As a leader, you’ve guided your organizations to the peak, transforming audacious visions into reality, overcoming the odds, and setting standards of success that reverberate across your industry. Today, let’s shift gears a little. Let’s focus not on your business, but on YOU, on building your executive brand.

Much like a corporate brand, your personal brand is the unique amalgamation of your skills, experiences, values, and vision. It’s a multi-faceted diamond that, when polished correctly, radiates an irresistible allure. But why, you may ask, should you invest in building your executive brand?

Firstly, a strong personal brand enhances your credibility within and outside your organization. It attracts talent, fosters trust, and opens doors to new partnerships and opportunities. It’s a differentiating factor in an ever-competitive marketplace. Secondly, in an age driven by digital and social media, your voice can reach further and more directly than ever. Leveraging this can position you as a thought leader in your industry, inspiring change, and innovation.

1. Clarify your Vision and Values

Your brand should reflect what you believe in and where you’re heading. Be clear about your values and long-term vision. Your values may include authenticity, sustainability, or relentless innovation. Your vision could be to revolutionize your industry, champion corporate social responsibility, or democratize access to essential services.

2. Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

What sets you apart from other executives in your field? This is your Unique Selling Proposition. It could be your innovative mindset, your ability to foster harmony within diverse teams, or your knack for turning challenges into opportunities. Whatever it may be, identify it, own it, and communicate it consistently.

3. Develop a Plan for Consistency

Consistency in your messaging and interactions fortifies your brand’s credibility.  Leverage Social Media: Platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and industry-specific networks are powerful tools to amplify your voice. Be regular in your social media posts, the events you attend, the content you produce. Show your thought leadership: Write articles, blogs, and give speeches or interviews. Share personal experiences, and provide your unique insights. This showcases your expertise and positions you as a source of inspiration and knowledge. Share insightful articles, industry trends, and your perspectives on them. Engage with your followers, comment on relevant posts, and participate in meaningful discussions. You can use your social channels to connect with other industry leaders, influencers, and talent. Remember, your network is an extension of your brand. The more diverse it is, the richer your learning and influence will be.

Your brand will grow and evolve with you.

These steps may seem challenging, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. Your brand is a living entity, growing and evolving with you.

Embrace the journey of self-discovery and the expression it offers. Begin with small steps – update your LinkedIn profile, write your first blog post, or schedule a networking event. Stay relevant by keeping abreast of new trends, technologies, and strategies.

Remember, your personal brand isn’t just about you – it’s about the influence you wield, the inspiration you offer, and the legacy you leave. So, let’s embark on this exciting journey of building your executive brand. The world is waiting to be inspired by your vision – in your unique voice – and engage with the extraordinary brand YOU.

Are you ready to begin?

Building your personal brand is important, but it’s not always easy.  If you are wondering where to begin or how to find the time, we can help.  Join our complimentary executive brand training. We’ll address these challenges and provide you with a roadmap to build your personal brand effectively.

Mobile has forever changed the human experience. It’s brought the world’s information to our fingertips, wherever and whenever we want. And it has fundamentally changed our expectations for responsiveness and relevance. This has major implications for brands. Thanks to mobile, there are increasingly more moments when hearts, minds, and dollars are being won and lost.

Customers expect brands to address their needs with real-time relevance.

Near ME intent is Near YOU opportunity.

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Mobile has radically reshaped the shopper’s journey. In the past, people included location qualifiers, like zip codes, when searching for ice cream shops or places to purchase a grill. Now, they just search exactly what they need and expect brands to know where they are. For brands looking to take advantage of this evolving consumer behavior, inferring and interpreting context will be key.

What begins with a consumer’s mobile search is an opportunity for retailers to deliver on and win omni-channel shoppers.  93% of people who use their phone to research a product go on to make a purchase. 82% of consumers use their phones in-store to make a decision about a purchase they are about to make. And it’s happening on phones while in the aisle— 28% of in-store sales in the US were influenced by mobile devices used before or during shopping trips last year.

With more computing power in our pockets than most of us had on our desks just a few years ago, our expectations have been massively raised. We expect everything right, and we expect it right away.

The good news for brands is that there’s a far greater opportunity to be useful and connect with people when needed most. When search ads launched, they were transformational because for the first time advertisements were tied directly to what people were looking for. With mobile, our ability to understand what people want has only gotten better, as we understand not only intent but also context. By understanding a person’s location, time of day, type of device, etc., we can tailor our marketing to help people when it matters.

