If there’s one thing 2020 taught us, it’s that having a solid digital marketing strategy is mission critical for any brand wishing to reach more customers.
Regardless of what industry you specialize in, the ability to promote your cause is a must in today’s attention economy. But marketing today is getting increasingly more and more confusing.
Recommended Marketing Podcasts for 2021
So we made a list of some of our favorite marketing podcasts on C-Suite Radio you should listen to in 2021 for insights to grow your business.
1. Secrets to Win Big With Arjun Sen
Winning is fun but WINNING BIG results in success that is sustained.
Brands who WIN BIG have three secrets:
They have VISIBLE Leaders who lead from the front, UNIQUE customer experience that is different, delivered consistently and evolves over time and AUTHENTIC brand stories that connect emotionally.These are universal secrets to win big in business, in career and also in sports.Tune in to listen to stories from leaders from all walks in life to put you on the path to winning big.
2. The Customer Experience Advantage Podcast with David Avrin
How do iconic brands and disruptive business leaders approach accommodating a new generation of customer expectations?
The Customer Experience Advantage Podcast features author and keynote speaker David Avrin talking with dynamic business leaders about their visionary concepts and powerful customer engagement models.
3. If You Market They Will Come
B2B Marketing, the If You Market podcast is a long form conversation on B2B marketing with industry experts and thought leaders. Topics include: content marketing, account-based marketing, social media, leveraging data, Marketing Technology, branding, demand generation, marketing automation, Email Marketing, sales and marketing alignment, SEO, CRM, and other great acronyms.
4. The CX GURU
Every business comes to life through its Service Experience. Your business success depends on whether your Customers are loyal to YOU. That’s where real value and profit is created. Great companies ubiquitously have great customer experiences. A thin red line divides those that invest and consistently deliver what their Customers need and those that fail and get disrupted. In competitive and challenging times, leaders need to double down on their Service Experience. Learn and grow the value you create. Grow your success. Be on the right side of that thin red line.
The CX GURU with host Eric Michrowski, a globally recognized Ops & Customer Experience Guru, public speaker and author explores through leader interviews how to increase the value you create, distinguish yourself from the pack, grow your business and your success. Your business success story begins now.
5. Building Better Businesses
The Building Better Businesses Podcast is the best place to learn how to take your business to the next level because it’s no longer enough to earn good profits. Hosted by Steve Eschbach, an expert on business and business people, he’ll tell you why building a network of connections and using all types to your advantage will put you over the edge.
Steve and his expert guests will delve into the many facets of owning the business and how to become a good, caring business owner. Tune in to learn how making a difference in your community can attract all sorts of clientele, which will in turn build you a better business.
6. Accelerating Revenue Series
True Influence’s Series is about having new conversations and fresh ideas on accelerating B2B revenue through unpacking best sales, marketing and data practices by hearing from C-level executives, VPs, and Thought Leaders.
Ten Top Strategies to Rank Well on a LinkedIn Keyword Search
Whether you’re hoping to catch the eye of an executive recruiter, a potential customer, or a company looking to fill a gap on its corporate board, the process for ranking highly on a LinkedIn keyword search is essentially the same. LinkedIn is not just an online directory of professionals; it is a search engine. Where you show up in the search results matters because people rarely look beyond the first two pages of results of their search. If you’ve not done a stellar job in maximizing your profile for search, it’s likely that people won’t find you based on a keyword search. That’s a problem because you may never know the opportunities that could have come your way, had you been found.
LinkedIn’s search algorithm has two primary drivers: 1) the size of your network and 2) the frequency of the searched words in your profile. So how can you maximize your opportunity to be found for right-for-you opportunities? This article shares ten strategies you can use to maximize your opportunity to be discovered, 24/7.
Have a large network If you are not a first, second or third-degree LinkedIn connection or a member of a LinkedIn group with the person doing the search, your profile will not show up for them on a keyword search. You can improve the odds that you’ll be found by having a large network. For example, if you were looking for an opportunity to be a Chief Information Officer, you could improve your odds by connecting with executive recruiters who specialize in recruiting senior leaders in IT. Joining LinkedIn groups related to the opportunity you seek can also be an effective strategy.
