasis on the visual. It’s not enough to produce great written content anymore – now companies must also produce interesting visual content if they want to be part of the social conversation. For many companies, this new direction will mean re-evaluating existing marketing strategies and re-assembling a team that can handle visual content production, too.

6.  The New Interest Graph

Finally, Likeable Media CEO Dave Kerpen believes Pinterest is changing not only social media, but also commerce as a whole. While Facebook introduced us to the value of the social graph, Pinterest is now demonstrating the value of interest graph. Kerpen believes this idea is even more relevant for businesses driving commerce. After all, a social graph will only take you so far, but interests run across multiple categories, and present numerous opportunities to connect and share with friends and strangers.

***

What’s your take on Pinterest? Is it a social media game changer, or just another social flash in the pan?

Image courtesy of Mashable

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

10 Marketing Insights From Today’s Top Thought Leaders

April 24th, 2012 ::

Thinking cap

I often find it helpful to glean insight from other marketers on current trends and new developments in our field. Recently, HubSpot gathered marketing observations, ideas and analysis from some of today’s best-known thought leaders. As I read through the collection, I was inspired by what they had to say. Here are my favorites:

Social Media Now

Social media changes at warp speed, as new technologies and best practices emerge almost daily. Here are a couple of observations that stood out:

  • Our ideas about privacy are changing. As noted by Seth Godin, a minority of people are concerned about what is known about them online, while the majority of us are redefining what is normal, as it relates to privacy.
  •  Kyle Lacy observed that split seconds are becoming more important than ever. In fact, the split second capturing of a memory is often more important than the time it takes to write a post.

Smart Planning for Mobile

The emergence of mobile has caught many marketers off guard, so what do the experts have to say about preparing for it now?

  • Roland Smart suggests learning HTML5 as soon as possible to capture opportunities to integrate mobile into your marketing strategy on Facebook.
  • Scott Fox recommends getting away from your desk and stepping out into the real world to really see how mobile is being used by a growing number of people who are not desk-bound.

Online Content and Social Media

Social media has taken online content off the static webpage and infused it with the goal to generate conversation and to engage audiences more than ever.

  • Michael Lazerow says that content has the added duty of being sharable as well as interesting. It’s not enough to create excellent content; marketers must ask themselves if audiences will share it before they can publish it.
  • Cameron Chapman emphasizes the importance of verifying everything you write about, since content is being shared more than ever before. Misinformation can spread like wildfire on social media, so be sure you get your message right.

Divvying Up Resources for Social Media

Just when marketers thought they had enough social networks to balance, Google+ and Pinterest emerged, showing us there is still room for more online communities. How do we divide limited resources among all the social media channels?

  • Maria Ogneva suggests letting your customers be your guide. Wherever your clients, prospects, existing customers, and partners are, those are the networks you should concentrate on most.
  • Tom Pick takes it a step further by testing to find the platform yielding the best results. Study your analytics to find out which networks are driving the most traffic to your website, and make those networks your top priority.

Building an Online Community

Some of the best advice offered by the experts is to understand that social media is here to stay and is a powerful component of your marketing strategy.

  • Linda Bustos encourages marketers to think of social media as a marathon and not a sprint. Building a vibrant online community is hard work, and results might not come right away.
  • Priit Kallas believes that building for the long-term can help businesses stand out from the competition. He suggests focusing on creating customer relationships that can stand the test of time.

To read the entire list of marketing ideas, suggestions and insights, check out Hubspot’s 54 Pearls of Marketing Wisdom. What other ideas have inspired you recently, as it relates to mobile, social or content marketing?

Image courtesy of theorangeinkblog.wordpress.com

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How to Repurpose Old Blog Posts and Articles for Fresh Content

April 13th, 2011 ::

If you are super-crunched on time and just need to churn out a blog post, newsletter, or article, don’t despair!  In the race against time, simply snag an idea from mainstream magazines: Repurpose old topics and content to create something entirely new.  I do this on occasion, and it is a lifesaver.