In defining our strategy, there are two equally important considerations –  being there and being useful. This means eliminating friction for the consumer wherever it exists — from streamlining checkout in a way that makes it easy for her to act, to honing in our story-telling capabilities in the ads and how-to videos she sees. It can mean rethinking organizations so that everyone has an incentive to help the customer where, when, and however she likes. Ultimately these new mobile moments mean that the modern marketer is constantly iterating, solving problems, and collaborating cross-functionally to connect with the customer in meaningful ways.

In B2B marketing, email can be an essential channel in building trust and maintaining an ongoing dialogue with your audience. Every campaign you send out offers the opportunity to:

– Listen to the ways your segment responds (by paying attention to open and click-through rates).
– Maintain relevance in your conversations (by acknowledging recipients’ profiles and interests).
– Engage with customers in the most meaningful ways possible (by following up appropriately).

True email marketing is NOT taking the “batch and blast” approach. Every email that is sent out requires careful consideration of the relevance of the message to the audience and what follow-up measures will be taken.

For B2B marketers, it is important to remember that email campaigns are always part of a larger effort to build relationships with individuals and help them along the buying process.

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When sending out emails, ensure each action is optimized to meet your objectives. Here are 5 optimization tactics to keep in mind:

• Develop buyer and customer personas and align them with the content in any email message. Create multiple messages or use dynamic content to ensure the email is sent with information that is important to that persona.
• Use the same name and email address when sending mail to ensure the recipient recognizes the email sender. Also, keep your emails in the same style as other branded content so the email feels familiar.
• Make sure to use A/B testing to find the right subject lines, images, and content for your buyer personas.
• Each email should have a call to action, typically in the form of a link, which will allow you to see if the message resonated with the recipient. Try to limit the number of calls to action so the recipient does not become overwhelmed or miss an important call to action.
• Go beyond following CAN-SPAM rules, ensuring that every recipient has opted-in to your email.
• Test how emails will render in multiple email clients like Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Gmail, and Hotmail. Also, test to see how emails will render on mobile phones.

Be sure to tweak this to the goals you set because ultimately your optimization tactics will be specific to your company’s strategic objectives. Make sure that each message you send supports that goal in some way!

People love online videos.

YouTube is now the second-largest search engine,  and more people turn to the platform for answers as they face new daily decisions, questions, and challenges.

Let’s look at the numbers:

• YouTube has over 1 billion users  — almost one-third of all people on the Internet. 
• 4 billion videos are watched with billions of views generated daily
• More than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices
• On mobile, the average viewing session is now more than 40 minutes
• YouTube reaches more 18-49 year-olds than any U.S. cable network

Source: YouTube Statistics

As an enterprising brand, you can exploit this opportunity by providing useful content when people are looking for solutions.

Here are 10 ways to get started on YouTube.

1. Know your target audience

Mold your video to your client base.

What are their pain points?
What are their values and needs?
What messaging resonates?

Talk to your audience!

2. Talk to one person

Don’t think of this as posting mass communication to “people on Youtube.”

Think of one person whose problem you are solving.

3. Find your hook

Lead with one compelling point so your target audience will stick around past the first few seconds. Think of this as the most important point. Or the one-liner that you think everyone will want to tweet.

Be concise and compelling. Your hook can also serve as an organizing principle that keeps you from rambling. Your hook will snag both you and your viewer into the video. Make your message meaningful, memorable, relevant, relatable, and tailored to your target audience.

4. Use the right keywords

Keyword relevancy is a key factor that contributes to the SEO ranking of a YouTube video.

Search for the best keyword on YouTube. Simply type a relevant keyword in the YouTube search and see suggested keywords.

You can also get the VidIQ Chrome extension to see which keywords will get your video the most visibility.

For best results:

• Ensure the file name and the thumbnail are aligned with the keyword of the video
• Include at least one keyword in the video title (close to the front)
• Include the keyword in the first 1-3 lines and the first 3 hashtags of the description

Utilize tags fully with relevant keywords to optimize search results. While tags are not visible on the platform uploads, using consistent tags across similar videos will improve the likelihood of them referring to each other in ‘Suggested videos’. You can also use multiple-word tags that specifically relate to the video to help users find the video e.g. YouTube Marketing Strategy.

Track the performance consistently and remove ineffective Tags.

5. Customize your YouTube thumbnail

Thumbnails are crucial in ensuring your content stands out quickly in search results.

They act like billboards to help viewers decide to click on your content.