Achieve All-Star Status All-Star-Status just means that your profile is “complete” – that is, you’ve entered text in all the primary sections. This is not hard to do and it does not address the quality of your text, but LinkedIn research has found that profiles that have achieved All-Star status are 40 times more likely to be found on a keyword search than profiles that are incomplete.
Optimize your headline using your most important keywords Keywords need not be single words. Rather, think of them as words someone would use to find someone just like you. Create a list of your most important keywords and make a point to use them in your LinkedIn headline and About section. Your headline, which is auto-filled by default, can be customized instead. Think of your headline as your personal marketing tagline (in 220 characters or fewer).
Write to the margins on LinkedIn – that is, use the maximum character count for each section as your guide
Why? Because when we tell about our passions and accomplishments in the world of work by “writing to the margins,” we will naturally use our keywords frequently. Don’t “keyword stuff” or just list them one after the other; rather, use them in context within your normal sentence structure. Maximum character counts for each section on LinkedIn as of this writing are as follows: Headline: 220; About section: 2,600 (this is 4-5 paragraphs); for each position entry in your Experience section: 2,000 characters.Failure to include an About section (or to have a very skimpy one), or failure to provide an account of your accomplishments in your various job positions will result in your not ranking highly on a keyword search. And what is the consequence of not ranking highly? Right-for-you opportunities won’t come your way.
Make all your LinkedIn sections public Huh? There is an under-the-hood setting that allows you to choose which sections of your profile will (or will not) be seen publicly. Check that you have not made some of your sections private. If you’ve hidden some sections, they may not be searchable for keywords by LinkedIn’s search algorithm, reducing your chance of being found. Beyond that, you may lose the chance to make your best first impression. The setting where you may have elected to make some things private is to the right of your profile under the heading Edit Your Public Profile and URL and the subheading Edit Visibility. For a more thorough discussion of settings errors and how to correct them, see my article Brand-bruising Public Profile and Privacy Settings: What You Can’t See Can Hurt You.
Include LinkedIn’s “new” Featured Section The Featured section is a very visual section, with opportunities to add photos, logos, presentations, videos, etc. with text as captions. The text that accompanies these visual assets is another place to use your keywords effectively. If you do not have a Featured section currently, you can add it by clicking the “Add a Section” button (you’ll find this button in the section containing your profile picture).
Include other pertinent optional sections If you have publications, patents, awards, certifications, courses, volunteer experience, etc., there are specific sections that you can add in which you can use your keywords. You’ll find them by clicking the “Add a Section” button (you’ll find this button in the section containing your profile picture).
Seek and give recommendations Recommendations, whether written by you for someone else or written about you by someone else, are searchable for keywords. Also, if someone is really interested in you, they will certainly read Recommendations written about you closely.|
List 50 skills in your skills inventory Skills in LinkedIn’s database are keywords. When your entire list of 50 skills (yes, that’s the best practice!) is well-aligned with what you want to communicate about your personal brand, you significantly improve your ability to be found based on keywords of your own choosing. When your profile is well-aligned with your personal brand, you are much more likely to be found for both internal and external opportunities that fit you well. For more information about how to edit the skills in your skills inventory, see my article “Have You Missed the Step that Gives Your LinkedIn Skills POWER?”
Be active on the LinkedIn platform Curate and post articles that are on-brand for you. Write and share your own posts and articles. Comment on (don’t just “like”) your colleagues’ postings. All these actions show that you are engaged with people and ideas. Being active may or may not contribute to being found by LinkedIn’s search algorithm, but if you are found via search, people will be more likely to click on your profile if they’ve seen you on their LinkedIn’s homepage often.
Does it take work to optimize your opportunity to rank highly on a LinkedIn keyword search? You bet it does. But the return on investment is high: it’s the opportunity to have your profile work effectively for you around the clock to find you for right-for-you opportunities.
LinkedIn for the Savvy Executive – Second Edition is a Featured Selection of the C-Suite Book Club.
