Ep. 014: Executive thought leadership

Why should executives invest time into social media?
What is thought leadership and why does it matter in driving business reputation and results?
How do you establish yourself as a thought leader?

We discuss these and other questions with Mike Casey, President at Tigercomm, the leading US cleantech PR, marketing communications and public affairs firm. Mike defines successful thought leadership as  "telling a discrete target audience useful things it did not know about itself". In our episode, he explains how executives can find their sweet spot in the market and what factors go into establishing yourself as a thought leader. Listen in!

Connect with Mike or follow him on LinkedIn
Visit the Tigercomm website

Interested in cleantech and the clean economy? Check out the Scaling Clean Podcast (this link is for Apple podcasts, for other players, just look for Scaling Clean) by Tigercomm. Scaling Clean is an insightful podcast for cleantech CEOs, investors and the people who advise them. Each show, host Mike Casey brings you a deeper look into the minds of influential leaders working to create a new clean economy.

About Mike:
Mike Casey is president and founder of Tigercomm, the leading US cleantech PR, marketing communications, and public affairs firm with headquarters in Northern Virginia and offices in Tampa, Denver, Pittsburgh, Charlottesville, and Los Angeles.  

His passion for the last 30 years has been designing, building, running, or being a part of winning communications programs. He counsels cleantech executives and investors and has trained over 2,200 people on message development, media interviewing, and public relations management.  

Tigercomm has helped over 140 companies and organizations increase sales, establish brands and secure fair policies that build markets in the cleantech space.

Mike regularly shares content on the Scaling Green blog and podcast in Renewable Energy World and other cleantech and marketing publications. Regarding social networks, Mike uses LinkedIn to share his thought leadership content and inspire clients, prospects, and the cleantech industry.

Mike is passionate about martial arts, clean energy, and technology, and lives and works in Arlington, Virginia, on the US East Coast.

About our sponsor ReadyForSocial:

ReadyForSocial is a leading social selling company and sponsor of this podcast. Since 2014, ReadyForSocial has supported large companies in the DACH region, Europe, and the USA by introducing, managing, and expanding their social selling programs.

Learn more about their solution and services here.

Lisa and Monika both work for ReadyForSocial. Feel free to contact them about this podcast or about ReadyForSocial's services: Lisa Davidson and Monika Ruzicka.

Transcript

Lisa Davidson: 0:02

Let's get Straight to Business. Whether you want to optimize your lead generation, make the most of your marketing budget or gain and maintain a competitive advantage in the field, Monika Ruzicka and Lisa Davidson give you the expert insights on social selling to take your business to the next level. This episode is brought to you by ready for social the b2b social selling experts. Hi, Straight to Business listeners and welcome to our latest episode. As always, Monika and I are thrilled to welcome you to our show and share the latest social selling knowledge with you. We want to start today's episode with an example. In early 2021, the CEO of German multinational chemical company BASF, the largest chemical producer in the world, signed up for LinkedIn. His name is Dr. Martin Brudermüller. He had been with the company for over 30 years, but had never been active on LinkedIn. Now, he had decided to join the social network to extend his dialogue with scientists, business leaders and other innovative minds about chemistry and sustainability. Within just a few months, Dr. Brudermüller had over 7000 followers. That's a lot but of course, as he is the CEO of BASF people naturally take an interest in him. However, his 7000 followers are only a fraction of the over 1.5 million people that follow his company's corporate LinkedIn page. Now here's where it gets interesting when we look at the impact of executives' personal profiles: Martin Brudermüller shared the same post that was shared on the corporate page about a new partnership with different wording, but the same image and basically the same content on exactly the same day on his personal LinkedIn profile. Now guess who got more engagement? Martin Brudermüller with his 7000 followers or his company page with 1.5 million followers? If you guessed Martin Brudermüller, you were right, it was the CEO. Comparatively he got about 200 times more reactions. So the fascinating story is the impact one individual can have on LinkedIn compared to their company brand. As you can see in this example, being active on a personal social media account as an executive can help you create a valuable marketing approach, complementary to your already existing strategies. The difference is that you can create exceptional trust, build new and lasting relationships, and drive behavior thanks to social media's human- centric characteristics. In today's episode, we want to focus on how to do just that. Are you excited? We hope so because we have a special guest speaker in store for you. Tigercomm founder and president Mike Casey is here with us today to explain the go-to-strategies for executives on social media, and help you understand how you can maximize your outreach with thought leadership. Hi, Mike, we're so excited to have you here today.

