How to Become a Thought Leader in Any Industry

How to Do Your Own PR, Influencer marketing, madeline johnson, marketing plans, personal branding, Thought Leadership, video marketing, website design, Wordpress website

Sometimes I work with individuals who are interested in developing their own personal “brand”. They want to create what is currently called a “thought leadership” position on the internet and social media. This will develop opportunties to meet more clients, customers and well, maybe even new friends.

Often, these clients will have years and years of real-life experience and talent but little knowledge of how to bring that to the world wide web. They know it’s the smart thing to do, the next step in their career and a way to stay relevant, but they don’t know where to begin. It’s foreign territory and it feels uncomfortable.

What is a thought leader exactly?

Someone who demonstrates knowledge and authority on a specific subject that targets their potential customer or client.

“Thought leaders become the go-to people in their field of expertise. They are trusted sources who inspire people with innovative ideas”

For the past four months, I have been working with Dr. Adam Perlman, Co-founder of Synchronicity, a Charleston, South Carolina company developing next-generation wellbeing centers. He is also an adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University, and from 2011 to 2017 was the Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness for the Duke University Health System as well as Executive Director for Duke Integrative Medicine. He’s currently the Director of Duke’s Leadership Program in Integrative Healthcare.

We started with a meeting to brainstorm Adam’s core messages, what he felt the world needed most.

Once we nailed down his messages, I created a plan to develop three months (posting once a week on his WordPress blog) of video content. Why video?

Adam is good on video. If he wasn’t easy on the eye, knowledgable and relatable, I would have rethought this approach.
Videos are more impactful and consumers of social media content want more of it.

How to Develop Your Own Personal Brand

No matter where you work or what you do, you need to be continually developing your connections, influence, professional relationships and your network.

A personal/professional website and social media allow you to scale this process on a regional, national and worldwide level. As long as you are creating helpful and useful blog and video content with the proper organic SEO and hashtag strategy you will be assisting others in a very valuable way. At the same time, commenting and sharing your point of view with others in health and wellness or whatever field you are in you will develop an influential presence.

A website and social media functions similarly to a resume or a CV. This is also a place for your own personal portfolio. A platform for you to write, offer video sessions and also share books you have written and/or possibly consult and build other businesses in the future.
Most reporters, journalists and influencers will search for your name online, you want to control what they discover. They shouldn’t have to patchwork pieces of your CV from different websites or LinkedIn. Your website is a great introduction to you and your unique point of view. Most importantly, your own published content will help them write or produce stories that are more accurate and true to your point of view.
If you are pitching yourself as an expert to the media or collaborating with other influencers, most writers and producers want to know who is behind the brand. What the backstory is all about. How the idea evolved. A website and social media gives you the opportunity to highlight your experience and showcase your work and gives you some control over your image and reputation. It will help fill in the blanks for Synchronicity and give the wellness centers more credibility.
Your website online platform where you have the freedom to share your own opinion, this includes the inclusion of photos, work studies, and testimonials.

The website will also assist you in growing your likes, followers and engagement with those interested in your work, which will benefit you and your future projects.

Your own website & social media platforms give you the freedom to try other types of approaches to your community, now and in the future and express yourself the way you want to at any given time.
Your voice may convince and convert future clients and customers and become a vital part of lead generation for future members. It may be an article or video that you product that influences them to become interested in your business endeavors.

If you are stuck and don’t know where to begin, get in touch. You can email me at hello@mj.works or DM me @madelinemariejohnson on Instagram. I am here to help.

Marketing Your Business Blindly & Building it in a Bubble

Brand Awareness, brand management, Creative Marketing Campaigns, market research, Marketing in the Moment, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Trends, personalized brand experience, social media marketing, Uncatergorized

I am working on a video tutorial today on how to research and test before you build your business. It will also be useful if you are looking for ways to make it grow. I will be sure to share it on this blog once it’s posted. Market research is really important, yet most brands keep on fumbling along without it.

So many companies that I work with tend to build in a bubble. They forget to find out more about their customers, investigate the competition or look for trends on the horizon.

You need to know the lay of the land. You can’t promote just because everyone says “oh this really works”. You need a marketing map people. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing your business and you can’t build anything big in a bubble.

Image from SunCityCamp.com – recreating the Martian experience.

How to Really (I mean Really) Make Money on LinkedIn

Clients, Communications, Content management, digital content strategy, digital marketing, freelancing, LinkedIn

Now that many popular growth hackers and digital marketers have claimed 2017 as the year of Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn, the ridiculous amount of redundant “How to Win on LinkedIn” articles are filling up my Flipboard pages faster than I can read clickbait headlines.

As a former boutique marketing agency owner billing close to a million a year and now a seasoned, independent growth strategist consulting well-known and emerging health and wellness brands, I have spent most of my career cold calling and canvasing new business prospects.

Over 18 Years of Rising & Grinding

For much of my career, about half of my time was focused on business development and filling project pipelines. With an expensive office on Fifth Avenue, securing enough work to make payroll and staying on top of the agency’s overhead was one of my biggest daily concerns and simply accepted as the price of doing business. Hustling hard is how I found our clients.

In the most recent year and a half, some of the most helpful new tools I have found for finding new professional partners are platforms for pairing talent with businesses. Platforms like UpWork, Thumbtack, Freelancer, Clarity and Contently have taken the guess work out of where my next project and/or retained client is coming from. Yes, they all work a bit differently, most have you working for five star reviews and competing against non-native English speakers willing to work for extremely low wages and some attract a more reliable and respectable level of professionalism than others.