If you are a C-Suite executive or senior leader who would like to improve your LinkedIn profile and presence, I can make it easy for you. I have a track record of working effectively with C-Suite executives and senior leaders to create LinkedIn profiles and other executive-branded materials that help them show up as authentically and powerfully online as they do in person. This way, they can attract the talent they want to hire, increase their visibility and influence, and control their career. I also mentor clients on LinkedIn etiquette and effective posting strategies to ensure their success. Let me help you use this essential business tool effectively. Contact me through my website: www.carolkaemmerer.com or profile: www.linkedin.com/in/carolkaemmerer.
Other resources for you and your team:
For a virtual or in-person presentation on personal branding via LinkedIn, contact me. I am a member of the National Speakers Association, a Certified Virtual Presenter, and an Advisor to the C-Suite Network.
“Fire warms, but it also burns. Like fire, the more you control a negotiation, the less likely you are to get burned.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (click to Tweet)
“To Win More Negotiations Faster Know How To Use Fire”
People don’t realize they’re always negotiating.
Fire! What just went through your mind? If you had been in particular environments, hearing that word would have captured your attention immediately. And that is what happens in negotiations when something occurs that grabs your attention. It can spellbind you. And therein lies the power of capturing a negotiator’s attention. Thus, fire, a metaphor in this case for grabbing a negotiator’s attention, becomes a powerful tool you can use to win more negotiations faster. Here is how to do that.
Click here to discover how you can increase your negotiation efforts!
For this #kTip, we discuss a myth going around about no one having money…
Most recently I had a customer tell me about their business. They were saying that nobody has money, and I believe that to be a myth. I know that we’re going through some hard times but I don’t believe that nobody has funds. And the reason I say that is this: experience. I’ve been doing sales for 25+ years and let me tell you something – there has never been a single customer who has told me they have enough budget.
Debunking the Myth
Every single customer I’ve ever come across has always said, “Well I don’t really have the budget, can you reduce your price?” Everybody is going to say that they don’t have monetary means right now. If they really don’t have enough dough, then ultimately, we have to find different customers. There are customers out there that do have money.
A Matter of Finding the Money
So, the reason I want to bring this message to you is to give you the confidence and understanding that there is money out there. You just have to find the customers that have the funds.
You don’t play small in person. You have an executive presence in any room, including all the virtual rooms in which we’re doing business these days. You dress for effect. You are careful to ensure that your grooming is on-brand. You command attention when you speak. You’ve seen to it that your LinkedIn profile is one of first entries that appears on a Google search of your name.
So, executives, why are you “playing small” on LinkedIn? LinkedIn is THE business place where people look to see what you’re about. If on the one platform where countless people are making their first impressions of you every day, your profile and presence fail to reflect your eminence then you are failing to attract the talent you wish to hire. You are not managing your career trajectory and maybe actually repelling opportunities that might otherwise find you. If poorly managed, your online presence might actually damage your overall credibility and influence.
Below I’ve spotlighted some of the ways executives tend to “play small” on LinkedIn. Read more to see if any of these cases apply to you – and if so, how to address them.
Failure to package your profile with flair:
Executive presence is a phenomenon embodying poise, confidence, and professionalism, blended with charisma or a “wow” factor. The wow factor on a LinkedIn profile is most often conveyed visually, through your portrait, your banner image (the real estate that is behind your portrait that is various shades of gray-green if you haven’t customized it), and your Featured section.
Let’s start with your portrait. Chapter 3 of my new book, LinkedIn for the Savvy Executive-Second Edition, has an excellent checklist that can help you decide whether you need a new photo. It should look like the best version of you, NOW (not the way you looked ten years ago. If you use a photo that shows you with a healthy head of hair but you are now bald, that deceit will undermine the credibility of all your profile.). You should be wearing your best smile or most approachable expression. You should be looking directly at the camera lens, and you should be dressed appropriately as if you are about to meet with an important new prospect or make a presentation to your board. Chapter 3 also has guidance on choosing a headshot photographer who will create an executive-quality image that matches your own version of executive presence.
