The activity level test is simple: how "busy" is the thought leader? The more they are creating new intellectual property (books, blogs, podcasts, research, etc.), speaking at events, and engaged in conversations on social media, the higher they rank on this dimension. Sadly, one of the things that would-be thought [More]
Your title is an important signal to the marketplace. It describes your responsibilities as well as your scope of authority. But what is the connection to thought leadership? Unless the title is directly tied to your expertise ("Chief Science Officer", for example), there is absolutely no connection to thought leadership, [More]
This question is too often buried under vendors' promises of nirvana if only a new piece of software was installed. Or buried under consultants' promises of better efficiency or higher ROI. Instead, before the actual transformation exercise is even defined, this fundamental question must be answered: Where is the opportunity? [More]
While this is a perhaps too-basic question, and one that is clearly a set-up, there is one area of branding that is too often overlooked: human nature. On a recent cross-country road trip, I had the opportunity to stop in many small towns. And as I did, I felt I [More]
Iron Age: While historians will point out that there were in fact "many" ages (Stone age, Bronze age, Iron age) before, but broadly, this is when society learned to craft (and to use) tools and objects made from Stone, Bronze, and Iron. It changed how people lived their lives in [More]
Personas are usually built to understand the details (and motivations) of a particular segment. Experienced marketers know the typical persona questions: Who are they -- demographically and psychographically? What service or product features are important to them? What challenges do they have? Where are they located? How do we reach [More]
The profusion of systems has led to a bumper crop of data. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and all of the other social media sites track the beginning of the journey, while marketing automation tracks the latter part of it. CRM systems track prospect and client activity, while ERP systems track [More]
One only needs to look at the sorry plight of the newspaper business to see that the future doesn't look rosy. The world has changed. Or have we so bought into the inevitability of technology that it has blinded us to what we are giving up? And have we left many [More]
Here are 20 ways... Social Media Write a blog post about it, but tie the news to the reader: answer the question "so what"? Create a mini-video (60-90 seconds), possibly including it within the blog, but also post it on YouTube. Update your LinkedIn Company page. Update your LinkedIn Status. Publish a [More]
Recently I had a stark reminder, in the most unlikely of places, that this is absolutely not the case. For several hours, I spent sorting food at the local food bank. Instead of going through the front, where patrons were able to pick up their food, I went through the back, [More]
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