The Power Of Social On Personal Brand

The first presidential debate earlier this week served as a timely reminder concerning the power of personal brand. People choose to work with those they feel they know, like and trust; yet politicians globally have never suffered from lower personal approval ratings or larger deficits of trust.

Trust is most precious currency for anyone who seeks to influence or lead

Above photo is courtesy of Neal Maxson.

The public is increasingly cynical about the politics of fear but is also wising-up to popularism where our ears are tickled, fears exploited or appeals made to the lowest common denominator. Beyond grand policy announcements, the public wants competence and delivery of positive results. Integrity is rare yet it is the foundation of trust. Execution (delivery) is more important than strategy (policy) and a willingness to face he awful truth should be the basis of seeking a vote of confidence.

The value we offer and the values by which we operate determine our viability

This is the narcissis-stick selfie that went around the globe (from Buzzfeed video promoting Obamacare) a few years ago. Anyone who still doubts the power of social media to build brands and sell a message must be living in a cave. Yet so many business people still act as if social is a fad – an aberration being touted and smuggled into the workplace by millennial and Gen-Y employees.

Yet savvy social media strategies won the presidency for Obama – twice. And it's winning deals for your competitors that you were never even aware of. They attracted clients early with high value content, they did their prospecting outreach intelligently doing research and contact via multiple channels. They focused on social listening rather than social blasting.

Be Where Your B2B Buyers Are... LinkedIn

There are 450 million people on LinkedIn, more than 3 people join every second, there are 300,000,000 unique views per day and 38,000,000,000 page views per quarter. 40% of users are in LinkedIn every day, 75% of business-to-business (B2B) buyers research before engaging. It's the biggest publishing platform in the world. The average CEO has 930 connections in LinkedIn... and if you're still wondering whether you should invest time in uploading a more 'professionally friendly' photo, you've already missed the boat!

Tweet this: Those who use LinkedIn for a 'warm introduction' are 500% more likely to secure a meeting. Those who have strong Social Selling Index scores are 50% more likely to achieve their revenue targets.

Social media is not some weird geeky teenage non-understandable web of confusion. It's simply a bunch of free messaging, publishing and engagement platforms where hugely powerful networks of people hang-out. The smartest businesses use social to listen, research, publish, engage and collaborate. Take off your hand-made black leather loafers, ditch the socks, roll up your Armani trousers and wade into the digital waters... it will transform your business life and results.

We live in the age of personal brands which are becoming stronger and more relevant at double the rate that which corporate brands are diminishing. Embrace the thing you fear and banish ignorance. I'm 54 and was a Luddite but I've done it – in less than two years I'm riding the Sigmoid curve of reinvention using social with more than 76,000 followers of my LinkedIn blog.

Combine Timeless Principles With Modern Tools

SPIN Selling is timeless and Neil Rackham a demigod of all things B2B strategic selling; the mad professor of unified sales theory, the wise sage of the totally insane cottage industry that is the sales training community (Miller Heiman, CEB and TAS excluded).

President Obama is to be congratulated for adapting SPIN Selling and also for creating his skunk-works social media machine and war-room designed to win the White House and then again to stop the Republicans from storming its walls at the end of the first term. Here was his line of thinking:

Situation: We need to win the election, win the deal, win mind-share. We need to define target markets, understand personas, engage early with relevance and context, set the agenda, engineer the process, win the sale and bank the check.

Problem: No cut-through with the electorate. No side-stepping the EA, no return calls from my voice-mail messages, no reply to e-mail, no response to our spamming and direct mail. Traditional channels expensive and with shrinking audiences.

Implication: The opposition wins and we're out in the cold for years; a legacy of losership. Wholly suppositories Batman, what it is it!? My career is flashing before my screen in 1,000 PowerPoint slides with endless bullet-point builds... where's the gun!? Without quality meetings I'm out of business.

Now we're really talking! (sorry Neil, securing a great meeting is a 'Needs pay-off' benefit to the seller and buyer). Yes, we're saved by engaging where my customers are. Social selling delivers real benefits and tangible ROI if you know what you're doing. Obama turned his advocates into his sales people... the market-place became the messenger.

Hilary and Donald have both learned much from President Obama's pioneering work in harnessing the masses for crowd-sourced micro-marketing. But they face a difference problem... getting busy does not equate to being effective. How will they rebuild trust? How will they combat cynicism? How will they set a positive agenda that plays to their own strengths and is also in the best interests of the free world?

For those in B2B sales, LinkedIn is the new telephone for introductions and securing appointments. It's the way you connect with people; the way you build credibility before even meeting, the way you show relevance and social proximity, the way to publish insights and establish credentials. It's the power network of social.

Twitter Is How You Amplify And Spread The Word.

President Obama's team are masterful. Here are some staggering statistics about Twitter: 1.3 billion users and 100,000,000 active users daily. 80% are active in mobile and it's the ideal platform for ‘news-jacking’ and also listening for trigger events to then go and engage with context.

YouTube Is Your Own Global Television Channel

The final part of the social trinity for B2B is YouTube. There are more than 1 Billion users with 300 hours of video content is uploaded every minute. Remarkably, the footage is comprised of 99% cat videos (Just kidding!). You can save YouTube by putting some relevant content up that that shares your expertise and helps customers upstream, allowing you to join the party! Stop doing high risk, low value demos. Instead, create compelling videos that help educate your buyers and take them on the journey to where they are ready to talk about what really matters. Here are some amazing YouTube stats:

• YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and third most visited site after Google and Facebook
• 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
• There are 3.25 billion hours of video watched each month
• More than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices
• The average mobile viewing session lasts more than 40 minutes
• On average, there are 1,000,000,000 mobile video views per day

You can be your own television station, creating your own channel! But wait, there's more, don't sell the free set of steak knives if they dial-in now; instead be a publisher of insights to educate and entertain.

What do your potential clients look for before they would ever know to look for you? That's the content you need to create

We all need to sell with the social savvy of Obama and the sales mastery of Rackham. Old school and new school together are atomically powerful. Get on board with social or be left behind eating the dust of your competition.

P.S. Facebook is the leading consumer social platform and was used for President Obama to post the clever video above. Facebook's stats are also staggering with 1.7 billion users ever month and they upload 300 million photos every day. The level of engagement dwarfs everything else... including LinkedIn

Just for for viewing pleasure, this is the ultimate narcissistic idiot... "Look... cruise control... no driver... no lifejacket, no observer... no idea."

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