Be A Thought Leader!

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Small companies have to work hard to get visibility, especially when the market is crowded with competitors all vying for the same business. In high tech they face the added dilemma that IT departments don’t want to buy from a small unknown vendor, and the vendor can’t become large and reputable unless it has major customers. So, how does a company become better known with limited resources? By becoming an industry thought leader.

What’s a thought leader?
A thought leader is a recognized leader in one’s field. What differentiates a thought leader from any other knowledgeable company, is the recognition from the outside world that the company deeply understands its business, the needs of its customers, and the broader marketplace in which it operates.

Trust is built on reputation and reputation is generally NOT built on advertising. It is built on what others say about you. Become a thought leader in your field and it won’t matter as much how big you are. Companies will look to you for insight and vision. Journalists will quote you, analysts will call you, websites will link to you.

How does one become a thought leader?
Before one takes the first actionable step, a fundamental shift in mindset is needed. Thought leadership requires a spirit of generosity – generosity of one’s time, intelligence and knowledge. It requires a trust that by being open with what you know, and by sharing your time and knowledge, the world will reward your efforts. With that in mind, here are steps that will help you on your way to being a thought leader:

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Public Speaking Tips

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Twelve Steps to Great Presentations

You’ve been asked to give a talk about your area of expertise to a group interested in learning what you have to say.

How do you ensure that your talk will be successful? That you will engage your audience, exceed their expectations, and position yourself as a thought leader on the subject?

1. Know your audience – what do they care about?

The best advice I was ever given regarding speaking to an audience was to think less of what I wanted to say, and more of what the audience wanted to hear. In other words, speak to their listening.

Will you be speaking to business executives or college students? What does your audience expect to learn from their interaction with you?

Try to gauge this well, make sure you deliver upon it, and then if you have more to add, do so.

Once you have an audience engaged and they trust that listening to you won’t be a waste of time you can give them what they want plus more.

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Writing a Creative Brief

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Many creative marketing projects get underway without a clear sense of expectations between the marketing folks requesting the project and the creative folks delivering upon it, resulting frequently in lost time and expensive rework.

A marketing brief is the best way for the marketer to clearly lay out a framework for the creative team. The process can be driven by either side – creative or marketing – but both sides need to agree on the brief before the work can commence.

Here’s the Creative Brief Template (click here for printable version) I used at Apple Computer for many years.

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Hormesis – Radiation Is Good For You?

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What is Hormesis?

I had a conversation with a retired X-Ray specialist physicist who claimed that radiation in low doses was actually good for you, citing the phenomena called “hormesis”.

What is hormesis? It’s a process in a cell or organism that shows two phases of response to increasing exposure to toxins – the first phase beneficial at low doses, then moving to detrimental as the amount of exposure increases.

Google hormesis and you’ll find thousands of studies displaying this effect.

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Monkeys and Company Policies

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Heard on the net:

Put eight monkeys in a room. In the middle of the room is a ladder, leading to a bunch of bananas hanging from a hook on the ceiling.

Each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder, all the monkeys are sprayed with ice water, which makes them miserable. Soon enough,whenever a monkey attempts to climb the ladder, all of the other monkeys, not wanting to be sprayed, set upon him and beat him up.

Soon, none of the eight monkeys ever attempts to climb the ladder. One of the original monkeys is then removed, and a new monkey is put in the room. Seeing the bananas and the ladder, he wonders why none of the other monkeys are doing the obvious, but, undaunted, he immediately begins to climb the ladder. All the other monkeys fall upon him and beat him silly. He has no idea why. However, he no longer attempts to climb the ladder.

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Wicked – Gregory Maguire

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How did the Wicked Witch of the West, from Frank Baum’s Oz stories, get to be so wicked? Gregory Maguire tells her story, in Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Author of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Maguire seems to revel in turning our beloved fairy tales upside down, and having us rethink our cherished notions of absolute good and evil. The Wicked Witch wasn’t born a witch, nor wicked. In Maguire’s delightful telling, we learn of Glinda’s obsession with status and fashion, the Wizard’s inhumanity, and the friendships, loves, and lost loves of little green Elphalba, the story’s moral center, who is ultimately destroyed by innocent Dorothy. This tale is more real, and more like life as we know and experience it, than the original. There’s always a different side to a story, and in the case of Oz, this is it. A great read from start to finish. I could not put it down.