Your banner image should definitely be customized, and not the default banner provided by LinkedIn (e.g., currently a non-descript field of three colors of green). Perhaps it could showcase your company logo or provide an image that evokes some aspect of your business or personal brand. Customizing your banner makes a huge difference.
The lack of a Featured Section in your profile is also a sign of playing small. This is a new, visually powerful section for photos, graphics, or videos. Check out my article on the Featured section to help you enhance your online brand by providing visual appeal.
Failure to establish know, like, and trust:
Chapter 5 of my book addresses all sections of an executive-branded LinkedIn profile. Although every section contributes to your brand, the headline (the text right below your name) and the About section can be the most instrumental in establishing your know-like-and-trust factor – a factor that must be present before someone will be interested in doing business with you. (People do business with people that they feel they know, like, and trust).
Your headline is auto-filled by default with your current position and company, but you can replace that default, customizing your headline with up to 220 characters of text. Tell those looking at your profile something more than your title. Tell them who you serve and how you add value; tell them about your leadership style; tell them about your results. Remember, you want to give people a reason to know, like, and trust you.
Your About section should be about YOU — not about what you DO, but who you ARE. Share something that helps people know you. This section can touch on your current role, but really that’s what the text you provide under your current position should be about. Instead, here you have about 4 to 5 paragraphs in the About section (2,600 characters) to tell your professional story. “When what you share is authentic, you connect emotionally with your reader. The more transparent and authentic your profile, the more people will feel they can know, like and trust you even before they meet you in person.” (page 59). What are your business principles, what is your career purpose, what are your passions? Share those. Why? When you share only what you DO, the content could apply to nearly all your competitors. When you share who you ARE, no one else can claim that.
Failure to use logos:
The absence of a logo on your LinkedIn profile is always a negative, but it is most damaging if the missing logo is for your current role in a company for which you are among the top executives (e.g., Owner, Founder, President, CEO, Principal Consultant, etc.). For example, if you are the founder of a company but your LinkedIn profile shows no associated company logo, it may be interpreted that you have a hobby rather than a real business – that you are not serious about your endeavor. Simply put, this error is a primary way senior executives undermine their own credibility. But if you have made this error, it is totally within your power to fix it. Read my article for remedies to this type of missing logo problem as well as several others.
Failure to engage on the LinkedIn platform:
LinkedIn is a great way to share your thought leadership, expand your influence, and nurture relationships that are important to your business success. If you’re not engaging on the LinkedIn platform, you are missing opportunities.
So, stop playing small on LinkedIn:
You have so much to contribute, and so much to gain by showcasing your eminence on your profile and cultivating relationships online. LinkedIn is an essential business tool today. Use it well and thrive.
If you are a C-Suite executive or senior leader who would like to improve your LinkedIn profile and presence, I can make it easy for you. I have a track record of working effectively with C-Suite executives and senior leaders to create LinkedIn profiles and other executive-branded materials that help them show up as authentically and powerfully online as they do in person. This way, they can attract the talent they want to hire, increase their visibility and influence, and control their career. I also mentor clients on LinkedIn etiquette and effective posting strategies to ensure their success. Let me help you use this essential business tool effectively. Contact me through my website: www.carolkaemmerer.com or profile: www.linkedin.com/in/carolkaemmerer.
Other resources for you and your team:
For a virtual or in-person presentation on personal branding via LinkedIn, contact me. I am a member of the National Speakers Association, a
Promote Your Brand with Authenticity, Tact, and Power
Certified Virtual Presenter, and an Advisor to the C-Suite Network.
“The perception of strength resides in the perception of a strong mind.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (click to Tweet)Click here to get the book!
“How To Possess A Strong Mind When Negotiating”
People do not realize they are always negotiating.
I cannot recall the last time I was negotiating with someone that caved to our every request. Yep. That negotiator made one concession after another. I wanted to continue the negotiation to see how much we could get from him. Yeah, he projected a weak position from the moment the negotiation began. He lacked a strong mind, along with his soft negotiation skills.