Mike Casey: 3:09

Thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate it.

Monika Ruzicka: 3:11

Hi, Mike. Hi, Lisa.

Lisa Davidson: 3:14

As always, I'd like to give our listeners some background information on our guest speaker first, Mike Casey is president and founder of Tigercomm, the leading US clean tech PR, marketing communications and public affairs firm with headquarters in Northern Virginia, and offices in Tampa, Denver, Pittsburgh, Charlottesville and LA. His passion for the last 30 years has been designing, building, running or being part of winning communications programs. He counsels clean tech executives and investors and has trained over 2200 people on message development, media interviewing and PR management. Tigercomm has helped over 140 companies and organizations increase sales, established brands and secure fair policies that build markets in the clean tech space. Mike regularly shares content on the Scaling Green blog and podcasts in Renewable Energy World and other clean tech and marketing publications. Regarding social networks, Mike uses LinkedIn to share his thought leadership content and inspire clients, prospects, and the clean tech industry. Mike is passionate about martial arts, clean energy and technology and lives and works in Arlington, Virginia on the US east coast. So Mike to start today's interview, I'd like to ask you what thought leadership is and means to you.

Mike Casey: 4:42

I think thought leadership - done successfully - is telling a discrete target audience useful things it did not know about itself.

Monika Ruzicka: 4:55

I really like how you put that, Mike.

Lisa Davidson: 4:59

And what role does leadership play in your industry in business decision making process?

Mike Casey: 5:07

It plays several roles we serve mainly the clean

economy sectors: 5:10

renewable energy, green hydrogen, green chemistry, certain financial vehicles for lending. And for the sectors that we service, thought leadership can do several things. The first is it can establish a beachhead, if you will. Imagine a company wants to get up and going, it needs to get a public presence of some sort. And for startups, you really just need to explain your reason for being out in the world. And typically, a startup is going to be run by a dynamic founder, you can make a lot of profile traction out of the interesting qualities of that CEO. So at the early stage for startups, thought leadership is best limited and directed toward explaining the reason that his or her company exists out in the world. For a company that is an early stage and trying to raise money, while it gets early commercial wins, thought leadership can help lay the predicate for why an investor should take a meeting with that company. And then in later stages, as a company prepares to get acquired or go public, the company itself needs to be narrated. And then things get a little more complicated. Your first gating issue at that later stage is deciding how much of the brand for the company, do we want to be comprised of the leadership teams' identity. And there's, you could look at examples where you know, companies, but you couldn't say who run them. And you can look at companies like General Electric in the Jack Welch age, and Jack Welch was General Electric, he shaped that company to be very much like him. And Tesla is a good example, Tesla and Elon Musk are pretty inseparable. And at that later stage, you have to make a decision about how much of the brand is going to be the person. And if it's going to be a lot comprised of the person, then you can put a lot of company narration out through that person's thought leadership. If you're going to elect to have the company brand be about more than just one leader, then you need several people in the leadership team narrating the company through insight-based thought leadership.

Lisa Davidson: 7:36

Mike, maybe can you explain when a company should make that decision? And why?

Mike Casey: 7:41

You mean the decision about narrating itself through a principal or through a team?

Lisa Davidson: 7:48

Yes, exactly.

