Influencers Who Inspire Series – Dan Schawbel

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We continue talking with some of the greatest influencers in the industry with this week’s interview with Dan Schawbel. Dan Schawbel is the founder of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and management consulting firm. He is the author of the #1 international best-selling book, Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future, now in 11 languages and he has been interviewed in top publications around the world such as Inc., Fortune and TIME, among others.
 

How do you define personal branding?
 

Personal branding is the process by which you unearth what makes you special and then communicate it to the right people who would benefit from your abilities. It’s about being authentic, having a specific audience in mind, and having flexible goals. It’s about believing in yourself, marketing yourself and making a commitment to success.  Remember that the product (you) comes before the marketing (selling yourself). If you aren’t extremely good at a skill or knowledgeable on a topic, all the marketing and social media tools in the world won’t save you, they will just bring you down faster.
 

You have interviewed so many interesting people. Who has been the most surprising?
 

Out of about 650 total interviews since 2007, I would say that Hulk Hogan was the biggest surprise. He was very laid back, generous, honest and respectful. He opened up about his family, was excited that I grew up as a fan and had a lot of good career advice. He was by his pool in Florida during the interview, so that could have been part of it.
 

What do you love about living in Boston? What do you dislike about living in Boston?

I actually just moved to Boston last year. I grew up in Newton, moved to Waltham to attend Bentley University and I now live in Seaport. I like living in the innovation area because there are a lot of young entrepreneurs (people like me) and it’s an up-and-coming scene. I dislike how there’s no parking in Boston and it can be hard to get around.
 

What inspired you to write your book, “Me 2.0” and what can someone expect to gain from buying/reading it?
 

I had eight internships, seven leadership positions in student-run organizations and had my own small business in college. It still took me about eight months to land a job at EMC after going on several interviews. After a few months at EMC, I started a blog, which eventually turned into PersonalBrandingBlog.com after I read the Tom Peters’ “Brand Called You” article in early 2007. Within six months, I launched my own magazine, online video show, and wrote articles on personal branding for online sources. Fast Company profiled me for everything I had done in six months. EMC had no idea what I was doing outside of work but saw my social media abilities and recruited me internally to be the first social media specialist. This inspired me to write Me 2.0 because I was recruited based on the personal brand I had established online, instead of applying for jobs. It was a life changing experience and I captured it in my first book.
 

What are your hobbies or passions outside of work?

Work is obviously a passion of mine but I like to run, travel and meet new people as much as possible.
 

What is your favorite travel destination and why?
 

I really don’t have a favorite travel destination. I like Chicago, LA, NYC and the Bahamas. I always enjoy coming back to Boston though because I’m a big fan of the Seaport and the community here.
 

You are certainly a young entrepreneur and have done so much so early in your career.  What are you most proud of? What else do you have planned for 2012 and beyond?
 

I would say that I’m most proud of turning Me 2.0 into the #1 book in Japan, despite not knowing the language.

I started a company called Millennial Branding back in early 2010, which started off as a full-service personal branding agency and is now a Gen-Y marketing research and consulting firm. I also signed my second book deal with St. Martins Press after over three years of rejection. The book is going to come out in the Fall of 2013 and it’s focused on how to get ahead in your career when you already have a job.

Persuasive Picks for week of 4/2/12

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Bored with your boards? Jennifer Van Grove of VentureBeat reviews one of the most requested features as Pinterest introduces customizable board covers – offering “pinners” the ability to choose a pin to be the cover for each board.

Tara Meehan writes that properly regulating social media shouldn’t be viewed as a negative. In fact, a compliant social media strategy can strengthen your messaging, build better relationships with existing clients and make you more attractive to potential clients. Here’s 4 Reasons Why All Companies Should Be Social Media Compliant via iMediaConnection.

Want Real Business Results From Facebook? Run a Social Campaign writes Mark Schmulen in this MarketingProfs post that provides examples of effective social media marketing via Facebook; as well as, explains how Facebook social campaigns can drive business results.

Businesses are getting more sophisticated in their use of social networking, so too are the metrics by which they measure social business ROI. As your business gets more social-savvy, Debra Donston-Miller of InformationWeek provides 5 Social Media Metrics That Matter Now that will help strengthen your metrics strategy.

Persuasive Picks for week of 3/19/12

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Pinterest released a new page design for profile pages this week – Danielle Leitch of SocialMediaToday discusses the improved functionality and advantages the new design will provide for both “pinners” and businesses alike in her post Pinterest has a New Design.

This week also brought the announcement of the integration of social media into Google Analytics, bridging the gap between social media and the metrics businesses care about. Frank Reed, Managing Editor at Marketing Pilgrim, asks Was Analytics Google’s REAL Social Media Missing Link? in his latest post that predicts marketers will be looking more closely at more social media channels and see the value of being in even more places.

As Twitter celebrated it’s sixth birthday this week, Nancy Scola set out on a quest for the origins of a hashtag and came up empty handed. In her latest post Our social-media amnesia, she discusses the access and value of archival tweets – via Reuters.

Speaking of hashtags, Todd Wasserman of Mashable focuses on 6 Successful Twitter Hashtag Campaigns that effectively harnessed Twitter in a way that provoked positive discussion and action.