A friend of mine, Thursday Bram, who also happens to be a fellow writer, wrote a wonderfully thorough guide on doing just this.  I have borrowed a couple of her ideas and added my own, leaving you with 5 ways to repurpose content.

Recycling symbol1. Reduce, reuse, recycle

This is what I do most often: I’ll edit out information from a blog post to shorten it or add new information to update it and then use the blog post on another blog.  I have also seen highly regarded bloggers outright announce at the beginning of a blog post that this blog already appeared elsewhere.

You can also use blog posts and articles in your newsletter, and expand on industry news items from your newsletter for a blog post.

2. Reposition the story

Thursday suggests repurposing content by repositioning it for a new audience.  You can refocus a blog post or article so it addresses a specific industry or niche in your target market.  You can also rewrite the content so it’s written on a personal level, or a more general level.

3. Write a follow-up

Another great idea from Thursday is to write a follow-up to a story.  If you wrote a profile, where is that person or company now?  If you published a book, launched a new product or service 3 months ago, or tried out a new business process, write about how it was received.  If you wrote about an event, explain what you learned, who you met, and what you are looking forward to next—maybe a new partnership, new funding, their next event, etc.

4. Rewrite a topic to address current events

The most creative content you produce can be the result of repurposing it to address current events.  With Charlie Sheen’s recent decent into crazy-world, marketing, public relations and branding experts found a ton of ways to return to their evergreen topics.  I read—or saw—lots of bog posts on how his antics were brilliant from a marketing perspective—he had his own online TV station, was producing video blogs and tweeting like crazy, and people were eating it up.

5. Talk to a new expert on the topic

If you like to conduct interviews, Thursday suggests talking to a new expert on the topic for their fresh perspective.  You need not write new questions, either, which is one of the best parts.  Just edit their answers for length, and you’re good to go!

Image by Flickr user John Morgan (Creative Commons)

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3 Lead Generation Case Studies: How Content, SEO, Social Media, and Lead Nurturing Can Increase Sales

March 30th, 2011 ::

Lego sales meetingOne of the hardest things for most small business owners to do is generate leads.  Doing so effectively and efficiently is key, but of course that’s easier said than done.  However, if you don’t do something, your sales will growth might plummet, just like it did for the Legos at left.  Because it is best to learn from others than to make mistakes that can be avoided, here are three case studies, courtesy of an eBook co-written by HubSpot and Marketing Sherpa, that illustrate B2B lead generation problems and their solutions.  The results are outstanding!

Makana Solutions

What they do: Subscription‐based software that helps organizations perform sales compensation planning.

Problem: The software is a new concept (this task is normally done manually) and their target market is composed of companies with 50 or fewer sales reps.  Because prospects don’t know this software exists, they are not actively looking for it; therefore, creating demand and awareness are key to generating leads.

Solution: Makana transformed their website into an online destination for sales compensation planning best practices and practical advice.  To do so, they added educational content, such as sample plans and webinars, they optimized their website for search using high-value keywords, and they used paid search to generate additional leads.  They also added all Web leads to a customer relationship management program for follow-up.

Result: After three months, website traffic increased 200 percent, lead generation rates tripled, and lead conversion rates doubled.

BreakingPoint

What they do: Provide cyber-security solutions

Problem: They are a startup with limited funds and a target audience of security and quality assurance professionals in R&D laboratories who hate marketing.

Solution: A social media strategy that would create strong relationships with hard‐to‐find prospects and turn them into leads.  BreakingPoint took a multi-pronged approach that included:

  • Starting a blog
  • Scanning social media for relevant conversations to follow
  • Using Twitter to share info, post fun stuff and conduct informal polls
  • Creating a LinkedIn group that focused on the industry, not the company
  • Tweaking their press releases by adding links to their website and distributing them via Qeb-based services more frequently
  • Promoting their social media channels on their website and in e-signatures
  • Measuring everything

Result: After six months, leads from the Web shot up to 55 percent of all leads.