A Social Network becomes Your Net Worth

We all know that LinkedIn has become synonymous with business. That’s quite obvious. However, LinkedIn has now become my best kept secret for finding new projects and interesting work assignments. When I heard that LinkedIn was launching Profinder in beta, I was one of the first to apply. I was already a premium member, requesting reviews, building my network, making recommendations, joining groups and posting valuable content daily, so I knew that LinkedIn would offer a stellar option to finding new businesses to pitch my talent and skills. LinkedIn has also done a great job of building trust into their brand by staying true to their mission of networking professionals and so far my experience on LinkedIn Profinder has not disappointed.

The Work Just Pours into Your Pipeline

Because of its enormous amount of user data, LinkedIn is able to quickly connect freelancers like myself with strong leads based on their keyword searches and companies followed. Client requests come in and an email alerts me immediately. Profinder is a great option for expert professionals like myself in countless fields.

So far I have connected and began working with and on . .

an industry-recognized thought leader in digital strategy and former Chief Digital Officer of Omnicom’s Healthcare Consultancy Group, a $100 million agency group serving pharma, medical device, and healthcare clients. I am helping him write articles on the risks, threats and the future of online privacy and cybersecurity.

the premiere launch of the NYC office for a social video tech firm in sports & entertainment.

finance and investment writing assignments for a private wealth management firm based in Montclair, New Jersey.

How LinkedIn Profinder Works

Much much more than a social site, LinkedIn is a community of professionals – in a business mindset. In my humble opinion, LinkedIn should have launched Profinder years ago.

Their Profinder https://www.linkedin.com/profinder talent exchange seamlessly connects you to those who are looking for what you have to offer– leaving you more time to focus on the work you’ve already secured.

On boarding is a breeze and sharing your skills as simple as connecting your LinkedIn profile, which you probably already have as you use LinkedIn to highlight your professional career.

You can create key messages and choose the types of projects you want to work on by using key words. I specialize in marketing strategy, plans, social media marketing, user experience, video editing and copywriting.

Client requests and open projects that best match your profile and preferences are sent directly to you via email.

Right now Profinder is free to use. The only concern I do have is when and how much of the freelance action LinkedIn will decide to scoop up. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that their online workplace remains a benefit to joining LinkedIn’s premium subscription.

By the way, if we haven’t met already, let’s connect on LinkedIn. You can find me here.

Don’t Sell, Focus on Why they Buy

building brand trust, How to Do Your Own PR, marketing muscle, marketing rituals, press release writing, Sales Funnel Explained, Start up Success

So your marketing isn’t getting any traction. No retweets, likes, comments or love. You need more traffic to your shopping cart, eyeballs to your website.

The real reason you don’t have engagement, why your blog and social posts aren’t read is because your content is too self-serving.

Word of advice. If you want to succeed in growing your business, do not try to sell or market another thing. Every time you say or share something about your company that emphasizes the upside you will most likely get skeptical responses.

Sure, it is perfectly fine to list the benefits of your brand, but whatever content you are creating – whether it be a blog or Instagram post, your unbridled optimism about what your business can do for customers and clients comes across as salesmanship and it seems dishonest. As a consequence it is met with skepticism.

Everyone is allergic to the feeling of being sold something.

What you should focus on instead – why people buy.

Buying motives are a million times more powerful than selling skills.

Don’t sell your product. Instead think about why people buy products like yours.

Marketing – Educate, inspire and enlighten your audience instead.

Learn more at ThePRPlaybook.com

Secrets to Building a Fast Following on Instagram

instagram, social media, social media marketing, social media statistics, social monitoring experts, social networking, Social Relations Specialists

Here are a few great Instagram tips to help you build a following from Vincent Dignan, creator of Secret Sauce, a growth hackers guide.

Find the fans that love you most. They like everything you create. Follow them and start to follow all of their followers and use the hashtags that they are using. Congratulations you have just infiltrated their community, as they begin to tag their friends and followers on your posts.

2.How to use #hashtags

Don’t use the main stream hashtags, they are too popular and your posts will get lost. Instead, use smaller ranking hashtags that are more specific to your market. Use smaller hashtags that fewer people use, but those who do, absolutely love what you are posting about.

3. You will rank for a hashtag on Instagram if you get enough likes in the first 15 minutes. This is what you should always be anchoring towards.

So how do you get traffic from Instagram?

4. Overcome the problem of only viewing Instagram traffic as direct traffic on Google analytics. Direct fans to where you want them to go.

Set up a landing page on your website for Instagram to avoid visits showing up as direct traffic on google analytics.

5. Add a link to where you want them to go – the landing page you created and create an offer – an unbelievable offer on that page.

6. Find hashtags you can trend for, the way @Foundr magazine did and went from 0-110K followers in a month.

7. You can reply to your own Instagram post and add hashtags within 1st 10 mins of posting. This increases your chances of trending for a tag.

8. Two best ways to produce engagement on Instagram -Double tap if you agree and Tag someone who . . .

Follow me on Instagram here.

Two Smart Tips for Better Blogging

Blogging, branded content, Content management, Content strategy, Cool Branding

Watch this short video to learn two tips for creating more followers and engagement. Blogging and VLogging tips from The PR Playbook, your essential guide to growing your online brand.

1. 80% of your content will come from 20% of your posts or videos. Create more of what people what to read, watch and share.

2. Creating helpful resource articles out perform anything that you are trying to create to go “viral”.

If you find these tips helpful, please subscribe. If you need help with your personal brand or business, send me a tweet @marketcouncil or email me m.johnson@themarketcouncil.com