Influencers Who Inspire: Hubspot’s Mike Volpe

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Just a little over a year ago, Christine Perkett won a guest spot on Hubspot TV with Mike Volpe.  Christine received 40% of the vote and had the privilege of guest hosting with Mike live from their Cambridge, MA offices.  We’ve always had a huge appreciation for Mike here at PerkettPR, and appreciated him welcoming Christine so warmly and making her guest spot a really fun and rewarding experience. We were psyched he agreed to do an interview for our blog and to be a part of our Influencers who Inspire series.

Mike is the Chief Marketing Officer of HubSpot. He joined in early 2007 as the company’s fifth employee  and currently serves as Chief Marketing Officer.  He heads  HubSpot’s lead generation and branding strategy through inbound marketing, including blogging, search engine optimization, video marketing, and social  media.  Since Mike joined HubSpot, the company has  grown from 10 to 5,000 customers, expanded from five to 300 employees, and raised $65 million in venture capital.  Under Mike’s leadership, HubSpot’s marketing  has won more than 30 marketing awards and has been featured in over 20 marketing  and business books.  Mike is a cutting-edge B2B inbound marketer who speaks at  numerous conferences, hosts a weekly live marketing video podcast on HubSpot TV, is one of the 100 most popular marketers on  Twitter, consistently posts on blog.hubspot.com, and appears as  a marketing speaker at  industry conferences.  He has also guest lectured at Harvard Business School,  Babson University, Carnegie Mellon, TCU, Boston University, and MIT Sloan School of Management.

 

You wear many hats at HubSpot. How do you manage it all?

The truth is that I don’t manage it at all.  I have a great team.  At this point in our growth, there is little I can do as one person directly that has a huge impact.  The impact I can have is by setting the right strategy and playbook, making sure we have the right people on the team, and mentoring the team members to help them grow.

 

What do you love about your role at Hubspot? Anything you dislike about your role or would like to change?

I love marketing.  Call me a marketing geek, but I love thinking about marketing problems and talking about marketing.  Doing marketing at HubSpot is like a triple dose of marketing because we’re marketing our marketing software to marketers.  There isn’t much I would change – I’d love it if we had a gym in the office or had a chef cater our meals, both of which we are considering for our next space.

 

If you could golf with anyone in particular (celebrity or athlete), who would it be and who would win?

I love to golf, and Tiger Woods is the natural choice because his raw talent is a level above everyone else.  But I don’t think it would be much fun to play a round with him, it would be too intense and he’d probably get really frustrated with me really fast, and it just would not be fun.  So I’ll go with Bill Murray.  He is a good golfer and hilarious – nothing could be more fun than to play 18 with him.

 

What topics do you enjoy speaking about the most?

Is there something to speak about besides marketing?  I actually don’t speak a lot anymore, but when I do, I prefer to speak about my own experiences in marketing.  That is what I know best and I usually hate it when some “guru” is up on stage talking about marketing, yet they have not worked in marketing at a real company in years.

 

What is next for you in 2012? And, for HubSpot?

In 2011 my wife and I had our first child, sold our condo in the city, moved to the suburbs after we renovated a house, hired a nanny and my wife went back to work.  So we’re looking to have a less hectic year in 2012.

For HubSpot though, I think 2012 will be a huge year where a lot of the groundwork we have done over the past couple of years starts to pay off in a big way.  I am more positive about the next 12 months than I have ever been in the history of the company.  There are so many things to be excited about, most of which are not ready for prime time yet.  All I will say is make sure to join us at Inbound 2012 for an amazing event and some big announcements.

 

Persuasive Picks for week of 3/12/12

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Does social media affect how you spend money? You betcha. Drew Olanoff of TheNextWeb says that it isn’t whether social services influence how we spend money, but how they affect our habits – and gives readers a closer look at three ways social media is doing this: influence, information, and indiscretion (yes, indiscretion).

Lisa Evans gives some expert advice on How Small Businesses Can Integrate SEO Into Their Social Media Efforts. She writes that optimizing your social media efforts so that both search engines and social community members can find your content is essential, and provides some helpful tips to integrate into your social media strategy – via ClickZ

Jason Blount posted on SocialMediaToday that Facebook Is No Longer Just Social Media – rather it has evolved into a personal representation of a user’s self and pretty soon almost every application that you use on a regular basis will integrate directly with your Timeline.

A recent report published on MarketingProfs, LinkedIn Use by Professionals in Industrial Sector Surges, shows that the use of LinkedIn among engineering, technical, manufacturing and industrial professionals continues to rise; and sites that keeping up to date with the latest business and product news and technologies is the most popular use of social networking within the tech/industrial sectors.

Influencers Who Inspire: The CMO Site’s Mitch Wagner

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This week’s interview in our “Influencers Who Inspire” series is with Mitch Wagner of The CMO Site.

Mitch Wagner, Editor-in-Chief of The CMO Site, has worked both sides of the street, as a technology journalist and a marketer and social media strategist. He helped lead development of social media marketing strategy for a business-to-business security company. Prior to that, he was an executive editor and writer at InformationWeek, where he launched the publication on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin. He pioneered blogging for The CMO Site’s parent company, United Business Media. Mitch has been a writer and editor at InternetWeek, Computerworld, and more.

