The Engaging Brand

Show 282 - How to manage your energy through thoughts

Show 281 of The Engaging Brand leadership and marketing podcast is ready just for you. To subscribe or listen on your PC now - both for free, you don't need to download anything - all explained at the end of the post and brought by our sponsor: GotoMeeting  Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days.

On today's podcast we talk to Janet Richmond about how to manage your thoughts, we discuss

• What is energy of thought?
• Are thoughts contagious?
• How you can manage your thought process
• Are negative thoughts more powerful than positive thoughts?
• How to neutralize a negative thought
• Techniques to manage negative meetings or negative people
• Do negative thoughts drain energy?
• Are there negative thoughts which are good for us?

Don't forget to subscribe to the show in iTunes or on the Blubrry site.

If you have feedback for me on the show or topics that you would like me to cover then e-mail me at anna@theengagingbrand.com or join me on twitter.

How you can listen to the Engaging Brand

1) You can listen on your PC now without downloading any software just click hear to listen to the latest marketing podcast

2) You can subscribe to the show via iTunes or

3) If you use a different podcatcher then you can subscribe using the following  http://www.podcasternews.com/feeds/enbr.xml

Ideas - Protected species of business

Just as humans need oxygen to breathe, businesses need ideas to thrive. Ideas are the fuel, they are the heartbeat of a company.

Ideas need nurturing, they need the right culture to grow in.....they need

• Open conversations
• Genuine listening
• A lack of fear about risk...that doesn't mean risk for risk's sake, it means understanding that fear of risk is a natural predator for ideas, manage risk but don't let risk stem the flow of ideas.
• Encouragement of ideas from any part of the organisation....believe in the power of people, don't outsource to one department or the top rung of the management ladder...ideas can come from anyone, anywhere, any job title
• Invest in ideas....personal development, in team working, in listening skills
• Invest in people who think as well as do...thinking is working, thinking is growing, thinking is a skill as important as any other in the business

Are you thinking forward?

It is not what life does to you, it is what you do with your life. Simple concept yet more people spend time thinking about the former than the latter.

I sometimes wonder why? This is what I tend to think...

Is it easier to deal with problems thrown at you, than to create a pathway to the dreams that lie deep within your soul.

Dad once challenged me to "Stop thinking about what has happened and start thinking about what you can create now that you have the knowledge gained through those challenges you have faced"

This week a great challenge is to think about how you spend your 'thinking' and 'talking' time......have you got the balance right between learning from the past and planning for the future?

Show 281 - The Google Way

Show 281 of The Engaging Brand leadership and marketing podcast is ready just for you. To subscribe or listen on your PC now - both for free, you don't need to download anything - all explained at the end of the post and brought by our sponsor: GotoMeeting  Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days.

A continental feel to the show today with Bernard Girard  who "lectures around the world on Google's methods of management and ways that those methods can be applied to businesses of all kinds." Bernard joins us to talk about the Google model, in terms of both the talent and the economic model of the business. This is based on The Google Way which he has just written. We talk about

• Why is there a fascination with Google?
• How Google can be seen as non conformist
• The idea of a gift exchange economic model
• How they are creating new marketplaces for new revenue generation
• Why has Google been successful with the free model?
• The talent management system at Google
• The reputation model of Google HR system
• The concept of 20% of time spent on own projects
• The peer review system of Google
• Importance of real time data

Don't forget to subcribe to the show in iTunes or on the Blubrry site.

If you have feedback for me on the show or topics that you would like me to cover then e-mail me at anna@theengagingbrand.com or join me on twitter.

How you can listen to the Engaging Brand

1) You can listen on your PC now without downloading any software just click hear to listen to the latest marketing podcast

2) You can subscribe to the show via iTunes or

3) If you use a different podcatcher then you can subscribe using the following  http://www.podcasternews.com/feeds/enbr.xml

What is your brand personality?

It sounds like a daft question! However what we believe our personality to be and what others perceive, can be two completely different things...I mean I am convinced I am honest, bubbly, giving, caring, intelligent...you see my perception and your perception can be two quite different things!! Humans often remain blind to their own areas for development....after all I don't want to shout about my lack of self confidence or inability to say no.

Social media can help you define - or as I like to say refine - your brand personality. It is like a paper trail of conversations, of how you express your brand. Social media can be an important mirror to your perception of your brand.

Two questions I think social media can be really useful in assessing are

1. What do we express as our values and do the words we use convey those intangible emotion into tangible reality?
2. What are other people saying about our brand?

Actually, this only works if you have that degree of humility and self awareness to honestly assess what social media is telling you....people talk about not wanting to "go the social media route because of the potential for bad press".

Social media should not be feared for reflecting the views, what should be feared is remaining ignorant that those views are held.....

10 Questions to Develop Your Brand

So much of our time is spent finding the answers, but to find those answers how often do you spend asking yourself the right question?

