Defining thought leadership and what makes it so.

July 14, 2009

I was invited to a thinking ‘salon’, as it was described, to play intellectual ping pong with ten very impressive people – among them a leadership coach, a brand fixer, an former CEO of a catalog company, a social (csr) entrepreneur, an ex-naval officer now in academia, a sharp accountant and fellow marketers.    I was participating on my tippy toes – reaching up to discuss philosophically and intelligently on what is thought leadership and what makes it so.

Sound boring?  Not at all.  In fact, it gave two hours to dissect an overused term whose deliverable (thought leadership) is critical to business and everyday life.  The analysis of which leaves me clearer on what is required of thought leaders.

[Incidentily, I was invited by Rick Wolfe of Poststone.  I learned long ago never to turn down anything Rick organizes; he is a master at facilitation and marketing savant well known in marketing circles.]

I started my conversation by admitting that I used to own the title “subject matter expert” [in e-marketing, branding, strategy at IBM] with thought leadership being among the deliverables that I had to produce.  I loved that title until I had kids and learned how much there was to learn about life in general and ever since I’ve been utterly convinced that noone owns an ‘expert’ title.   I cringe now when I hear the s.m.e.  title.

More importantly, I questioned ‘thought leadership’ since

a) in this age of social wisdom, I see less individual thought leadership and more collective thought leaders and

b) in our interconnected society, I often think I have an original idea and if I google it, I find that it is not original at all.

As it turns out, the group collectively agreed that being original or first to market with an idea does not necessarily constitute thought leadership.   That thought leadership needs to also result in impact.  That the leadership of the thought includes relevancy, application, resources, action and impact.  There was also talk that thought leadership is a special thing and a special person who synthesizes in a special way.   I added that thought leadership can be unintentional – an idea or meme that catches like wild fire.

I have a number of books to follow up on – as always seems the case when I go to these intellectual debates.  They are  “Brief History of Nearly Everything”, “The Gift”, “The Singularity is Near” and probably something on Obama would be good too.

4 Comments | thought leadership | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Laurie Dillon Schalk

Socializing with a social media agency: Coffee with Mark Campbell, VMG Cinematic

July 8, 2009

I met Mark Campbell, a social media seeding and feeding guru of VMG Cinematic today at Balzac’s in Liberty Village to shoot the breeze on social media, what clients are asking for, what the market is willing to invest in, how to use social media to engender customer loyalty, what is being recommended and various campaign work we’ve both been doing in 2009.   [Mark and I have a mutual friend from Harley Davidson and so we met thru Linkedin - ah the power of social networking.

VMG Cinematic is an edgy, new media shop producing enviable online video distributed socially thru youtube, digital signage, and more.   They sport a client base we'd all love to play ball with including Harley Davidson, DHL, and Motorola.  Their high quality work is leading to very creative customer and employee focused campaigns integrated artfully across social medias.

There were a couple interesting themes in our conversation, beyond integrated social media campaigns.  One in particular focused on improving marketing ROI thru clever use of content assets.

I used to pull my hair out discovering various content assets being unused and not leveraged but easily deployed or strongly desired by customers.   (by content I mean video, photography, copy, etc).    Developing original content is hard enough and so its important to make every content piece that is developed work really hard.   The time to do this is at the creation of the content and not afterward.

A quick example.. in the condo development market, photos are taken throughout the whole construction process (and often live web cams accompany professional photos) and yet these photos/webcam are not made available to the buyers simply because the content did not reside or originate in the marketing department.  Certainly, there are privacy and legalities to consider and yet the sourcing of content does not have to stop with the marketing department because the customer experience does not stop after the purchase.

This is, in part, the beauty of studying the customer experience of buying a home and understanding how people who buy condos are very, very interested [nay emotionally invested]  in seeing the progress of their home during its construction.  Heck – I have friends who scrapbooks of the building of their home.  [okay - now to really digress - wouldn't it be cool to see these scrapbooks?  Check out moleskine 's mymoleskine section for customer contributed content].

Now marry customer experience strategy, content sourcing with new and social media distribution possibilities and the world is your oyster.

Back to Mark.  Mark had some great examples of how he increased the payout of existing efforts by just adding a little bit more upfront investment.  The old “with just a little bit more spend, we can double the return on your efforts” tactic – but an honest approach that is compelling and working for Mark and his clients.

“It doesn’t cost much to add a production team”  Mark said of sending a team to capture a customer event.   At the end of the day, the customer had the event and a mini-documentary to release on youtube [and in my experience, often some significant internal assets - be that e-learning or corporate communications].    Mark also talked about re-using video assets, or “using the b-roll” as he called it, to extract further value from a production for creating more value for a company.

Well.. the day is done.  This isn’t high school.. I don’t need a conclusion to all this.  G’night.

