Tag Archives: engage

Do You Have An Audience Or An Influence?

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So the list of Twit­ter fol­low­ers, LinkedIn con­nec­tions, Face­book ‘likes’ are grow­ing health­ily, but does this mean any­thing at all?

Is this merely build­ing an audi­ence to inter­act with, or is it much stronger to have an influ­ence within your audi­ence?

By using the word influ­ence, I’m not talk­ing via a com­puter decid­ing how enga­ging you are (take a bow Klout, Twit­ter Grader, Twita­lyzer and other meas­ur­ing tools), but how other people see you as reput­able and will­ing to spread the gos­pel accord­ing to YOU. Hav­ing a large num­ber of fol­low­ers provides an audi­ence, but it doesn’t neces­sar­ily make you influential.

The thing is, it doesn’t mat­ter how many fol­low­ers you have, or Face­book ‘likes,’ (boy I hate that word) or LinkedIn con­nec­tions, what mat­ters is that those you are address­ing are listen­ing to you and will­ing to inter­act and par­ti­cip­ate. This then helps build your influ­ence and then cre­ate advocacy within your com­munity.

Here are nine defin­ing traits for someone who has the ‘influ­en­tial gene’:

  1. Express them­selves in a way that people will under­stand and invite inter­ac­tion with. People need to adopt your inten­tions and it needs to be as clear as pos­sible.
  2. Stand up for some­thing that is dif­fer­ent. If you are the same as every­one else, you merely blend into the crowd.
  3. Tar­get the right audi­ence, by being seen as provid­ing a clear solu­tion to their prob­lem. Is it to make their lives bet­ter? Is it to make them more prof­it­able? Is it to give peace of mind? Is it to make them leaders?
  4. Your audi­ence begin to regard you as being dif­fer­ent from other altern­at­ives on offer and in turn, inher­ently better.
  5. Your audi­ence can clearly see that your inten­tions are to solve prob­lems, and not purely the ‘sell.’
  6. You have an opin­ion that has clar­ity. It doesn’t have to be con­tro­ver­sial for the sake of it, but to stand up for what you believe in.
  7. You encour­age a flow of con­ver­sa­tion and take a respons­ib­il­ity to listen and then interact.
  8. Your audi­ence sees you as someone who is approach­able, has per­son­al­ity, and most import­antly is human.
  9. Your audi­ence under­stand that you have a pas­sion for your industry and regarded as an expert in your field.

Those who build influ­ence, win. The whole world begins to be trans­formed, Twit­ter becomes more like a club and Face­book is seen as a mem­bers only priv­ilege. Your advoc­ates stay with you and to help, har­ness and grow.

Cre­at­ing authen­ti­city, pas­sion and build­ing an influ­ence is one of the most power­ful tools to build sup­port and success.

Image cour­tesy of sjaustin (Flickr)

How To Be A Thought Leader

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To be seen as the ‘go to’ per­son for your industry, you build cred­ib­il­ity as the thought leader, but how do you earn this grand status?

If you can por­tray a mes­sage to your mar­ket­place with a level of author­ity, where you inform, inter­act and advise this helps to por­tray a per­cep­tion in the minds of the receiver and the long term goal of becom­ing the mar­ket leader.

Here is the magic formula:

Level of trust + cap­ab­il­ity to ful­fill what you say = com­munity accept­ance and advocacy

When a mar­ket­place trusts an organ­isa­tion and is sup­por­ted by an ongo­ing dia­logue as high­lighted in other posts (such as reg­u­lar news­let­ters and tar­geted dir­ect mar­ket­ing), this helps to define your place within your area of expertise.

Only today, has the inform­a­tion about the iPhone 5 star­ted to build momentum for an autumn release. This show­cases the power of Apple, in terms of when any inform­a­tion is leaked about a product, we all sit up and listen.

To be the thought leader, you bring all your com­mu­nic­a­tion tools together to spread your mes­sage in a vari­ety of ways, namely the use of blogs to get your view across, the social media chan­nels to tease and invite, the rela­tion­ships with the press to inform (not self con­grat­u­late), to lov­ing your imme­di­ate customers/​community by treat­ing as the VIPs with a small num­ber of prin­ted reg­u­lar newsletters/​magazines (not a ‘down­load­able pdf’ or page on Mailchimp).

The suc­cess to being a thought leader is to cut a cake in half. The first half is to have a multi chan­nel approach and the second half is when you engage with your audi­ence, it is a two way com­mu­nic­a­tion where added value is key. What this leaves is a cake that people will go for time and time again, no mat­ter how much icing is on the others.

Do you brand or market?

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There are mis­con­cep­tions when it comes to brand­ing. Busi­nesses tend to men­tion brand­ing with mar­ket­ing and advert­ising in the same breath, this is just not the case. This is what you need to know.

A brand is an over­all image of a product/​service that con­sumers are able to con­nect, make an emo­tional attach­ment and inter­pret. This is through identi­fy­ing with a name, logo, strap-​line and style of a visual appearance.

The reason why brand­ing is dif­fer­ent from other com­mu­nic­a­tion meth­ods is because mar­ket­ing focuses on a mes­sage and keep­ing con­sumers con­nec­ted, whereas the brand itself is the image and per­cep­tion which must stand alone in order to be effect­ive, cred­ible and noticed along­side your competition.

An import­ant thing to remem­ber is that brand­ing can only be effect­ive and suc­cess­ful if it is executed cor­rectly and con­sist­ently. Think about your logo and what it rep­res­ents (as it high­lights everything you stand for). Be clear of what val­ues your com­pany and brand iden­ti­fies within its mes­sages. Above all else, cre­ate a per­sonal con­nec­tion through your brand for cus­tom­ers to engage with.