IBM Cognos

What they do: Business intelligence software

Problem: Longer sales cycles and buying committees composed of more people were making traditional tactics less effective at driving sales.  Email marketing, for instance, saw click-through rates (CTR) plummet.

Solution: IBM Cognos put lead nurturing processes in place that positioned the company as a thought leader, generated demand, and supported the sales team.  To read these goals, they overhauled their website to provide useful content, such as white papers and demos, and they organized all the content and information by product line and industry.  They also created a lead‐nurturing program based on the prospect’s profile, and they analyzed and tested the program to ensure they were getting results.

Result: Open rates increased from 13.2 percent to 33.3 percent, CTR increased from 0.09 percent to 15.5 percent, response rate increased from 0.05 percent to 17.5 percent, and costs‐per‐lead decreased by 30 percent to 40 percent.  Better alignment between sales and marketing goals allowed the marketing team to generate 30 percent of all leads per quarter.

Image by Flickr user Mark Anderson (Creative Commons)

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Posted in Marketing, Search Marketing, Small Business, Social Media, Thought Leadership | 4 Comments »

How to Use White Papers to Market Your Small Business

February 28th, 2011 ::

By Rieva Lesonsky

Does your business sell services or expertise? Maybe you’re an accountant, consultant or IT expert. If you’re looking for a way to gain exposure as an industry expert while also educating clients and potential clients about what your business can do, consider marketing your business with white papers.

A white paper might sound like something that you’d only find in a college course, but in reality, it’s not that academic. A white paper is an informational report, typically 4 to 10 pages in length, that is provided to users for free and focuses on one specific aspect of a problem. They may spotlight research, interesting data or the results of a survey.

For instance, if you own a marketing company that helps businesses improve their social media profiles, you might do a white paper on how using Facebook can help businesses increase awareness of their brand, customers and sales. If you have a website design company, you could write a white paper about how to convert website browsers to buyers and focus on some tactics that you use in design.

White papers have a twofold purpose: to educate readers, but also to promote your business. So be sure your topic ties in to the areas your business specializes in and promotes you as an authority. In addition, the white paper must provide some reason why people need what you sell. (For instance, the marketing company in the prior example would want to show that companies that hire a marketing service get better results from Facebook.) For that reason, make sure you include plenty of ways to contact your business (email, address, phone, website) at the end of the white paper.

You’ll also need to determine who would benefit from your white paper and how to distribute it. For sure, you’ll want to put it on your business website and Facebook page. Then let people know about it by promoting it wherever you can—in your email signature, using social media, in your email newsletters, and in any descriptions or bios of you that appear online.

As you develop more white papers, you’ll find more uses for them—such as putting them into print booklet form as a giveaway in situations where downloading isn’t practical, or gathering several into an ebook. Use it right and you’ll discover that a white paper can be one of your simplest and most effective marketing tools.

Image Courtesy: Karen Axelton

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Using Content Curation To Become a Thought Leader

August 11th, 2010 ::

Ever hear of content curation?  Neither did I, til I signed up for another fabulous American Marketing Association webinar on that topic last month.  Pawan Deshpande, Founder and CEO of HiveFire, and Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs, collaborated to present the informative, funny, and very interesting webinar.  Here’s what I learned:

Thought leaders share four qualities:

  1. They distill information into key insights
  2. They foresee new directions their industry is taking and set trends based on that information
  3. They are trusted, go-to authorities for information
  4. They look for patterns in trends and news and report on those patterns

Chris Brogan

So, what a thought leader will do is identify a topic they think is worth pursuing.  They’ll do research on that topic and produce a report, article, blog, white paper, or whatever.  Then they repurpose the content for different uses, distribute it, and start all over again.

The reason it’s so important to become a thought leader in an industry is due to the power of influence.  You want to not only influence your prospective clients but, most importantly, have them seek you out, rather than vice versa.  Remember, though, that thought leadership is NOT about tooting your own horn.  If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: no one cares about you, they only care about themselves.