Mike Casey: 7:50

There are many points in the lifecycle of a company where thought leadership can produce value, that value is typically more pronounced at the three stages that I just mentioned. And let's take that third situation where you're a company that's done your early, fast growing, you're getting ready to go to public markets or to get acquired, you have this decision in front of you. How do we narrate the company? Because like you market your products, you have to market the company now the company is what's going to be sold in effect? Do you market through a person? Or do you market through a team? Because you can't get away from the physics of investor buying decisions that the company is viewed through the lens of the strength of the leadership team. Then it's just a question of: how prominent do you want that CEO to be? Obviously, he or she is a first among equals, but are they really the only person that's advertised in the leadership team? And I've seen it done both ways. And I've seen it done well, both ways. So I don't think there's a particular math that you can bring to that choice. And there are some human factors that I've seen go into

that decision: 9:00

is the CEO, somebody who likes a public role, how much time and effort to they want to invest of their many responsibilities into content creation, because even if you are being almost fully supported, I haven't run across a CEO yet who has even an internal person who will just write things for him or her sight unseen and be posted in their name. I've seen it in politics a lot. But I've never seen it in the private sector. I'm sure it exists. But I haven't experienced that situation. I don't know that I'd want that level of delegation as a vendor. And I think whoever has that level of responsibility is pretty heavy burden to get it right. So I think there are some human factors here. One of them is how much the CEO wants to be up front and center to how much time does he or she have to devote to this because you have to at least review content. And typically in our experience, that leader has to originate the idea. They at least have to give their reactions to events. So staff and consultants can build content for them around those ideas. And some of our CEOs are extremely hands on. I've got ones who do line edits on news releases, and even LinkedIn posts that we do for them. And I think that that's another factor. And then third is do you have other strengths of the company that are particularly well represented by someone on that leadership team. So if the company is making its way in the world, based on the strength of its technology, you might have a chief technology officer who you really want to show off, it's good for the company's valuation to show off that non-CEO member of the leadership team. So there are more factors, but those are three that I've seen really come into play.

Lisa Davidson: 10:47

Great, thanks, Mike.

Monika Ruzicka: 10:49

I thought that was really interesting, Mike, how you describe this decision process of how you narrate a company in its growth phase through the CEO or the leadership team. I've been following this for years now at more mature and established and, if you will, traditional companies, the personal branding of the top leadership team, and obviously in terms of executive thought leadership, is most often the CEO who is at the forefront with his or her personal brand. But I've recently seen an interesting study by a German advertising agency, about the trend of CFOs- Chief Financial Officers - taking a stronger role on social media, for instance, at Porsche or Siemens Energy. At the number one spot of the list of CFOs was a woman named Simone Carstens, who is the CFO at a large subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom group, the largest German telco company, and she specifically brands herself as The Social CFO on LinkedIn. And she also uses that hashtag, which I thought was pretty interesting.

Lisa Davidson: 12:09

So Mike, you already mentioned it a little bit? What all plays into actually building executive thought leadership? Can you explain that a little more in detail, like how can executives create their own thought leadership strategy? And how can they find their voice on social media? Commercial break

