FIR Podcast Network

The eighth weekly Zoom conversation with FIR hosts and listeners covered a lot of ground, including a look at Phil Gomes’ collection of mugs featuring the logos of evil corporations from movies. Not to worry, there was lots of communication-focused conversation, too.

The last piece of an integrated PESO Model program, before you get to measurement, is authority—or thought leadership. If you implement a full PESO Model program, complete with the full foundational work of paid, earned, shared, and owned media working together, it will be inevitable that you’ll build authority for your organization and its executives. But you also have to create some of it on your own.

There isn’t a single piece of content out there about marketing that doesn’t extol the virtues of thought leadership. In fact, it’s so prevalent the phrase itself has become a word most marketers hate to hear.

Test it out. Tell a marketing friend that you want to be a thought leader and watch his or her eyes roll back into their head.

Even though most hate it, thought leadership is a very important part of a content strategy in today’s business world. But what does that mean? How can it be effective?

The Benefits of Thought Leadership

In an article written by Haydn Shaughnessy, “The Growth of Thought Leadership as a Marketing Strategy,” he describes it as essential as companies search for new markets, where they have no presence but see opportunity, and as they seek to defend their positions from competitors. He describes it as a strategic necessity in an era of “hyper-innovation,” social enterprise, and social media.

Thought leadership drives new directions. It pushes the economy forward. It makes the rest of us think, question, discuss, and purchase.

Thought leaders can develop organically. We’ve all known someone who is wildly creative, persistent, hard-working, and vocal. Who has been willing to take the time to study and work at her craft, to learn from his mistakes. Someone who has pushed past the fear of how it looks, how it should be done, and has produced magnificent results. Or controversy. Or both.

To some degree, thought leaders can be created. That’s what we talk about on today’s Spin Sucks podcast episode.

Links for Your Perusal

* PR Pros Must Embrace the PESO Model

* Moving From Thought Leadership to Thoughtful Leadership

* PESO Model Certification

* Thought Leadership Resources

* Spin Sucks Community

For marketers, it’s difficult to plan with so much uncertainty, leaving them to wonder how they should go about their marketing strategy during this pandemic.

In this episode of AMP Up Your Digital Marketing, Glenn Gaudet speaks with George Jacob, Vice President at Marketri, a B2B strategic marketing consultant. They discuss the challenges organizations face during the coronavirus pandemic, and how they approach their marketing strategy. You’ll learn:

* How organizations should try to pivot.

* Why they should focus on what they do well.

* How to prioritize your plans during the pandemic.

During the time of coronavirus, everyone needs to adjust, and that is a struggle for many organizations. For marketers, how do you adjust your marketing strategy, and what’s the right direction to go? Where do you start?

Jacob explains why you should focus on the basics of what you do well.

How to Begin to Pivot Marketing Strategy

Executives might have a tough time adjusting to new business models in a short period of time, switching up their internal processes, and totally pushing towards a different marketing strategy from what they were doing before.

In these instances, Jacob meets with clients and gets down to the basics. He goes over the SWOT exercise where he has clients nail down the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the organization.

“What are we working with?” Jacob said. “In a time when you need to make a quick decision, it’s always a good idea to have a knowledge of what you have at your disposal to make that pivot.”

During the time of the pandemic, the idea is not to completely transform your entire organization and business model from top to bottom. That is not realistic. The idea is to slightly pivot, so you can operate and function during these unique times, and eventually, there will be some return to normalcy.

What Does a Pivot Look Like?

By “pivot” we’re referring to adjusting your marketing strategy. But for many organizations, this pandemic requires adjusting the way they operate.

For example, a financial services company can still be helpful to their clients, but they just can’t meet in person like they may have done before. However, there are some services that have to meet in person, so there is no way around it.

“In some cases, it’s about changing your messaging and going after a secondary market,” Jacob said. “In some cases, it’s about investing in marketing operations and technologies that you’ve been putting off. Get that operational effectiveness down, so when we’re through the pandemic we can hit the ground running.”

How to Plan Your Marketing Strategy

There is a ton of uncertainty right now, so how do you plan for the future? No one knows when this pandemic will fully lift and when we’ll start to see a return to normalcy.

