Why Now Is The Time To Build Your Personal Brand
Brands used to be only for businesses. And we, the employees, were expected to uphold and support the principles of the brand. Some of us in marketing were even lucky enough to help our businesses build their brands.
But as trust has eroded away from corporations and government institutions, we are seeing the ushering in of a new era: the employee-brand.
Those of us who understand how to yield the power of our networks will achieve greater levels of professional success. And those who know how to use social channels to deliver helpful messages will ride the wave of this new era in personal branding.
In this post, I will explain why now, more than ever, is your time to shine as a positive voice in the crowded media marketplace.
And I’ll offer tips on how to get there…
Lead Generation or Demand Generation? It’s All Just Content Marketing!
Last week, Eric Wittlake (@wittlake) wrote a great post called Lead Generation is Crippling Demand Generation where he argued that these two marketing activities were working against each other due to the different outcomes each is trying to achieve.
Many marketers lose focus on the bigger picture as they chase more leads.
They throw registration forms in front of their content without thinking about earning the right to build an engaged audience that will return to you when they are ready to buy.
Too often we think about how to capture people in our nets instead of helping them along their buying journey.
Eric generally produces the most thought-provoking articles, and this one got me to thinking that we need a new term to describe the whole process. I think the rise of content marketing as a hot topic in B2B Marketing is partly due to this struggle.
So instead of lead generation or demand generation, content marketing might be the term to use.
Social Media? #WTF
Tonight I am presenting social media marketing to a group of local marketing students at West Chester University.
In preparation for the class, I spoke to the professor in order to determine which points about social media marketing I should touch on.
She explained that the students think “Twitter is for old people” and are looking to understand what value social media marketing has relative to the larger marketing mix.
Everyone understands the power of a great TV ad, but explaining the importance of social media marketing for businesses is no easy task…
So here’s my best shot. And if you have any good tips, please let me know in the comments below…
The Leadership Gap in B2B Marketing
CMOs feel largely unprepared for the challenges of today’s marketing challenges when it comes to the changing buyer, the corporate pressures to contribute and the skills and tools they have to work with. And yet much of the B2B Marketing conversation is still on generating leads.
Generating leads is one important aspect of what we do in marketing but while we are busy talking about how to meet the needs for sales today, we are losing ground in our ability to meet the needs of our customers tomorrow.
This is why I believe we have a leadership gap in B2B Marketing today. Read more
Why Your Social Media Marketing Stinks
Social networking is as old as humanity, and even the term social media has been around for quite a while. But as a function within marketing, social media management is only 3 years old at best for the majority of organizations.
Despite all this, many B2B marketing organizations are seeing huge growth in the number of channels their business is demanding. And as the channels grow like weeds in a field, they become harder and harder to control, maintain and nurture.
In fact, channel proliferation might be overwhelming the good, customer-centric, buyer-controlled marketing you are trying to encourage. And that’s why, for many marketers, your social media marketing stinks!
Will Content Marketing Destroy Social Media?
There was a recent exchange on twitter where a prominent, intelligent and well-respected analyst predicted that content marketing will destroy social media.
I mean “Whoa!”…The power of content marketing!
The suggestion was that content marketing will result in the rapid erosion of the sacred trust we all have in the established media.
I certainly do not agree with these statements, but I do think this topic deserves a healthy dialogue and discussion…
Some of the relevant questions this raises for me include: what is the definition of content marketing? Where is the line between editorial and advertising? Is it blurring? Are marketers pushing the boundaries in pursuit of more leads or are publishers loosening their standards to collect more advertising dollars?
I’ll offer my point of view and share the opinions of a few colleagues of mine who are actively participating in this discussion.
But don’t let us hog the spotlight, chime in with your opinion in the comments below or on your social channel of choice…
Marketers, Managers and the Parable of the Monkey Tree
Sometimes it seems like marketers in the trenches, marketing leaders and our agency partners are all talking different languages. We’re not on the same page…
We should all be working toward the same goal of growing our businesses by meeting customer needs. But something gets in the way…
The problem, it seems, is that we see completely different challenges in the roles we play and are quick to point fingers to the other.
We’re certainly not on the same page, and recent research shows this disconnect. I’ll review the research and propose the parable of the monkey tree to explain the results.