Mike Casey: 14:06

Yeah, I have a bunch of thoughts on that, because we spent a good portion of our time doing just what you talked about. I'm going to present this in more of a grab bag than I would a checklist because I think that there are a number of factors and they play in different proportionality per the situation. As you think about how to do thought leadership one, what does that leader have to say that will tell a target audience something that's useful and that audience did not know? And typically you want to tell an audience things about itself. So what do you have to say? I think another thing is to make sure that you have correctly assessed the competitive field and you've determined who is saying what in their thought leadership that I compete with. And what you're looking for is the lightly occupied or unoccupied intellectual space. Is there a topic or a set of topics that my target audience really cares about? And not a lot of my peers and competitors are talking about it. That's a sweet spot. That's kind of where you want to go, because you've got a lot of opportunity there to be useful. And the extent to which you're interesting and you go viral is, in large part, determined by how interesting you can be. I know, it's kind of an obvious thing. But we've seen three factors to drive thought leadership traction. In other words, if the question is how does a thought leader build profile, they're building it with some combination, potentially, of three factors: Organically, how important is the platform from which he or she is speaking? So, if you're the CEO of a national bank, right, we don't have one this country, we've got the Federal Reserve. But if you've got a national bank, or if you run the world's most highly valued auto company, Tesla, you don't have to say things that are as important or say them in as interesting a way. Because what you say coming from a highly important platform gives you a head start. If you don't have organic import out in the world, then you've got a second factor, which is the flair or the style with which you can say things. So if you're in a highly regulated industry, like investing, in public markets, most places, you can't be very interesting, because you're highly regulated, in how you say things. But the example I like to give on people who use the how to great effect are the Kardashians. So if you just stepped back in the world, my daughter when she was in high school said that the Kardashians were a lot like iceberg lettuce, they are everywhere, seem to never go away, and they have low nutritional value. So like, how does this family which really doesn't have any talents or exceptional contribution to the world, why have they stayed in celebrity news for, what are we at, 20 years now? I mean, dad got a murderer off, and the rest of them just kind of do period kooky things, and they get a substantial portion of the public to buy products with their names on it, I mean, it's a good work, if you can get it, I don't have a lot of respect for it. But it's just, they're an extreme example, of using style to get attention generated. The third is what most of our companies have to work with, which is the what you say. So there's who you are out in the world, how you're gonna say what you're gonna say, and what you're gonna say. And it's that third one, where most b2b companies have to live almost exclusively, unless you're of a certain size like Tesla. And I think Tesla is arguably the biggest clean economy company in the world. And I don't think,... it's an elite by itself. We... I think, over time, more clean economy companies will become household names that will become the main economy. And when we get there, then this formula changes. But right now, you're really relegated to what you have to say. So that brings both good news and bad news. The bad news is what you say matters. And it's really your only focus. And you have to really, you got to have something interesting to say you can't be interesting in any other way. The good news is that it simplifies your focus, you have fewer variables, so the equations are easier to run, so to speak. And if I know that I only have my what I say, to make my way out in the world to make my public case that hyper focuses me on making sure I'm delivering value to a discrete audience. Does that make sense?

Monika Ruzicka: 18:42

Yes. Yes. Thank you for laying it out like this. Mike, I have one more question. So if I am a CEO or another high ranking executive of a business, and as you said, you know, it takes time and dedication to be active on social. What would you tell me, why should I spend my time there?

Mike Casey: 19:09

Really good question. I'll answer that question hypothetically. When I'm asked, as I often am, what's in it for the company to take precious CEO time and devote it to thought leadership? The shorter answer is, well, what's your business objective? What's the most important objective you're trying to achieve this year? And then there's an honest question that a consultant like me has to answer: do I have a case to make that achieving that particular goal can be significantly supported, and cost effectively supported through thought leadership? If there's a case, then I'll make it. Very often a CEO will need to engage in public case making to make private case making more effective. In other words, we do content marketing, so the mid sales funnel conversation with a particular prospect is more advanced and goes easier. That's a micro example. But it's the same thing. So whether you're trying to get treated fairly by governments, or you are trying to get evaluated accurately by markets, or you're trying to have customers see the value of your product accurately, it's just too busy of a world to rely on individual retail communication, in person communication, or one on one. We've seen sales teams across the sectors we service struggle with what we call the sixth email problem. Let's say I meet you, Monika, at a trade show, you're a prospect and we exchange cards and you say, Great, I'll be back in the office two weeks from now. Give me a call then, or reach out to me. And I do. Well, you come back to a pile of emails and meetings, a lot of work. And I go from someone you want to talk to, to a nice idea if you can get to it. And if I'm not doing effective content marketing, that I'm sure it gets into your world, when you move from a potential future prospect to an immediate sales prospect, I'm at a disadvantage, if I'm relying only on in-person engagement. Because I haven't gotten the engagement yet. I haven't got you to respond to me, I've sent six emails in and I'm beginning to train you to see me as an annoyance. So I went from, at the tradeshow, went from somebody you'd like to talk to, now I'm just an annoyance. Content marketing and thought leadership helps solve that problem. Because it makes the company available to you, it makes my products available to you, when you move from I might buy at some point to I'm now actively looking to buy. So there's that general case making but here's another thing, most CEOs that I'm running into are my age or a little younger. I'm 57. So I started my career pre internet. And I've seen the changes that the digital world has brought to the way that humans interact with information and with each other. And one of the big and tragic changes that digital has brought about is the death of journalism, which we're still in the throes of. I think what's journalism 20 years from now, I'm not really sure what's going to look like. But I can tell you in the US, you've had a couple of 1000 news media outlets go out of business the last 15 years, you've got 1300 communities around the United States who are essentially news deserts. There's no local news media. And we are doing active work right now in three or four US states and getting traditional news media in those markets to do anything other than cover shootings and car wrecks, is really hard. It's much harder than it was 10 years ago, because there's just fewer people, there's less dollars coming into these outlets. There's far fewer people. And I find that a lot of the CEOs that are close to my age have not had a reason to pay attention to the shifts in how humans are communicating with each other. And so they have a legacy mindset of what traditional news media can do for them. So they think in terms of traditional PR, I'm going to give you something in your news release, you're going to send it out, I'm going to pitch 30 outlets and magic is going to happen. It just doesn't work that way anymore. So a frequent top reason that I will cite to a CEO who is considering devoting some of his or her time to a thought leadership program is: you are the newspaper. You are the TV show, in some respect. Your voice published by you has to perform the function that news media used to perform because there's just way less of it to get.