Because of that, you can’t plan a long-term roadmap of what you want to accomplish this year, what goals you want to hit, and when you want to accomplish them by. Instead, you have to plan for the short-term in hopes that the pandemic will eventually lift.

For example, many organizations were hit hard by the cancellations of conferences this spring and summer. They are hoping that these conferences will still take place later this year, but we don’t know that will happen for sure. Even if the conferences do take place, we don’t know if nearly as many people will show up.

So how do you plan for these big uncertainties?

The seventh weekly Zoom Chat featuring listeners and FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz. Sorry; we neglected the begin recording until about 20 minutes into the 60-minute conversation.

We talk today with Dee Anna McPherson, the CMO at Invoca, an AI call tracking and conversational analytics vendor. That is a mouthful and one of the things she is doing is trying to define and own a new product category. That could be a daunting prospect, except she has done this before when she worked at Yammer (before they were engulfed by Microsoft) and then at Hootsuite. When Yammer began, no one had heard about microblogging, as it was called then. McPherson managed to define “enterprise social networking” as Yammer’s category and the company was off to the races from there. With working from home now the norm, that kind of technology has become the de factor standard for communications among remote team members. 

Paul wrote about Invoca last year for Silicon Angle on how they use machine learning to transcribe and classify calls.

McPherson tell us about the importance of customer communication in building strong customer advocacy programs. You need to figure out a way to tell their stories without using the words “customer case study” or “reference account.” Customers really do want to help as long as they aren’t seen as shilling, she believe.  This is a topic we’ve touched on before, such as FIR B2B #118’s discussion about how customers should be your best advocates as well as our written work on social media marketing. We close out the podcast talking about how things have changed for marketers in the pandemic, how customer supply chains are evolving and how marketers can benefit from this transition.

 

 

One hundred episodes ago, we launched the Spin Sucks podcast with trepidation, anxiety, and a sense of adding just one more thing to the weekly task list.

Today, while not exactly the easiest task for me to complete each week, it’s one of the most effective. And that’s because of you, dear listener. You show up week after week after week. You listen while you walk the dog or clean the house or soak in the tub or lock yourself in the bathroom to escape the insanity that is a global pandemic. Or maybe that last one is just me.

It’s been quite a ride—from a whopping 53 downloads per episode to more than a thousand today. We’ve had quite the journey together and I thought it’d be fun to celebrate 100 episodes by taking a walk down memory lane.

As I thought about how to celebrate this journey with you, I asked my buddy Chris Penn what he thought. I also tried to get him to produce this episode, to no avail. But if you know Chris, you know his advice was to look at the data. Big surprise! So I did. And of the top 10 episodes, six are about the PESO Model. You love it, which makes me very happy (because I do, too). 

In this celebratory episode, we go through the top 10 episodes of the last 100—according to you.

And, if you missed any of the most popular episodes, the links are below!

Spin Sucks Podcast Show Links

* Reworking Earned Media

* How to Do Your Own Professional Development

* A Podcast About Podcasts

* Why Communicators Struggle To Implement the PESO Model

* The Newly Refreshed PESO Model Graphic and Process

The Do’s and Don’ts of Holiday-Themed Content Campaigns

Are You Out of Your Mind, Ernst and Young?

Star Wars, the PESO Model, and a Challenge for You

How to Prepare For a Down Economy 

Who Can Use The PESO Model?

* The PESO Model Certification with Syracuse University

Different brands are using their email marketing strategy in different ways during this pandemic, but it’s important to contextualize your messaging and be empathetic.

In this episode of AMP Up Your Digital Marketing, Glenn Gaudet speaks with Tracy Sestili, Global Head of Marketing at SparkPost, an email intelligence software company. They discuss the different ways organizations make use of their email marketing strategy during the coronavirus pandemic, and how you can optimize your email marketing strategy on both the back-and-frontend. You’ll learn:

* Why you should be empathetic and contextualize your messaging.

* The importance of segmentation and good list hygiene.

* What metrics to look at, and how to optimize your email marketing strategy both during and beyond this pandemic.

During the time of the coronavirus pandemic, emails are spiking. Brands are sending out emails more frequently and people are reading them more often. Is it because brands send the right messages at the right time? Or is it because people are home and glued to their devices?

You may have noticed that some organizations are sending emails around the coronavirus quite frequently, while others are sending out emails that are less about what’s going on in the world as a purposeful way to give you a small distraction.

