Mediaboss Marketing

Believe it or not, you already have a personal brand. The question is, are you leveraging your personal brand to monetize your expertise or accelerate your success?

Personal branding is the process of marketing yourself, and your career or business, in order to attract relevant opportunities. Marketing, in this context, means getting people to know, like and trust you, so that they'll eventually want to work with you or buy from you.

Content marketing,on the other hand, is the strategic process of creating and distributing content to attract a targeted audience. And on LinkedIn, your content strategy has a huge role to play in successfully building your personal brand.

So what does this mean for you?

With your expertise, and your drive to create relevant, useful and engaging content, you'll be on your way to building a powerful personal brand that'll give you "permission" to monetize your expertise using LinkedIn features.

In this post, we'll look at seven content marketing strategies and tips that'll help you boost your personal brand on LinkedIn.

Let's get started.

The thing that will differentiate you from everyone else on LinkedIn is providing super-valuable content, that people simply cannot resist.

Im talking about providing learning and networking opportunities that are relevant and useful to your network,that people will be willing to spend 10 or 30 minutes -or even an hour or more - consuming your content or joining your event.

Now, you can easily host LinkedIn Live if you have access to it, or maybe organize free webinars that offer value to your target audience. You can also leverage LinkedIn Event Pages to promote your events, and get people to register.

For example, in February, I hosted a LinkedIn Local Philippines - 2nd Virtual Panel Discussion through VB Consulting and invited speakers to share their insights with the audience.

And in January, I launched a free on-demand video series to help those who would like to use LinkedIn to land a job during the pandemic.

Here are some examples of highly valuable content that you could give away to or share with your LinkedIn network:

Instead of simply sharing any existing content that you've created for your general audience, try creating exclusive content for your LinkedIn network. After all, if you've been highly strategic in building your professional network on LinkedIn, they will mostly be your target market.

Industry influencers are influencers for a reason: People follow them.

Building relationships with influencers and mentioning them in your posts can help boost your visibility on LinkedIn - here are some examples:

Peter Brace mentions Amy Edmondson and Timothy Clark, among the pioneers in the field of psychological safety

Raymond Domingo mentions Robina Gokongwei-Pe, a highly reputable entrepreneur and President/CEO of one of the largest multi-format retailers in the Philippines

Anda Goseco mentions Marcia Reynolds, an Executive and Leadership Coach based in the US

Peter, Raymond and Anda didnt really talk about themselves in their posts; instead, they talked about the influencers they mentioned.

So what can we learn from these posts? If youre making this type of post, remember to make it about them,the influencers,not about you.

While expanding your reach on LinkedIn by mentioning influencers who engage with your post is a good strategy, another strategy that works is the opposite -this time, if you already have a huge network, why not leverage your network to help others build their LinkedIn presence?

This is a win-win strategy. You win because you expand your reach to other peoples networks, and they win because they also become visible to your network. It also helps you build a strong community on the platform.

I've been using this strategy in one of the longest-running initiatives that I started in 2018 -the Top 100 Filipinos to Follow on LinkedIn for Inspiration and Learning.

This is not just about recognizing people who are actively sharing content on LinkedIn, but also about encouraging more people who are new to the platform to become more active on LinkedIn.

When youre on LinkedIn, being aware of, and sensitive to what is happening in your community is important.

This proved to be a super valuable tip when the pandemic began in 2020.At that time, people were losing their jobs, employees were forced to work from home unprepared, companies were turning to their business continuity plans, and the general public was forced to stay home.

Here in the Philippines, the first lockdown was declared on the 2nd week of March in 2020. With this context in mind, you cant be posting content as if everything was business as usual - you need to revise your content plan to ensure you remain useful and relevant.

And during these challenging times, showing empathy in an authentic post can go a long way.

In this post below, Edward Musiak, an Australian who lives in the Philippines, posted about his experience during the early lockdown period in Manila.

Although Edward usually posts about sales and mental health, which are his expertise and advocacy, this post was unusual,but because he felt the need to share his insights about what he had been experiencing, as well as what he had seen others doing as a result of the lockdown in Manila, he posted about it.

As you can see, this more personal, insightful, empathetic update gained huge traction on LinkedIn.

Talking about our successes is easy, but bringing up failure is hard. And what Ive learned on LinkedIn is that if you truly want to build a personal brand that will resonate with people, and that will get people to want to know more about you, to like you for who you are and to trust you for showing up, then you have to embrace vulnerability.

Being vulnerable means giving yourself permission to be yourself, and showing up when you have to.Being vulnerable also means showing up to your network as a relatable person who is not perfect, not all-knowing, and not worried about being judged by others.