90% of the best-performing videos on YouTube have custom thumbnails.

Use custom thumbnails rather than automatically generated ones. Well-designed thumbnails attract fans to your channel and help make sure they know what to expect of your content.

Here are some Dos and Don’ts.

Do:

• Add graphics
• Apply the rule of thirds: objects should be placed closer to the central grid for focus
• Overlay with branding/ descriptive text
• Use consistent layout and colors
• Ensure your thumbnail works on desktop and mobile
• Use a color scheme that stands out
• Use high contrast
• Experiment with text
• Check and track thumbnail performance

Don’t:

• Use tiny, illegible text
• Incorporate too much text
• Be boring or use dull colors
• Use unclear confusing imagery
• Use irrelevant, misleading, or sensational imagery

6. Choose your title wisely

You want to attract human readers with your title, but you also want to attract search engines. Otherwise, readers might never find your post. You want a compelling promise that turns a browser into a reader and relevant keyword phrases in your titles to attract search engines. Use a compelling title with less than 70 characters to be fully shown on the search result.

7. Include hashtags in your description

You can be wordy in the description (and insert hashtags) because this supports search engine optimization. Use relevant keywords that suit your business and connect with your target audience.  The first 3 hashtags in your description appear as hyperlinks above the title. However, you should be careful about over-tagging. If a video has more than 15, all the hashtags will be ignored.

8. Be creative and consistent

More is better. Don’t just make one video. Post creative videos consistently. You should have at least a couple of videos on your YouTube channel. This is beneficial for your ranking in search.

9. Setup autoplay

Set the main video to play automatically when someone clicks on your channel. This gets the ball rolling fast and captures the viewer’s attention. You can create your own playlists.  You could also record 4 short “To Get More, Go Here” videos.  This is known as “the bumper.” At the end of each video, tell people where to go for the entire 20-video series.

10. Brand your YouTube channel

Use your logo and company colors. Leverage all your other social media handles. Post your video link to Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, etc. All these social signals still matter in search.

Given that most people are likely to search for videos about a certain product before making a purchase, YouTube is definitely the perfect platform to market your business. Your audience is facing a seemingly endless number of new questions and adventures every day. YouTube video moments are great opportunities for you to lend a hand, show empathy, entertain, inspire, start a conversation — in short, to be a life sidekick that will keep people coming back for more

Agile has become one of the biggest buzzwords in tech. So what exactly is it? Put simply, agile means we value responsiveness over procedures and process purely for the sake of convention. It’s often a people first approach with teamwork and collaboration that provides a more rewarding experience. And when people enjoy their work, it’s amazing what they can achieve!

To remain competitive in an ever changing digital marketplace world today, many organizations are embracing agile practices. The agile manifesto states that “we value: individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, responding to change over following a plan…”

Here are 3 proven ways to winning in the digital age that are rooted in the agile methodogy (witnessed from the best and the worst):

1. Cultivate your people

• Your company’s vision will be within reach if you have motivated and capable people on board. Set clear expectations and offer a transparent career plan. You want to get people with the right skills, set their sights on the finish line and let them lose to figure things out with their creative, communicative and problem-solving acumen.
• Beyond pay, people are motivated by growth, certainty, significance/ recognition, connection, variety and contribution (in varying degrees). Invest precious time understanding individual motivations and aspirations. Ensure people are placed where they can maximize their daily contribution, develop them into their aspirations and create collaborative opportunities to sync with the right mentors.
• Hire audacious problem-solvers, leaders that bring different values to your company and uncover your blind spots. Promote autonomy and internal motivation while creating an environment that rewards camaraderie, teamwork, and a passion for excellence.

Hire audacious problem-solvers, leaders that bring different values to your company

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2. Support technical mastery and innovation

• In this ever-evolving landscape be prepared to experiment constantly, learn fast and adapt quickly. Establish a methodology to promote learning and technical knowledge through training sessions, hackathons, dojos, digital summits etc. Run “Open Innovation” initiatives by connecting with other companies and colleges. Tap into opportunities that go beyond your organization.
• Cultivate an environment for cutting-edge technology adoption. Create opportunities for people to get closer to digital technologies, exercise creativity and initiate side projects.
• Recognize people that share and multiply knowledge – give them a chance to meet with executives to promote their next ideas.
• Encourage experimentation in search of the “next big thing.” Experiments are at the core of improvement. Establish hypotheses, define the goals, ideate, prototype, test, validate the hypotheses, adapt and improve.