There are some really great email campaigns going on right now, and what they have in common is they’re contextual and empathetic. That is what you should strive for with your email marketing strategy.

“You want to make sure the context of your message fits the current situation,” Sestili said. “We can all learn from this experience that we are going through right now. It has to be contextual, and I think if you can do that, then you’ll have success.”

Building Brand Affinity During Coronavirus

People are getting peppered with coronavirus content these days. Whether it’s on TV, on social media, the radio, or anywhere else, people can’t escape the COVID-19 talk.

Now, all this talk of the pandemic is certainly warranted because it’s leaving its mark on all of us at all times. You’re probably reading this at home right now because of it. But people need a break.

What you need to do is either give them an escape or offer a way to solve their problems. You should not give a sales pitch. This is an opportunity for you to use the right messaging, and deliver the right content that your target audience will appreciate in the long run.

“Now, in this time period, people are looking to brands for information,” Sestili said. “It’s a great time to build brand affinity and brand trust with your end-user. If you’re sending them content they find useful, they’ll remember that. They’ll remember your brand in the long run.”

Organizations need to be mindful of if they’re sending the same type of message too much or if they’re emailing people too much in general. But Sestili pointed out that if your service is helpful to people, your emails might be as well.

“Maybe getting your inspirational yoga email is valuable in this environment,” she said. “How can you be empathetic and helpful and give value of some sort without shoving your product down people’s throats? It’s a really fine line, honestly.”

Source: Hot Yoga Bowling Green

What Metrics You Should Look At

[Today’s episode: 7 minutes]

Can you hear them now?

For a solid eight weeks, we’ve been working with managers on how best to communicate with their teams remotely during the COVID-19 crisis. This week—at your request—we turn that question on its head: How can leadership teams make sure they’re really hearing from staff and directing feedback effectively?

In today’s episode, we talk through our best strategies for expanding listening channels to make space for all this new traffic and keep it moving in the right directions. From surveys and focus groups to informal listening sessions, we cover approaches to soliciting feedback ― and offer you ideas on how to execute.

Give it a listen, and then let us know what questions are keeping you up at night. We’re listening.

 

The sixth weekly Zoom Chat featuring listeners and FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz.

Become a high-growth individual and build high-growth teams through personal disruption. This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert Whitney Johnson (http://www.linkedin.com/in/whitneyjohnson), the CEO of boutique consultancy WLJ Advisors and one of the 50 leading business thinkers in the world, as named by Thinkers50.

Whitney is an award-winning author, world-class keynote speaker, frequent lecturer for Harvard Business School’s Corporate Learning, and an executive coach and advisor to CEOs. An innovation and disruption theorist, she is the author of the bestselling “Build an ‘A’ Team: Play to Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve,” and the critically-acclaimed “Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work.” In these books, she codifies her frameworks for developing high-growth individuals and organizations: the “Personal Disruption” and the “S Curve of Learning” frameworks.

If you want to grow but don’t know what growth looks like, reach out to Whitney Johnson by visiting her website, https://whitneyjohnson.com, and going to http://www.linkedin.com/in/whitneyjohnson.

Here are a couple of AHA messages from this episode:

* People who want to grow but don’t know what #Growth looks like should reach out to Whitney Johnson. https://whitneyjohnson.com @JohnsonWhitney

* Our basic premise is that the fundamental unit of #Growth in any org is the individual. I can help your people learn personal disruption and calibrate for that growth. https://whitneyjohnson.com @JohnsonWhitney

* Do you know what #Growth looks like? You start from the bottom, you get into the groove and climb to the top, and then you jump when you’ve peaked. I can teach you this “S Curve of Learning” framework. https://whitneyjohnson.com @JohnsonWhitney

* My life is all about personal disruption and disruptive innovation. I wrote 2 books: “Disrupt Yourself” and “Build an ‘A’ Team.” This gives me the credibility to help you disrupt yourself and achieve rapid #Growth. http://www.linkedin.com/in/whitneyjohnson

* People have this deep desire to #Grow. Personal disruption is the mechanism by which you become a high-growth individual and therefore, are able to develop a high-growth structure. https://whitneyjohnson.com @JohnsonWhitney

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, visit: https://thoughtleaderlife.com/.