Vulnerability builds connection, and connection builds trust. That trust is the one thing you need to create more opportunities for yourself and for others.

One of my most valuable posts of all time,in terms of the number of leads generated by a single post,remains to be this post where I shared how I was rejected by LinkedIn in 2015 when I applied at LinkedIn Singapore:

When was the last time you shared your story on LinkedIn?

One of things I've learned through the years is that people on LinkedIn either know what they want to achieve through the platform, or they dont know at all what they want to achieve.

Although it may seem like the ones who know what they want to achieve would be more successful on LinkedIn, I've learned that this is not always the case.

Many times, those whose top goal is to generate leads for their businesses are too focused on the goal of selling so they end up operating with a wrong mindset, thinking about what they can get in terms of immediate leads or sales.

But LinkedIn is not a place where people want to hear sales pitches all the time -LinkedIn is a place where people engage with other people who provide valuable content, and whose stories resonate with them.

And guess what -the more you share who you are, the more people gravitate towards you.And that means more opportunities for you to start conversations, and build meaningful business relationships.

In this post below, Peter openly shares a part of who he is that makes him different -a lifelong learner who entered university in his 50s, and finished his Ph. D. in his 60s:

What most people dont realize is this - knowing and being yourself is a free, tried-and-tested way to increase your reach and attract like-minded people on LinkedIn.

Peter wasnt sure at first if this post was "appropriate" on LinkedIn, but posting it anyway led him to the answer:

Being who you are, and sharing what makes you different, indeed, can have a place on LinkedIn.

7.Reshare your top-performing posts

Your top-performing posts performed well for a reason. Maybe they resonate well with your audience, or perhaps you posted it at the right time, when your network needed to read it the most.

Reposting your top-performing posts will not only ensure you get a lot of views and reactions (again), but it can also help you capture a whole new audience. Don't just post and forget, keep a record of your top-performing posts, and when the timing is right, go ahead and repost them.

In my case, I repost my top-performing content at least after 3-6 months. And they work like magic each time.

Below is an all-text post I shared in March 2020. This post reached over 97,500 people, and garnered almost 2,000 reactions and 81 comments.

The same post at the time was trending in #personalbranding:

I shared this post again this year. Here's the same post I just reshared three days ago (March 19, 2021):

And according to LinkedIn, this post garnered Top 1% engagement on the platform:

By creating content that resonates with, and engages your target audience, you can attract the right people that you would like to do business with. But of course, it takes a lot of time and patience, as well as a willingness to strategically curate and create content that adds value to your network and permits yourself to be authentic.

Try using these seven tips to take your LinkedIn presence to the next level.

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7 Posting Tips to Help Boost Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn - Social Media Today

Social media remains a double edged sword and needs skillful wielding.

By Piyali Chatterjee (Konar)

Traditionally, the role of marketing has always been about defining and introducing the brand to the customer. Today, customers are self-empowered, have unlimited access coupled with information, and are more discerning. Customers are no longer relying solely on advertising of the brand; in turn marketers are required to increase their capacity from just defining and managing the brand to also focusing on strengthening the customer-brand relationship.

It has become vital for marketers to not just understand the business, but to also understand how brand value can be delivered via customer experience. This shift has led to customer experience (CX) becoming critical to the ultimate success of an organisations marketing strategy. The pandemic has certainly changed the Customer Experience (CX) landscape. The change in CX is reflecting in what customers value, how they want to interact with the brand, and what they expect as benefits for their loyalty.

Marketers today are embracing technologies such as AI, ML, Robotics, Algorithms, etc. to ensure a superior customer experience. These tools allow brands to;

Gather and analyse social, historical, and behavioral data about customers to gain a better understanding of the customers Offer better customer service Commence digitally customer self-service tools Eliminate some of the pain points in the customer journey.

Driving Personalisation with Intent:

Brands ahead of the CX curve are driving personalisation with the intent to provide greater value to customers in terms of time savings, effort, and a better product-service fit. When there is intent, the personalisation drives customer loyalty and retention. The 2021 NPS DIGIPAY study conducted by Hansa Research puts Amazon Pay as the leader as far as Net Promoter Score (NPS) is concerned along with MobiKwik and ICICI Pockets. Market leaders like Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay score much lower. Net Promoter Score is a trusted customer loyalty metric used by brands to measure the health of customer relationships. Amazon Pay has all the components such as easy gauging of instructions for usage, ensuring the drive of personalisation with the intent of ensuring quick and seamless transaction. The fact that the user already has established trust in the Amazon brand having used it all these years helps Amazon Pay in making inroads into creating the right CX for the customer thus boosting its NPS.

