Ponderings from the Perch

Join Priscilla McKinney, CEO and Momma Bird at Little Bird Marketing as she chats with Tim Hughes, co-founder of Digital Leadership Associates and author of best-selling book, Social Selling - Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers. They discuss a new mindset for social selling and effective ways to get fast responses selling by using social. The transformation he offers is not just about Social Selling, but providing a complete new way of working for sales and marketing teams. He also elaborates on the difference between buyers and changemakers.

The book is relevant because of the reality that the digital landscape has changed buyers' habits. It is also increasingly difficult to reach them early enough in their decision-making processes. Additionally, developing relationships with decision makers through social networks has become a critical skill for the modern selling professional.

Tim discusses how he was getting tired about the narrative surrounding social in relation to lead generation and practical sales growth. Over time, he felt the discussion about social selling had gone backwards. Once the first excitement wore off for some people, they left social media without really understanding what a powerful tool it is when used correctly. He offers expertise around these pressing questions:

How do you increase your influence online?

How do you stop wasting time online?

How do you successfully build a community online?

How do you develop a system to use technology to your advantage and shorten the sales cycle?

How do you identify changemakers and deal with them successfully?

In this episode you not only get great advice about proper use of social media for business, but you'll discover where to get a proper drink in London as well. Suffice to say, they both recommend lunch at The Savoy.

You can hear Priscilla's thought before she left for London where she and Tim met on our episode called Priscilla Goes to London Town.

For a good time, follow Tim on Twitter. 

Join Priscilla McKinney, CEO and Momma Bird at Little Bird Marketing as she interviews Paul Connor of Emotive Analytics. Group. Together they consider the deeper human feelings behind our actions and how market research can handle measuring these emotional associations. This podcast is a great follow up to Priscilla Looks at Consumer Relationships with Brands, where Priscilla and Dan discussed these sometimes hidden forces which compel us toward or against a brand. In this episode, Paul reveals how marketers can measure for this qualitative reaction, quantitatively. 

A consumer researcher since 1982, Paul founded Emotive Analytics in 2004 after seeing that traditional consumer research was lacking a component to reveal WHY people do what they do. These deeply sub-conscious or even non-conscious emotional dynamics need to be understood to deliver the whole truth of insights about brands and their products or services. 

Paul used psychology and neuroscience to assess the role of emotions in our processing of preference, dislike and a myriad of other reactions as we make seconds in micro seconds. Emotive Analytics' proprietary DIY program, IEPro You, helps companies measure a variety of explicit and implicit responses to enhance market research efforts. 

Paul is a prolific blogger and has been published in Quirk's QRCA News, NMSBA's Insights, and Marketing News. He is a frequent speaker in the industry and will be speaking again at IlexNA, this year in Atlanta on June 13th. 

Join Priscilla McKinney, CEO and Momma Bird at Little Bird Marketing as she interviews Ahava Liebtag of Aha Media Group. They discuss Priscilla's favorite topic, the "stunning discomfort of entrepreneurship". The hard work and passion for great writing is still driving both of them to lead creative teams. 

In terms of content that responds to the current needs of clients, Ahava talks about how consumers are actually zigging and zagging throughout their thought their interactions with brands. Because of the multiple ways people interact with content, she underlines the importance of starting with the end in mind before ever writing a word. Her group builds the user experience using layers of multiple questions because consumers don't interact with content in a linear fashion. They laugh about the notion that people are rational and simply plan accordingly. 

Ahava shares her entrepreneurial story about how she started the now powerful Aha Media Group. This boutique content consultancy delivers marketing strategy and digital communications solutions including web writing and content development. 

Original theme music by the illustrious Leighton Cordell.

Join Priscilla McKinney, CEO and Momma Bird at Little Bird Marketing as she interviews Greg Shugar, serial entrepreneur and prolific writer. He, along with his wife Gina started Tie Bar in 2004 in true entrepreneurial fashion. They built the business from the ground up, starting alone in their basement with no employees. Over the next 9 years, they grew their brand and their business, employing 55 employees. Having sold the majority share to a private equity firm in 2013, Greg sheds a little light on his newest venture, Thread Experiment, the only brand in the world dedicated to the design of masculine bedding. 

They discuss what it truly means to disrupt the market and the opportunities that are out there when you develop the entrepreneurial mindset. Believe it or not, there was a day when going directly to e-commerce was just not done. They revisit his journey discussing the difference between obstacles in 2008 as opposed to the challenges we face now in 2017. He shares some of their best wins and most hard-won lessons. 

Be sure to connect with Greg on LinkedIn here and get wow'd with the masculine bedding options at Thread Experiment. 

He also shares his favorite apps just to make it more fun!

Original theme music by the illustrious Leighton Cordell.

Join Priscilla McKinney, CEO and Momma Bird at Little Bird Marketing as she talks with Author, global B2B Marketing Consultant and Keynote Speaker, Pam Didner. Pam is an expert creating global marketing strategies to guide a company's content marketing efforts and together they dig into the nitty gritty of effective content marketing for the Fortune 100 Senior Marketer. Most pressing in this world is the challenge of scaling content across not only multiple teams, but multiple languages and indeed, cultures. They discuss the real cost of content marketing (HINT: It's not free) and agree that measuring the effectiveness of content marketing is they only way to improve results and truly understand what is going on in the market.

Be sure to connect with her on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. You can also download her FREE course - How To Build A Global Content Marketing Team or check out her book, Global Content Marketing. 

Want more info about the special world of B2B Marketing? Check out her guest blog, "5 Tips for Better Content Marketing". 

Original theme music by the illustrious Leighton Cordell.