1 Comment | customer experience, Emarketing, housing / home building | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Laurie Dillon Schalk

New for me: Contributing writer for the 405 club

July 7, 2009

The 405 club, New York’s Official Unemployment Network, is a rapidly growing network and clever blog site started by Garrett Dale and Jose Gonzalez.

As you may not know – $405 is the maximium unemployment benefit you can receive in New York State.   So for those who were earning over six figures – its a pretty big fall during a great recession.    The Gotham Gazette, NYC paper, wrote an interesting article about the realities of being unemployed in New York.

I was contacted by Garrett to see if I would be a contributing writer for the blog.   I wrote back asking if he says this to all the blogs but Garrett confessed to liking my writing style and being serious.  AH .. his timing was wonderful and the news brighten my day.

I am pleased as punch to contribute.  The move make more of my volunteer work.

My only professional hesitation is that I really want to be much more than just ‘using social media in job search’ – I want to be about using social media to rock your customer, change the game, create idea jams and engage with customers on levels not yet imagined by most.   [not just me - many of my colleagues in social media pine for this]

The changes that I see that – for the home building industry, for retail, for insurance, for government, for every industry!  And yet – my work in social recruiting 2.0 and job search seems to be hitting a wild nerve – not surprisingly given the market realities.   So as much as I want to talk about how the condo market should be using social media more, or how under utilized youtube is, I continue to talk about jobs.

Now.. if I could just figure out how to get Employment Ontario and the federal government to fund my work…

Leave a Comment » | housing / home building, recruiting 2.0, the 405 club, using social media in job search | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Laurie Dillon Schalk

For 405 club: Dodging the stigma of actively searching for work

July 7, 2009

yippeee kiyaaa mfff!  Here’s my first post to the 405 club.

I’ve been volunteering/consulting in social recruiting lately – a high demand and growing area – playing both sides of the fence between consulting with HR/recruiters & execs and volunteering with the painfully transitioned in Toronto.   I wanted to offer suggestions to those who choose not to open up their chest cavity and explain why they are out of work…  AND give a new blog post to the 405 club:  NYC’s official unemployment network who’ve just asked me to be a contributing blogger to the site. <blush>

===========================

Perception is Reality

Picture it – you’re sitting in the first interview you’ve managed to get in weeks, its a job that matches your working desires and the promise of pay is in line with your old self – the one that used to work.

The fumble you are trying to avoid is not whether or not you qualify for  the job.  NOOOO its whether or not to pretend that you are not the active job searcher you are.   Damn the stigma of being an active job seeker.

I touched on this in an earlier blog post - social recruiting 2.0.   Quickly – recruiters and hr managers break job searchers into three main groups -

  1. non-seekers – those who have a job who aren’t looking,
  2. passive job searchers – have a job and are mildly searching, and
  3. active job searchers – say no more.

Active job searchers are, at times, avoided under the belief they constitute the undesirable; the belief that they will jump at any job opportunity – qualified or not,  suitable or not and desert jobs when they find what they really want.   I’m sure this stigma is grounded in some reality and yet, in a great recession, employers should not ignore quality candidates regardless of situation.  [Excellent article on out of work stigma fading.]

So.. back to business – HOW TO PRETEND YOU AREN’T ACTIVELY SEARCHING WHEN YOU ARE:

  • Build your own website – not a online resume, a small business site.  Consider using free blog publishing to get up and running fast.
  • Invest in your own domain name.   I wouldn’t necessarily go with your personal name as a domain but if you can’t dream up something cheap and available as a .com, then go for it.  Some instructions in a previous “how to” blog post of mine using godaddy.
  • Volunteer in a relevant capacity and make an “in-kind” deal allowing yourself to claim the organization as a client, and get website or other exposure for your business.
  • Make the bloody most of every volunteer/contract experience – blog about it, status update it, twitter it if you are on twitter, talk about it.  Use popular tag words in your blog title post so that your post gets auto pulled into silly blogs that add posts based on key word terms rather than content.
  • Update all social networking sites to your new business - linkedin, etc.  [I'm assuming here you are on linkedin.. and you should be]
  • Use a powerful signature linking back to profiles, @twitters or blog posts.  Start commenting as the president and chief pipeline filler in relevant forums, questions & answers paying attention to well attended blogs, websites, facebook fan pages or linkedin discussions as they will feed back traffic through the comments you make.
  • Cross pollinate your social networks.  Add linkedin applications that display your blog in your linkedin e.g. wordpress app, then add linkedin badges to your blog.

At the end of the day – an hr mgr and recruiter will still ask you why you are applying for full time moving away from your business.    My response has always been about the opportunity.  Personally, its hard to fill a pipeline as a small business and work on it.  But being committed to playing in a field you love means that you may have to take on different roles to do it.  Some of those roles are full time – others are contract and others are volunteer work.

Good luck.

Leave a Comment » | Blogging, Charity / volunteer, How to, recruiting 2.0, small business, social networks, the 405 club, using social media in job search | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Laurie Dillon Schalk

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