Measuring and Managing Social CX:

Social media is no longer a place just to send out information. It is emerging as a highly interactive channel between the brand and its customers. It is key to driving customer experience on the brands social media platforms through consistency, responsiveness, and transparency. Marketers need to recognise that Social media is now a valuable customer support channel and also a vital listening tool for insights. Mobikwik in recent times has faced backlash because of a rumored charge on dormant accounts being levied on its platform. Mobikwik was quick to take stock of the situation and put in corrective measures to reach out to irate customers who wanted to disengage from the platform.

Social media remains a double edged sword and needs skillful wielding. It can however play a pivotal role in enhancing the CX of a brand manifold if used well.

Include Focus on Empathy and Personal Safety to remain relevant and connected to the customer:

The new normal warrants, brands focus on being more empathetic to customer needs. This pandemic has resulted in organisations demonstrating generosity by having flexible processes, listening to customers better to resonate with them at an emotional level. Personal safety is another critical element and is now a basic expectation in the minds of the customer e.g. mobile and contactless pickup or check-in options and it is here to stay. The sudden explosion of digital payments across the country has been massively aided by the need to go contactless. QR codes at every vendor including the bhel puri wala and the kirana store has helped digital payments gain massive traction. This is in turn has helped the local vendor showcase empathy towards his customers need to stay safe during the pandemic and also helped the CX of the digital payment brand that facilitates quick and seamless exchange of money.

Keeping Human Customer Support accessible, while digitising:

While self-service tools have huge advantages in terms of costs to organisations, the human touch is still very essential in helping build trust in the mind of the customer. The value of being able to connect with a person when there is a concern or a special situation should not be undermined. Marketers need to create frictionless paths to contact their human support team. Inability to do so could lead to customers defecting in the long term. Tata Sky, a popular DTH brand of Tata is known for its great customer support. The customer service person from Tata Sky always makes sure to address all queries and assist the customer in making sure that the service runs without any hindrance. This in turn means that Tata Sky would still score high on CX and also retain the customers trust. This helps the brand in keeping a customer base that is currently disrupted by the rise of OTT platforms.

Surprise customers to delight:

Today, engaging customers is one of the challenges being faced by all brands. One great way of engaging customers is through the element of surprise. This can be a single big surprise or a steady stream of small surprises that build over time. It can be used successfully to make customers start generating positive word of mouth;After the last test in the Australia vs India test series and post Indias nail biting win in the last test at The Gabba Zomato did a spot promotion using its social media platforms to celebrate the same. Coupon codes like PANT and THE GABBA were promoted which afforded the customers to get sizable discounts on their orders that evening. Zomato was thus able to be topic relevant, showcased how cool it was and scored big points on CX by getting a cricket mad nation to flood its platform with orders to celebrate the win. This was a great example of how customers can be pleasantly surprised into using a product and generating great CX.

The author is SVP of Hansa Research (CX Vertical). Views expressed are personal.

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Trends in marketing that drive customer experience - The Financial Express

If you're running TikTok ads, or you're thinking of launching a TikTok ad campaign, this could be hugely valuable.

TikTok has launched a new Ad Library tool, currently called 'Top Ads', which enables you to search for the best performing TikTok ad campaigns, by vertical and region, in order to get inspiration from their approach.

As you can see here, the platform provides a range of search filters to navigate through the ad listings, including 'Ad Type', 'Region'and 'Industry'.

You can then further filter your displayed results by time (last 7 days or last 30 days) and by performance (CTR, Impressions, 6 second video view rate), honing in on the most relevant examples for your business.

From there, you can tap into any of the listed ad examples to get more info on that specific promotion.

I will say that the platform doesn't seem to be complete as yet, with some categories having no examples, and some of the examples also looking like placeholders.

TikTok additionally notes that the ads displayed in the library are limited to those which have been authorized by advertisers "and may not reflect all the actual top-performing ads". So it doesn't seem overly comprehensive as yet -but still, there are some interesting, and valuable examples, and if TikTok continues to build out the platform, it could be a great resource for TikTok marketers.

In addition to this, there are also separate tabs for 'Popular trends', which highlights the latest trending themes in the app, and 'Showcases', which provides a range of ad case studies to check out.

Again, it seems a little unfinished, but there are already some good examples to check out here, and the capacity to filter your results by region and industry is great for getting ideas on exactly how each sector is using the platform for promotions.

You can check out the TikTok Top Ads library here.

Read more:
TikTok Launches New Ads Library, Enabling You to Find the Best Performing Ads in a Range of Categories - Social Media Today

Should you be considering where Clubhouse might fit into your social media marketing efforts?

The trending social app of the moment, Clubhouse has seen massive growth in recent months, even with its conservative, invite-only approach. The serendipitous connection of real-time audio provides another means to stay in touch during the pandemic, when many people are lacking those regular social cues, which could position the app to become a more relied upon engagement tool moving forward.