So let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about content.  Content marketing evolved as the cost of publishing information nose-dived.  Thanks to the internet, free blog software, and numerous social networking platforms, anyone can publish and distribute content for the price of a high-speed internet connection.  This, as we well know, has lead to its own complications. There’s just so much out there!  And because marketers struggle to get found, they publish tons of stuff and distribute it on as many mediums as possible.  So now there’s this vicious cycle going that is expensive, time-consuming, and creating content marketers rather than thought leaders.

Pawan Deshpande

Pawan Deshpande

This is where content curation comes into the picture.  Rohit Bhargava defined it very nicely: “A content curator finds, groups, organizes, and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific topic online.”  Think the Drudge Report, TMZ, the Huffington Post.  Because these companies are so good at content curation, they have become thought leaders.  We go to them for our information.

To become a thought leader using content curation, you have to first decide if content curation is a good marketing strategy for you.  Ask yourself two questions:

  1. Is your brand focused on an issue and do you have an innovative perspective on that issue? 
  2. Do your prospects conduct a lot of research on this issue?

If you answered yes, then here’s what you do:

  1. Distill information into key insights
  2. Provide fresh perspective on a topic (or topics) within your industry

As always, easier said than done!

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Your Customers May Be About To Move – Are You Ready?

January 26th, 2010 ::

I read a short article by Steve Rubel over at Advertising Age about the future of Internet access that made me stop what I was doing and author this post. He thinks that facebook will enter the cell phone market. Why not? Google did right after releasing Wave.  This move has less to do with Google than the size and potential of the mobile market.  Let’s explore this and other data points -

Market Size – From the Ad Age Article sighted above “According to Morgan Stanley, more people will connect to the internet via mobile devices than PCs in five years. Meanwhile, Forrester reports that 17% of U.S. consumers have smartphones. This means that 83% currently don’t.”

Cost of Devices – According to, Moore’s Law the power of electronic devices will increase, the size will decrease and the price will fall so we will see a sub $150 carrier independent smartphone in just a couple of years.

User Behavior – Yesterday The New York Times ran an article that pointed to research showing children 8 to 18 years old now spend 7 1/2 hours with media devices on a daily basis absorbing 11 1/2 hours of information by multitasking. The majority of the devices they use are portable in nature.

Conclusion – At the confluence of demand and the affordable device lies your customer. In five or fewer years, you company will need to be fully engaged with a mobile site that fits on a screen roughly 2″ x 3″ and supports bi-directional connections to several communities.

Get the jump on your largest competitors – Large companies are still struggling to figure out social media. The inertia of complacency in these firms will cause them to show up at the party late and under dressed. There are some very good research papers on the internal issues these firms struggle with such as this Master Thesis pointing out the three reasons why large companies fail at incorporating community driven innovation into their plans.

So be nimble and start figuring out your strategy now. Chances are good you will get the jump on the big guys.

We have an entire organization at your disposal Stop by our site or give us a call. We understand sales, marketing and media.

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Perspectives on How to Become a Thought Leader

June 24th, 2009 ::

thoughtleaderI know, I know, you hate management speak and trendy buzzwords but these days it is hard to be different and get properly noticed for what you do and what you can offer clients, especially if you are a small business working hard to grow.

HubPages has a great article on Thought Leadership. They define “A “Thought Leader” someone who is not only recognized by others as an innovator of ideas, but has the confidence to promote the ideas they created. This quality is often called “Thought Leadership”. The thought leadership process includes coming up with ideas, dissecting them, and developing a plan to promote them. It also includes the final execution of a plan for the idea to come to live. In general, thought leaders do not need to be well financed, but they should have a good reputation. This is because effective thought leaders need to have a good reputation so that others will back their ideas and hear what they want to say. In reality, if you’re a thought leader with a good reputation, companies large and small will recognize and respect your views. “

So I went searching for tips on how to develop your thought leadership skills, gain the trust of others, and boost your reputation.

I found two lists and they couldn’t be more different. Let’s take a look.