Those were the comments of two members from the same negotiation team. They recalled the occurrences of a person with whom they had been negotiating
and mocking him for not being of strong mind. Are you aware of the last time someone ridiculed you for not possessing good negotiating skills? Did they think you were not strong-minded when it came to your will and negotiation skills? A negotiator’s weak mind is his foe and his opponent’s ally when negotiating.
The following is how you can project a more robust persona, along with a strong mind in your negotiations. Having this skill will increase your negotiation outcomes for the rest of your life.
There are so many ways to attract more website traffic, but when it comes to learning how to manage traffic to your blog, the sky is the limit. Here are some of the most promising methods we have been experimenting with for years to increase traffic to your # site.
In this article, we will look at the 10 best ways to increase organic traffic to your small business website and whether or not it actually works.
If you have your own tips for increasing traffic to your websites, I would love to hear about them!
1. Use AnswerThePublic.com
Go to answerthepublic.com and discover what people are already searching for on your keyword topic.
People are already searching questions around your content topic in search engines. Just enter your subject matter and Answer The Public will kick you back a report of the most commonly researched questions.
Just Enter Your Content Keywords
The Power of Google Analytics Delivered to You
Answer The Public scraps Googles algorithm to itemize the most frequently searched questions around your keyword. Find the top questions and simply create content that answers the questions.
Eventually if you do this long enough, Google will start to organically connect your content to people already searching for your answers.
Create Content People Are Actually Looking For!
Seriously, you can get a years worth of content ideas that people are already searching. All you have to go is go to the site, enter your keywords and get instant feedback at your little fingertips.
And it’s a completely free!
It’s Important to Know What People Are Already Searching For
For Google to Connect Your Content to the User
2. Gotta Build Those Links
Link building plays an important role in bringing more traffic to your website and improving the ranking of your website.
Links to pages that lead to other pages on the site increase traffic and increase your SEO, and potentially also increase valuable referral traffic.
Flat out, internal links are key to getting more Google traffic from your websites.
WARNING: Nerd Alert
Search engines use domain names – linked hrefs as ranking signals, and if you include a href that leads to a domain on a website in a separate domain, it has the potential to increase traffic to that website.
Basically, when Google sees that you are doing out of your way to provide helpful links to data sources, you perform better with their algorithm.
These internal links can also play an important role in directing traffic to your website and increasing valuable recommendations and traffic that you can potentially increase as a source.
In short, by building more links into your site and content, you increase your SEO effectiveness, increase your clicks, and possibly even increase referral traffic from other websites.
Using the tactics listed above to direct traffic to your website will help you get more leads, customers and revenue for your brand.
You will attract the right kind of traffic, both in quality and quantity, and you will bring traffic to the site and your visitors will keep coming back to see more.
3. Promote On Social!
Don’t skip over this one cuz you’ve heard it a thousand times and stop outsourcing it.
Social media is not just a great place to promote your content, it is the place to promote your content.
Add social sharing buttons to each blog post to direct traffic to your site via social media.
Advertise Your Content on Your Accounts
Use PPC and social media advertising to bring more traffic to your site and increase your visibility in search engines like Google.
Facebook is probably the easiest place to start.
For example, you can set an ad budget for as low as $10 per day and simply choose one interest your audience likes and Facebook’s algorithm will get your content in front of who will like it.
4. Host a Webinar
Combined with an effective social promotion campaign, webinars are a great way to increase traffic to your website.
Normally a live webinar provides very valuable content for free and is one of the best ways to increase traffic to a website because it is free.
In combination with your PPC and social marketing campaigns, your webinars can be a great way for you to increase traffic and increase it to the website, especially in the early stages of development.
We host webinars and digital event (16 per month!) and is one of the largest sources of traffic for our company site.
5. List Your Business on Online Directories
Another way to increase traffic to your website is to be listed on online directories and rating sites.
One of the free and easy ways to increase traffic to your websites is to be listed in a free online directory that features local business. But while that may sound complicated and time consuming, it’s not.