That is, of course, unless the larger players, like Twitter,end up stealing its audience away.

Right now, it's too early to predict what the future holds for Clubhouse, or indeed, audio social more broadly, but it is interesting to consider the implications, and where the app might be of value as a marketing and brand communication channel.

To provide some perspective on this, the team from Branex recently put together this overview of the Clubhouse opportunity for brands, along with a range of other usage stats.

Read more:
Everything Brands Need to Know About Clubhouse [Infographic] - Social Media Today

The latest edition of the Chartered Institute of Marketings magazine Catalyst has a number of articles related to creativity especially involving brand, image and advertising and the overall marketing spend. However, the purpose of every business is to make money, for the benefit of the owners, the workforce and the long term future of the business. Brand, image and advertising are contributors to producing income, but they do not in themselves make money, but only spend it.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) defines Marketing as the management process that identifies anticipates and satisfies customer requirements profitably Thus marketing is a management process and the responsibility of the commercial manager. Whether a business is large or small, its long term future will depend on the amount of income it makes and the amount of profit it retains. It is the commercial managers who have the responsibility for producing profitable income for the long-term future of the business by anticipating and satisfying customer requirements.

Sales are made when the product or service package presented to the potential customer solves the customers problem at a price they are prepared to pay. The product or service package will include not only the benefits of the product or service, but also its delivery and the manner of payment and subsequent service. Advertising, promotion, customer relationship management (CRM), are all important, but Selling is arguably its most important aspect, as it is the main interface with the customer and is directly responsible for generating the revenue on which the business depends. All marketing activities are inter-dependant and collectively contribute to support sales success. Making profitable income requires careful management of all the assets used to satisfy customer requirements.

Business is about making profit. As the late Robert Townsend said, If youre not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing here? Profit is what is left when all the costs and investments involved in running a business have been subtracted from all the revenue generated by the business activity. Profit rewards the investors and provides for reinvestment to develop and sustain the business.

In recent years marketers have tended to concentrate on the customer to the exclusion of everything else. Customer satisfaction is vitally important, but sustainable profitable revenue is the prime requirement of every business, and customer satisfaction is merely the means of obtaining it. Generating profitable revenue is the responsibility of the commercial manager. Without sustainable, profitable revenue, there is no profit, and without profit there is no business.

The job of the of the commercial manager is to balance all the marketing activities to support and maximize the generation of sustainable profitable income for the long term, while at the same time, minimizing the costs incurred and the use of assets involved in its production.When evaluating the contribution of the marketing function, its performance must be measured in terms of output and efficiency. From the business point of view, the main factors will be the amount of sustainable profitable revenue produced together with a measure of its efficiency in converting marketing costs and investment into revenue. Using the CIM definition of marketing, it is soon apparent that there are many cost centres involved in anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.

Here is just some of cost centres involved with customer satisfaction, with reasons for their inclusion:

* Warehousing costs Product is produced for customer demand and has to be stored before it is sold. Thus there are costs for heat, light, power and warehouse wages.* Distribution costs Getting the product to the customer involves fuel, postage, freight and associated salaries.* Advertising cost Communicating with the market includes media and production costs* Promotion costs Promotional schemes, exhibitions and PR expenditure.* Web-site costs Includes design, registration and management costs* Selling costs The salaries and expenses of all direct sales staff* Sales office costs Sales admin and marketing salaries, office running costs.* Discount All discounts on accounts and invoices, because this is a direct cost against income.* Market research costs Market research is a pre-requisite to anticipate customer requirements.* Bad debt costs Bad debt results from customer credit management* IT costs Software costs and licences, hardware rental and lease directly associated with sales and customer support.* Vehicle costs The cost of vehicles uses specifically for selling and selling support, capital and leasing costs.

In addition, the commercial manager must be aware of the value of the assets used by the sales organisation, including finished stock, dedicated vehicles and debtors.

The late Peter Drucker, is famously quoted as saying that in business if you cant measure it, you cant manage it. The performance of the commercial manager may be judged on the amount of profitable income produced, and the efficiency of its production measured in terms of the level of costs, investment and assets used, rather than the questionable value of an intangible asset such as a brand name. Ultimately, every aspect of business operations must be seen in terms of its contribution to producing income.

For many businesses, the marketing budget is still seen in the narrow terms of advertising, promotion, social marketing and other communication based activities. However, for the commercial manager, as well as the chief executive and the finance director, defining all the constituents of the marketing budget is essential, if assets are to be correctly allocated and managed profitably.

N.C.Watkis, Contract Marketing Service 10 Mar 21

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Are you confused? - Customer Think