Join Priscilla McKinney, CEO and Momma Bird at Little Bird Marketing along with Dan Leadbetter as they discuss consumer relationships with brands. What brands do you love? What brands do you hate? What brands do you love to hate? Interestingly many people don't consider that their lives are full of actual relationships with brands. They are tied into our family stories, our values, our conversations, daily routines and holiday traditions. 

No matter how much you think about it, we do develop actual relationship with brands throughout our lives. Priscilla reaches back to an older article she considers foundational regarding brand relationships and consumer behavior. This article can be found here: http://bit.ly/consumerrelationships if you want to go deeper. 

Priscilla loves Roku. 

Dan loves Zildjian. 

Also, in this episode they do not explain jazz. If you don't get it on your own, there's really nothing they can do. 

Any chance you feel like doing your good deed for the day and giving a 5 star review of this show on iTunes? 

Original theme music by the illustrious Leighton Cordell.

Join Priscilla McKinney, CEO and Momma Bird at Little Bird Marketing as she talks with author, prolific writer and marketing guru, Mitch Joel. As the President of Mirum, a global digital marketing agency operating in close to 20 countries, he has earned the right to direct huge brands as they navigate digital marketing. He talks openly about how the marketing industry must come to grips with how consumers adopt quickly to technology while agencies and brands tend to lag behind. 

Since Mitch is a prolific speaker to the likes of LEGO, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Twitter, Oracle, Nestle, Procter and Gamble, Unilever and more, his ideas have been put to the test. He breaks down complex strategies by focusing on three points on his "bull’s-eye" approach. Listen in for more of his musings on the nuance between the art and science of marketing. 

More than anything, Mitch believes in his work as craft and labors under the conviction that he simply wants to create things that are deeply meaningful to him. He writes, and challenges us to live our own truth as it rings true to us regardless of how it is received. In that way, he prefers the more creative approach to the absolute embrace of formulaic success. 

Follow Mitch's blog and be sure to subscribe to his fantastic podcast, Six Pixels of Separation. 

Don't miss his books, Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete. 

Learn more at: www.mitchjoel.com.

Original theme music by the illustrious Leighton Cordell.

Join Priscilla McKinney, CEO and Momma Bird at Little Bird Marketing along with Dan Leadbetter as they celebrate her St. Patty's Day birthday. As they are fellow-holiday birthday peeps (Dan having debuted on New Year's Eve) they talk about the joys and perils of a holiday birthday. What they can't wrap their minds around is the reality of actual St. Patrick's Day Birthday cards for sale. Seriously, individualized cards celebrating your birthday falling on this holiday. Hmmmm....

To celebrate, Dan delivers another pop quiz in which Priscilla rants a bit about marketing pet peeves. Seeing as it is her birthday, and will be wearing a green wig all day, he lets her vent. Included in those questions are also some reflections on entrepreneurship and of course, her memory of the top three birthday presents she's ever received. 

They also wrap up highlights from her trip to London and she offers some travel and networking tips. 

Was this supposed to be a marketing podcast? You'd better complain to the authorities! But, if you loved it and were wondering what to get her for her birthday, **SPOILER ALERT** she'd like a 5 star review of this show on iTunes. 

Original theme music by the illustrious Leighton Cordell.

Join Priscilla McKinney, CEO and Momma Bird at Little Bird Marketing and her special guest, Stoney deGeyter of Pole Position Marketing. He is the author of the very definitively titled book, The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period! among others. Where others focus on search engine optimization (SEO) only for ranking results, his team goest beyond with a laser focus on total web presence optimiation for the sake of helping the visitor. 

Stoney elaborates on his process of writing his book. His journey of writing his own proprietary checklists for the work he did over the years. He uses his own book as a reminder to stay true to these fundamentals. Again, front and center to his advice and prolific blogging is his motivation to truly help his clients. 

Other books by Stoney deGeyter include:

SEO 101: Everything You Need to Know about SEO (But Were Afraid to Ask)

Keyword Research and Selection: The Definitive Guide to Gathering, Sorting, and Organizing Your Keywords into a High-Performance SEO Campaign

They also both enjoy Belgian waffles. This is true. 

Don't forget to give us a 5 star rating on iTunes and give us a suggestion with who could play Stoney in the movie about his life! 

Original theme music by the illustrious Leighton Cordell.

Join Priscilla McKinney, CEO and Momma Bird at Little Bird Marketing and Robin Barr, Chief Inspiration Officer at Unleash Your Brilliance in this episode. As a Life Coach Robin works with high performing executives who feel as if they are "dying at their desks". She addresses the true suffering many experience when they are out of alignment with their own values and are frustrated with their own inability to alter behaviors or outcomes they so strongly desire to change. 

They discuss the role of stress in modern life (especially how that shows up for entrepreneurs) and the different ways males and females tend to deal with this foundational issue. Along with our normal stress, she discusses how we layer habits of "checking out" on top by either living more in the past, or fixating on the future. Robin is passionate about helping people expand and integrate their emotions and stay present in order to create a life they truly love regardless of thes stress they feel. Together they debunk popular misconceptions about Life Coaching as an industry.  

Robin shares how she incorporates brain science to help stressed-out, hard-working professionals learn to live authentic, purpose-driven lives they love. This requires dismantling well-worn neuro pathways in your brain in order to reconfigure more positive ways of staying with and walking through our emotions. They explore how a Life Coach helps build capacity to stay with such difficult emotions. Robin offers a few simple techniques to incorporate into our every day lives, helping us bring our best self to work, to our families, and increase our own personal well being. 

Just know that Priscilla's business is definitely NOT a strong, muscular, winged pegasus (you'll have to listen in for that inside joke). She is still, however, building her capacity to walk through what she calls the "stunning discomfort of entrepreneurship."

Original theme music by the illustrious Leighton Cordell.