1. Can you explain in less than 15 seconds what value your brand provides the world?
2. Can you explain in less than a minute your vision for your brand?
3. What are your 3 biggest challenges and what are you doing about them?
4. What are the 3 biggest opportunities and how are you planning to exploit them?
5. Do you read, think, listen outside of your company...and do you use those ideas to improve your brand?
6. Do you spend time each week on your own development?
7. Would you follow your blog?
8. Would you follow your tweets?
9. When was the last time you ordered secretly from your company - and were you wowed!
10. What three words would a new customer and an existing customer use to describe your company/service? Are they representative of the brand personality you are trying to portray?

Show 280 - The Challenges of B2B Marketing

Show 280 of The Engaging Brand leadership and marketing podcast is ready just for you. To subscribe or listen on your PC now - both for free, you don't need to download anything - all explained at the end of the post and brought by our sponsor: GotoMeeting  Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days.

I am delighted to be joined by Suzanne Lowe, president of Expertise Marketing, LLC. She is an analyst, advisor, writer and speaker on the best practices and emerging strategies in professional services marketing. She has just written a book called Integration Imperative and we discuss

• Is Business to business marketing different to business to consumer?
• Is B2B marketing easier?
• The subjectivity of a marketing strategy.
• Is a marketing strategy in B2B best built over the medium term?
• How B2B marketing is about all functions
• The friendship model of marketing
• In these recessionary times what should professional services be doing?
• Outside trust starts with inside honesty.

Don't forget to subcribe to the show in iTunes or on the Blubrry site.

If you have feedback for me on the show or topics that you would like me to cover then e-mail me at anna@theengagingbrand.com or join me on twitter.

How you can listen to the Engaging Brand

1) You can listen on your PC now without downloading any software just click hear to listen to the latest marketing podcast

2) You can subscribe to the show via iTunes or

3) If you use a different podcatcher then you can subscribe using the following  http://www.podcasternews.com/feeds/enbr.xml

6 Reasons NOT to do social media

I work a lot with businesses who want to know more about social media and you can assess early whether it will work for them. Social media will fail if

1. They see it as a quick fix
2. They see it as a pure sales tool
3. They don't want to invest SOME time
4. They don't have a clear strategy for their business
5. They see customers as customers and not people
6. They are working because its a job, not a passion

When they want to connect, when they are passionate about what they do, when they have motivation not necessarily bundles of money, when they see it as an extension of their brand personality...then the sky is the limit

Show 279 - Jack Trout on Marketing

Show 279 of The Engaging Brand leadership and marketing podcast is ready just for you. To subscribe or listen on your PC now - both for free, you don't need to download anything - all explained at the end of the post and brought by our sponsor: GotoMeeting  Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days.

I am delighted to be joined by Jack Trout one of my favourite marketing authors and strategists. Jack has written a new book called Repositioning which looks at how companies need to evolve their marketing strategies to secure future growth. We discuss

• Do people overcomplicate marketing?
• What Jack means by repositioning?
• How to evolve your marketing brand over time.
• How to recognise a marketing strategy going wrong
• The importance of living and thinking outside the company
• How to create innovation
• How to be innovative within functions
• Is there a risk of changing for change sake
• How to win the argument for change
• How to develop your marketing skills

Don't forget to subcribe to the show in iTunes or on the Blubrry site.

If you have feedback for me on the show or topics that you would like me to cover then e-mail me at anna@theengagingbrand.com or join me on twitter.

How you can listen to the Engaging Brand

1) You can listen on your PC now without downloading any software just click hear to listen to the latest marketing podcast

2) You can subscribe to the show via iTunes or

3) If you use a different podcatcher then you can subscribe using the following  http://www.podcasternews.com/feeds/enbr.xml

10 C's of Employee Engagement

1. Be clear about your expectations
2. Be clear about their expectations
3. Be consistent to the values. Values are for all and are not optional depending on your job title!
4. Be clever in recruitment. It is not about filling a position it is about creating value for both the company and the person.
5. Be creative and flexible to new solutions.
6. Be caring. Engagement comes through person to person -  not title to title. To get the best out of people at work you need to care about the whole person not just the job.
7. Be aggressive with complexity. Complexity kills organisation and saps the energy of the teams. Cutting complexity increases engagement every time.
8. Be communicative. Be open to both talking about aims and ambitions but also open to listening to ideas and concerns. Communication is always two way...one way is the quickest way to disengage people. That is why I believe social media has a real role to play in employee engagement.
9. Be a coach rather than a manager. Ask the questions, develop their thinking and give them freedom and support to succeed.
10. Be a collector of talent. Talent will help you succeed or fail. Talent should never be feared but used as your fuel for your own self development. Be proud of a team which is perceived to be better than you! It is a strength not a weakness....