Monika Ruzicka: 24:02

That's an interesting comparison. I would like to link this back to what you said earlier that investing CEO time into social media and thought leadership needs to support the business objectives. Of course that's individual for each business, but a recent LinkedIn research has found that 56% of professionals say a business executive's presence on social media positively influences their purchasing decision. And 66% say they would be more likely to recommend a company or brand if they followed a company's executive on social media. And then the last couple of data points I would like to add are from the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer, a survey of over 30 6000 respondents across 28 countries, and this survey found that business is actually today the most trusted institution at 61%, followed by NGOs, non government organizations, at 59%, government's at 52%, and media comes in last at 50%.

Mike Casey: 25:29

Yeah, it's just, there's just no getting around the death of business media. And it's tragic. I mean, I grew up in this profession as somebody who, I love traditional news media, I love talking to reporters, it's been one of the great pleasures of my professional life. But there's no getting around the fact that we have 330 million people in the US right now, in 2022. And 1990, I think we had 235 million people. So we have 100 million more people in the country now than we did in 1990. But we have half the number of people working as daily reporters. Half. And this, there's just no getting around that reality.

Monika Ruzicka: 26:13

How did you, Mike, if you don't mind me asking, how did you embrace it for yourself, LinkedIn? And how do you, next to all the other tasks that you have as a CEO of your own business, how do you manage to be present on LinkedIn? And what do you focus on in your own professional life?

Mike Casey: 26:34

Thank you, good questions. In no particular order, how did I embrace it? I embraced it slowly. And I had people on staff telling me I was wrong. And they told me I was wrong over a couple of years, because I grew up it with an ethic in this profession that my job was to make other people prominent, not for me to be prominent. And when I was my first 10 years in my career, those who were out front of their organization out front of their principal, getting attention for themselves as the comms person, they were frowned on. They were they were looked at as arrogant or showboats, or not really doing their job. And as the 2010s went on, I realized that the marketplace was rewarding prominence, and it was punishing obscurity. In other words, I have found that whether it's in politics, or it's in nonprofit work, or it's in the private sector, human beings conflate prominence with competence. I know a lot of people who are not prominent and who don't enjoy prominence, but are highly competent. But in this age of what Jeff Jarvis calls publicness, prominence is conflated with competence, I said, Okay, well, it's not a trend, I'm going to be able to fight and there's no... I'm not going to be conscientious objector here, I've got to be out in the world, making my living. And if I'm trying to be as effective a voice for the transition to the clean economy as I can be, I have to work with trends, rather than against them. Okay, so the next step was how? How would I be a thought leader? I have had one sales job in my life, I lasted a week, I sold magazine subscriptions to senior citizens who really shouldn't have been buying them in the first place, I hated it. And I vowed never to do it again. So I now I'm our consultant, I'm not a salesperson, even though my job is business development as the head of this firm. So the only place for me to go given I don't want to be salesy, I don't want to be hustling people for things they don't need, and I need to be prominent is to then take what I've learned in 37 years of doing what I'm doing, and condense it into usable formats for the next generation of clean economy communicators, and the up and coming younger clean economy CEOs. And can I say things to them that they will find useful, even if they're never going to give me a check? So then let me go to the how. I have a quote from Seth Godin that I absolutely love. He said, marketing is identifying the smallest possible viable audience and super engaging and super delighting it. I'm paraphrasing some. And so for me, I don't want a thought leader by just saying, running my mouth about current events. I don't think really anybody outside my mother, and maybe my wife care about what I think about a particular topic just because I think it. Do I have something meaningful to impart to people that can then turn around and use it to profit in their own life? If I can clear that bar, I will post something, I think so if I say something that I think would be useful to people, then it's in the zone for me to be wanting to spend time writing about and publishing it. So, in sum, I had a business imperative to be prominent because those who are less competent than us, but were more prominent, were getting rewarded by the marketplace. Couldn't have that, so okay we gotta be prominent. Don't want to be salesy, don't want to be a Kardashian, want to be meaningful. Okay, so now I have to reduce my audience to those who I can actually impart something of value to. And I'm going to market the hell out of them by saying... really making myself clear the bar of insight rather than content. That's my journey.