“The Ramsey Show” is a podcast with host… Dave Ramsey, who invites his audience on a mission to achieve financial freedom and to become debt free.
A mission they have been achieving together in a really significant way.
The show’s audience has paid off over $500 million dollars in debt since the podcast began just 15 years ago!
Their Podcast Was a Major Key to Their Success
“We’re teachers at the core,” said Brian Mayfield, executive vice president of Ramsey Network. “And podcasts are an extremely useful medium, giving us another megaphone to reach people. We’ve never seen anything grow the way the podcast world has grown, so we see tremendous opportunity there to continue to increase our audience.”
The caller-driven show, now in its 29th year, shares practical answers for life’s tough questions from money expert Dave Ramsey and best-selling authors Rachel Cruze, Dr. John Delony, Christy Wright, Ken Coleman, and Anthony ONeal.
“The Ramsey Show” is the third largest nationally syndicated talk radio show in the nation, airing on more than 640 stations across the country. The podcast is consistently one of the most downloaded shows across all major platforms.
Ramsey Network podcasts help people handle their money, navigate relationships, guide their careers, become better leaders, and grow their businesses.
How David Ramsey Built a Mass Movement With a Show
Ramsey and his team invite people to take a leap of faith and join them on a journey.
They believe in a world where everyone should live debt free and without fear of their financial situation.
Who wouldn’t want that?
To date, over 5 million people have taken or attended their financial peace university course to learn practical financial wisdom.
The journey is much more powerful than if Dave’s message just said, “Buy my course on budgeting.” The podcast invited people to join something bigger.
Ramsey teaches people to live like no one else, get out of debt, and make money. Because he did it. Reminding everyone that nobody wins without paying a price.
The Importance of Telling Your Story
From a very early age, Ramsey understood the value in a day’s work. As a teenager, he started several different business ventures to earn extra pocket money.
His work ethic helped him become a millionaire by the age of 26.
He started flipping houses, and that’s where things took a turn for the worse when his local bank was bought out and the new bank canceled his loan and gave him 60 days to pay back a $2 million dollar line of credit his previous banker had approved in good faith.
At 26 with little assets, he didn’t have $2 million in liquid cash and was forced into bankruptcy to avoid a potential jail time.
Dave was crushed. But developed a new mission in life. To get as many people out of debt as possible to avoid a similar fate.
Turning Lemon into Lemonade
Since then, he’s created a business empire that revolves around using his previous money mistakes to teach smart money management practices.
Today, millions of Americans have turned to the teachings of Dave Ramsey to guide them along the path to financial security and wealth.
He now has an estimate worth of $55 million, making him living proof than anyone can turn a bad financial situation around.
Conclusion
The Ramsey show has become one of the top 4 downloaded podcasts of all time by building up a community of people sharing a journey to overcome and achieve financial independence.
The podcast medium has proven again the potential for creating movements of positive change.
About Ramsey Solutions
Ramsey Solutions is committed to empowering people in the areas of money, business, leadership and personal development using Biblically based, commonsense principles and education.
Every day, Ramsey Solutions reaches millions with nationally syndicated radio shows and columns, #1 national best-selling books, products and courses and industry-renowned podcasts and video channels. Ramsey Solutions’ world-class speakers and authors give inspiration, practical advice and hope to audiences across the country.
Recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of best places to work in the country, Ramsey Solutions and its team of more than 950 are dedicated to doing work that matters. For more information, visit ramseysolutions.com.
“What Hidden Value Is There In Being A Better Negotiator”
People do not realize they are always negotiating.
My negotiation skills are not bad. I know I could become a better negotiator. But I do not see the hidden value in being a better negotiator. Is there one?
That was part of a conversation one friend had with another. The friend had asked about the importance of enhancing his negotiation skills and whether there were benefits to becoming a better negotiator.
Do you know the value of becoming a better negotiator? Do you know what you need to do to become one? Continue, and you will receive information that will help you negotiate better in every aspect of your life. And, you will also uncover information about why you need to become a better negotiator. You will also discover how to use your enhanced skills to enrich all aspects of your life.
