In this talk, Mark Burgess brings to our attention how employees, through social media, are changing how companies market to, and engage with, customers and prospects. With the transparency and opportunity for personal connections that social media offers, pushing fabricated, unauthentic sales pitches doesn’t work anymore. Instead, we are witnessing the rise of the social employee who creates a win/win proposition by leveraging their personal brands to build trust and increase the digital “surface area” of the brands for which they work. The result is nothing short of a revolution.

Source: www.youtube.com

“Employees are the brand at IBM” said IBM’s Ethan McCarty. But isn’t it true in a lot of companies? 

Are your employees thought leaders then? Or rather, what are you doing to develop – and show – their thought leadership?

As Burgess develops in his talk, there is a clear synergy between developing employees into thought leaders and building the corporate brand. 

But how can this be achieved? 

As shown in this topic, thought leadership is highly connected to knowledge. Empowering employees to share their knowledge easily and in an engaging and rewarding way therefore becomes critical:

– easily because they don’t have (much) time,

– engaging because they won’t do it if it’s not impacting,

– rewarding because that’s what’s in it for them.

Aggregating, promoting and spreading that knowledge through collaborative content hubs like the ones Scoop.it Enterprise offers that show the collective curation work of your brand’s employees is one of the most efficient ways to promote your brand: by promoting them.

A win-win deal for all. 

Becoming a thought leader is about providing your unique and valuable expertise to people at no cost to them. There’s obviously nothing egotistical about that.

Source: www.linkedin.com

Of course this is not philanthropy either. As this post describes, there are benefits that come with becoming a thought leader, including many direct positive impacts from a professional or business point of view.

We can then go further and ask: can everybody become a thought leader?

To me, it’s down to expertise. If we believe we all have expertise, then we all can show thought leadership. From what we say, from what we create but also from what we read and curate.

This was going to end badly.My boss screamed at me in front of my colleagues. I had done something wrong of course. I had sent a product to the client without debugging it thoroughly. It was my fault.

Source: www.linkedin.com

James Altucher might have Woody Allen style neurotic accents but he makes a lot of good points in there. Bottom line is that the “safe” career path that worked for your parents or grandparents is a thing of the past. 

Time to think seriously about that startup project.

Why I’ve decided to stop taking “content” gigs and other journalists should, too.

Source: medium.com

Anyone who’s been tempted to outsource their own thought leadership should read this.

You just can’t ghost write your way into being a thought leader.

Of course, one of the limitation of content marketing is time: good content takes time to create.

So where does it leave busy CEOs who don’t have time to write?

Well, since they all take the time to read, they’ve done the hard work for content curation already. By selecting the best pieces they see every day or every week and adding their visionary comment to it, they’ll start showing thought leadership much more efficiently. And perhaps more important: in a much more genuine way.

Source: fr.slideshare.net

This is a break from professional presentations. A tribute to a man of exceptional fate. No other leaders in today’s world matches Nelson Mandela‘s vision, courage, determination and wisdom. RIP Madiba.