Monika Ruzicka: 30:26

Thank you for sharing that.

Lisa Davidson: 30:27

Yeah. Those are some really great insights, Mike. So before you give even more tips on becoming a successful thought leader on social media, I'd like to ask you our mandatory question here on our podcast. And that's what your favorite dish or food from your part of the world is. Now, we heard you currently live in Arlington, Virginia, can you recommend anything specific there?

Mike Casey: 30:50

Well, I can and I'm going to, I guess, rest my answer on the reality that America is a very cosmopolitan place despite perhaps impressions in some quarters out in the planet. My favorite dish is açaí, which I first learned about when I started competing in Brazilian jujitsu. It's Brazilian and the Brazilians offered... one of their many gifts to the world is açaí. And I have been to Brazil three times for international competitions and we went to a town with team we were always doing açaí tourism, and I just have loved it ever since. I don't think I've ever had açaí and not absolutely loved it. And we have really good açaí here at Playa Bowls in Northern Virginia. So my daughter works there. And, and she makes a really mean açaí so that's my favorite dish.

Monika Ruzicka: 31:35

Nice. Those are the açaí berries, right, that are then processed into these bowls with cereals and other good ingredients, right?

Mike Casey: 31:46

That's right, açaí berries tastes like mud, they have to be dressed up with sugar, or they will often add what they call guarana, which is a more flavorful plant, but it's it's very sugary. And it's got caffeine in it.

Lisa Davidson: 31:59

Thanks for taking us onthis little food excursion. But it's time to get back to business. And I'd like to spend a little more time talking about the role of social media. Now, we touched on the topic before, the role of social media in general. Mike, I'd like to know what kind of role social media plays for you in comparison to other business channels? And what role should it play for any modern business these days?

Mike Casey: 32:29

I can't speak to any modern business, I can speak to the companies that we serve. So we typically serve clean economy companies. We only serve cleaning company companies, very few exceptions. And most of them, not all, are b2b. So what is the role of social in b2b? Social and your website must be at the center of your corporate communications efforts. If your corporate communications program is primarily comprised of news releases, and sending out news releases on PR Newswire, you are missing out on a lot of potential, a lot of potential. What we know is that in b2b sales, all b2b sales, up to 60% of the purchase decision is made through online search and content. And that's the first 60%. So it's pretty important. And we guesstimate that if it's an industrial good or service, high ticket, long lead time, a lot of due diligence, like most of the companies that we service, we're going to pare that back to say 25% of the purchase decision is made through online search and content. And if that's the case, when a market qualified lead moves to become a sales qualified lead, in other words, someone who might buy from you at some point decides they're ready to go buy from a company like yours, don't you want to have been engaging with them, or at least make sure you're in their search universe? So your stream and your website become part of what they're using to form that early part of their purchase decision. That's the real value for social in b2b marcomm in our experience.

Lisa Davidson: 34:17

Thanks, Mike. Monika, do you have anything else to add?