Experiments are at the core of improvement.

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3. Foster a culture of responsible risk taking

• Encourage people to take smart risks and learn from failures.
• Implement a lean-agile process that is obsessed by customer satisfaction, quality and productivity. Today is better than yesterday; tomorrow will be better than today.
• Ensure you are adapting constantly with a continuous improvement mindset – be knowledgeable about the work being done, removing blocks and setting ambitious goals.
• Make a few bold moves. Prioritize transformational initiatives in areas that anticipate large returns and can represent sustainable differentiation in the medium and long term. Establish clear links from your digital initiatives to value outcomes and track them with actionable metrics.

Prioritize transformational initiatives in areas that anticipate large returns.

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Attaining digital excellence in this rapidly evolving environment can feel like building a plane while flying it, but ultimately – along with the commitment to continuous learning – passion, creativity and genuine belief in the power of people will be the sustaining competitive advantage.

I love digital marketing because the constant tremendous success stories are a reminder that if you believe it, it can become a reality – striving for digital excellence is the clarion call to dream big, find your north star and go for it with everything you’ve got!

Marketers are shifting their budgets away from “interruption”advertising. They realize most people now begin their purchasing experience by doing online research to compare prices, quality, and read reviews. Even if they end up making their purchase in a store, they start their fact-finding and decision-making  on the web.

How Brilliant Marketers Leverage Content, Customer Insights and Big Data To Win

Given the long sales cycle, digital marketing in the B2B technology sector has remained relatively static, focused only on incremental changes. However, business leaders are realizing that in today’s climate, incremental innovation is like walking on quicksand – it will keep you busy, but you won’t get very far.

Incremental innovation is like walking on quicksand – it will keep you busy, but you won’t get very far.

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As in every other industry, the marketing funnel has evolved. More and more B2B buying behavior is online and takes place well before the buyer ever gets in touch with the vendor. As we build and deploy the robust digital infrastructure necessary to reach the buyers, who are increasingly insanely busy, we need to:

1.Get personal

Personalization is the holy grail in B2C marketing. The benefits of monitoring, understanding and predicting an individual’s behavior to create targeted, meaningful, real-time interactions are undeniable. In B2B digital marketing the process is more complex because the buying unit made of many individuals. Therefore propensity data is vital to personalize inbound visits from B2B buyers. B2B digital marketing also requires that we look at the entire sales funnel and develop a content strategy that adapts to the buyer journey based on intent and persona.

2.Use social

While most industry experts particularly in B2B technology sales turn to more selective communities for information over channels like Twitter and Facebook, I predict a return to social in coming years for B2B technical product marketing. With a more sophisticated use of social we can understand who the true influencers are in the buying unit, then surround them with meaningful content and measure the activities we trigger them to take part in. Ultimately the goal is to get them to create organic, engaging content about our brand that carries credibility.

3.Run pilots

Pilot programs are essential for 2 reasons: One, they can be used to test assumptions before making significant investments. Two, they can be used to understand more quickly how activities might play out against primary KPIs in order to maximize an organizations returns. For example, how can content be sequenced to drive high value activities during the purchase cycle such as driving a download, doing an online product demo or filling out a product evaluation more quickly. By defining these high value activities and checking the metrics early using pilots, we can consistently iterate and improve throughout a given time period.

4. Leverage channel surfing

In the omni-channel journey across the website, email, social channel and mobile, relevant content pushes the buyer further into the sales funnel. Using firmographic and behavioral data to customize web and mobile experiences, marketers can build relationships with buyers, guide them and accelerate the purchase cycle. The goal is to make content experiences consistent and additive in a sequence that makes sense based on their behaviors and research needs.

My fascination with YouTube started almost 15 years ago, but it didn’t become a passion until around 2007 when the power of the platform was undeniable. By 2009 I had published a few videos of my own but was primarily focused on supporting companies like Demand Media and Maker Studio.

Over time I’ve pivoted, helped businesses with their channels, and experimented creatively, seeking to understand what it takes to create a stronger YouTube presence.

I’m obsessed with machine learning and YouTube optimization solutions that help brands to be more successful with video marketing. I’ve helped clients like PopsugarTV, Fandango, CBS Films, Interscope, AARP,  Streamys, etc. identify rapid growth strategies and implement those strategies efficiently and effectively.

I’ve also created or directly managed videos that were syndicated through various video distribution networks.

Below are a few favorites.

Lohika

Hi-tech B2B

Reactionpower

Thirdwind

Wandia