List #1 – Five Tips from Paul Dunay, Global Director at Bearingpoint

  1. Start by defining a clear objective – Most thought leaders become thought leaders because they have a desire to educate the folks that follow them.
  2. Pick your spot - There are always just a few thought leaders in every industry and/or field of study so pick a spot that you can differentiate yourself with.
  3. Find your voice – We can’t all be Hemingway. Don’t try to write like someone else, find your own voice and don’t try to change your demeanor.
  4. Don’t try too hard – Thought leaders genuinely influence others by creating, advancing and sharing their ideas. Thought leadership is not what you say or write. It is a state of being. Use your content as your attraction vehicle.
  5. Lather Rinse Repeat – you can’t just write one blog post and call yourself a thought leader – it comes with persistence, it comes with passion about a particular topic and it comes with dedication to continue to publish and publish often.

List #2 – Hubpages Tips on Thought Leadership

  1. Be innovative - Being innovative means you should be capable of providing ideas and plans that are better than the other ones in the market. If your idea is brilliant, then surely you will be recognized as a thought leader. The basis of thought leadership lies with concept of generating new ideas, communicating them and finally,implementation. But all thought leadership roads start with innovation, so hone that skill first before anything else.
  2. Be generous – The key facet of thought leadership is to gain a reputation. What’s a better way to gain a reputation than being generous with what you have to offer. In the early stages, it’s perfectly reasonable to share the ideas you have with others as a way to prove that you have ideas worth paying for later.
  3. Communicate well – Quite often, brilliant ideas are lost because they are not presented in an appropriate or conducive way. Communication to convey your idea must be done with lot of clarity for people to understand your idea and accept it. Polish your communication skills and you’ll find a more attentive audience to your ideas.
  4. Increase the visibility of your idea - Use the different media available at your disposal to spread your ideas. With blogs and social media, it is very easy to spread ideas for low or no costs. This can help you boost your reputation and raise your profile online, building a sort of fan base that looks forward to what you’ll come up with next.
  5. Learn to take constructive criticism - Every idea has its critics. This is not necessarily bad. Human nature often makes you overlook your own mistakes. But critics can point out problems in your ideas that you probably did not think of. Answering critics helps to build reputation, but you must respect these critics and think about the criticism as well. If possible, use the criticism to improve on your ideas. A good thought leader listens to outsiders before finally implementing ideas.

Learning from the Master – John Doerr, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

There is also a fantastic 15-page interview of legendary venture capitalist John Doerr and it covers a range of topics and perspective on becoming a thought leader and the lessons he learned along the way.

Here is an excerpt on how he says you can become a thought leader:

“You have to be passionate. You have to really like what you’re doing. It cannot be a task. It cannot be a chore. It has to be something that you really care about doing. Because it’s ongoing, because it’s something you’ll always be doing, if you feel like it’s a task or a chore, eventually you’ll get burned out and tired of doing it. So I would say, without really caring about it, it’s not going to happen.

I would also say there has to be a certain intellectual curiosity about whatever you’re writing about or doing. You have to want to understand what’s going on, learn how something works, what makes a difference and then put it all together… because you can’t fake this.

Another big thing is being willing to take a risk. Starting a business was a risk. With any of these things, you’re putting yourself out there. You write an article, you put it out there, and people write back to you. As I said before, the worst thing is if nothing comes back to you. I’d rather get bad feedback than none at all. At times, my writing style is a little irreverent… but you have to be willing to take that step, not just say what everyone else is saying.”

Bottom Line Lessons?

Reviewing these and tons of other articles on Thought Leadership and what it takes to become one I come from away with the following:

- Gotta love what you do, people will see the passion but don’t over do it or you will turn people off

- If you are the one spreading the ideas then when people come to learn they will find that you are the one speaking and the one to learn from

- Be unique, listen intently and just get started because no one will do it for you

What did you learn? How will you apply it? Leave a comment and discuss.

Photo Credit: istockphoto

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