Monika Ruzicka: 34:20

Just one quick addition here with regards to the purchasing process. I've recently spoken with a large company that we work with in Europe and they are a technology b2b company, they they set the bar for themselves in the higher ranges of what you've mentioned. And they also defined it for themselves as clearly important to influence their clients in those early stages of the decision making process and I like that you say it on our podcast because there's so many statistics out there on social media and influencers talking about these numbers, but just these numbers are real. You see them, we see them. And that's how decision making is done today.

Mike Casey: 35:07

Yeah, very much agree. I can tell that I'm among fellow travelers.

Lisa Davidson: 35:12

Okay. So my guess we are slowly coming to an end, I'd like to ask you to share your top three tips for marketers who want to help their executives become thought leaders. What kind of support is needed? What's the most important things they should keep in mind?

Mike Casey: 35:30

So your question is, how do you convince leadership teams to update their view of what marketing can do for them? And why they should engage in it? Is that correct?

Lisa Davidson: 35:43

Yes. And what kind of steps are necessary to support them on that journey?

Mike Casey: 35:48

I think your first step is to go to the sales team, and ask them, Are you experiencing the sixth email problem? You will probably want to use a different term for that, although you're going to plagiarize mine. But how's it going? Is it easier this year to get in front of prospects than it was five years ago? You will get universal responses, No, it's harder. Because the volume of electronic communications, the amount of screen time per average human is just going up. And so the amount of attention available for you to win goes down. And I think once you hear from the sales team, you have a much more empowered position to suggest a communications investment of time or money or both by leadership team because you can point to a problem. Our sales team is saying that they're not... it's harder to get the same result that you are tasking them with achieving. I can help with that. And I can help them with that, if you give me a little bit of your time and a small budget, that to me is probably the most that your most important step. I would also go armed into that conversation with even an informal competitive analysis. And we do these a lot for clients, it's often we insist on doing right at first is to say, of your competitors, who's out there saying what and how are they delivering it to the marketplace? So we can identify the lightly occupied or unoccupied messaging space. And then I want to think, Okay, so here's what here are meaningful things that we can be talking about, they align with our offering, and the value it provides to our customers, who in my leadership team would be most effective at speaking to that topic? And I think once you have those three things lined up, then you're really empowered to have the conversation with greater odds of success.

Lisa Davidson: 37:43

Thanks, Mike. One more question. So if someone has never used social media before, would you suggest them to first go for like an internal audience or immediately attack the external audience as well?

Mike Casey: 38:03

I think the first thing I'd suggest they do is pick the platform with a clear rationale, I learned early on only be on platforms that you're going to be significantly active on. I'm not an Instagram, I'm not on Twitter. I'm only on LinkedIn, for professional life and Facebook for private life. And that's purposeful, because Twitter is a very demanding spouse, if you're going to get married to him or her, it's, they're going to demand a lot from you. And for me, LinkedIn is the place where I'm really investing the time to learn the platform, to learn the nuances, to learn the algorithms, and to make sure that my thought leadership, the way I offer what I'm offering comports with the demands of the platform. So I think go where you're actually going to invest. That's number one. Number two is, watch, and observe, and listen, to understand how others who you want to meet or exceed, what are they doing. Because you're gonna learn a lot by keeping your mouth shut and listening at first. And then I think you can begin to dip your toe in the water, participate in the conversation here or there, then begin to put your foot out and offer it. I keep a 75/25 ratio, talking about your target audience 75% of time, 25% talking about yourself. I actually tried to never talk about myself unless I can relate it to the audience in a way that delivers value.

Lisa Davidson: 39:35

Thanks, Mike. That doesn't make a lot of sense. And I'm sure that helps a lot of people out especially the ones that are a little worried about taking the first step.

Monika Ruzicka: 39:43

Yes, fantastic input. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you coming on today.

Mike Casey: 39:48

Thanks for having me. It's been fun. I really enjoyed talking to both of you.

Lisa Davidson: 39:51

Well, thanks again, Mike for taking the time and sharing your knowledge with us and our listeners. And you guys at home. Don't forget to connect with my console. for media, I put all of his links into today's show notes. Thanks again for being part of the show Mike and thank you guys at home for listening to the Straight to Business podcast.

Mike Casey: 40:55

Thanks