He started his career in technology journalism covering Digital Equipment Corp. and IBM, then covered operating systems before leaving that beat to start writing about this new idea of doing business on the Internet (against the advice of his editors, who were sure the Internet wouldn’t last). Mitch’s first journalism jobs were on local community newspapers in the New York metropolitan area; on his very first job, after writing and pasting up the whole newspaper, he put the bundles in the back of his car and delivered them.

Mitch is a social media addict. Connect with Mitch on Twitter; @MitchWagner; Facebook, and Google+. Mitch lives with his wife in San Diego, where he avoids direct sunlight.

Persuasive Picks for week of 3/5/12

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Forbes contributor Anthony Kosner breaks down the success of YouTube’s recently Most Popular video KONY 2012, a poignant 30 minute video with over 50 million views that begs the question; can the power of social media do what foreign policy cannot?  Kosner’s piece provides  12 Lessons from KONY 2012 from Social Media Power Users including be positive, get their attention and make it personal.

Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post looks at the impact of  Social Media in the media. Has the viral nature of news accomplished anything? Read more in her piece Virality Uber Alles: What the Fetishization of Social Media Is Costing Us All

This week also brings us a creative picture painting of  The Beauty of Social Media, an infographic posted by Shea Bennett that takes a closer look at how the beauty industry has embraced Social Media, and the innovative ways the top brands are using Social Media channels in this post by AllTwitter.

For most, Social Media brings to mind Facebook or Twitter. Krista Neher points out that there are more opportunities beyond the obvious to grow brand presence in her recent post 6 Effective but Ignored Social Media Marketing Sites on ClickZ.

Influencers Who Inspire: VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi

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As PR professionals, we’re often asked “who do you know” and “will they take your call?” It’s part of the reason that we started our “Influencers Who Inspire” series – to not only validate those questions but to support and promote the work by influencers that we all admire and follow. And we were stoked when Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat agreed to catch up with us for our next interview.  Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and The Xbox 360 Uncloaked. You can follow Dean on Twitter at @deantak.

What’s the strangest/most memorable place from which you ever conducted an interview?

I interviewed Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, in a car driven by his bodyguards. It was hard to concentrate on asking questions in the moving vehicle.

How do you keep your sense of humor when managing multiple deadlines?

Who has time for humor? Well, I enjoy writing. So that makes a big difference. I consider most of my work to be fun.

What are your interests outside of tech/gaming (hobbies or passions)?

Taking pictures. Traveling. Going to the kids’ sports games. And, I do play games for fun.

You have authored two books. Do you have any others in the works and can you tell us a little bit about them?

I’ve written two long stories that we have turned into eBooks for VentureBeat. We posted these on the Amazon Kindle and Apple App stores. The Complete History of Zynga (so far)  and Xbox: The Making of a Bad Ass Machine.

What is your favorite travel destination and why?

I enjoy my annual trip to Seattle for a game conference. It’s a great city and there are always cool places to see and great places to eat. And good coffee.

What is next for you in 2012?

We’re expanding GamesBeat into a destination site, as the second main property at VentureBeat. We’ve hired our Review Editor, Sebastian Haley, and our Editor in Chief of GamesBeat, Dan “Shoe” Hsu. We have 11 freelance game writers working for us. Now we have to execute on bringing our crowdsource writing team, Bitmob, into GamesBeat and then write as much as we can for rest of the year.

Hopefully we’ll write some more long stories that can be turned into eBooks.

Happy Employee Appreciation Day to PerkettPR – An Amazing Staff

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The first Friday in March marks Employee Appreciation Day and I wanted to be sure to send a small token of appreciation out to my amazing staff. In the PR agency business, it’s not unusual to see a revolving door of employees and I have to say that I am very lucky to never have had this problem. I have a talented staff that is smart, energetic, creative and amazingly loyal to PerkettPR. I’m not quite sure – you’d have to ask them – why I’m lucky enough to have such a good retention rate, but I do know that we just celebrated milestones of 4, 7, and even 10 years with several employees (out of 14 in business to-date).

I always wanted to build an agency that was less political than a typical PR environment, and so we’ve always been pretty choosy about who we hire. We want folks who have entrepreneurial attitudes, but who aren’t going to stick around for just a few years and then take off. We ask employees to leave their egos at the door and put clients and teammates first. We require collaborative work, especially as a virtual environment, and we can’t offer anyone a corner office to show off to their friends and family. And yet, we have a staff that sticks by one another, challenges each other to work better and smarter every day, and that clients continually come back to because not only do the PerkettPR-ers turn out amazing results, but they are fun to work with. I can attest to that. We have such a good camaraderie that it often surprises people. After one six-month long RFP process, in which we were unanimously chosen over 14 other agencies, I was told that one of the reasons we were hired was because “Your team had such an amazing spirit of collaboration that we’ve rarely seen with any agency – let alone a virtual team.” That’s right – you’d never know we’re not in the same “office” every day. We are true teammates and it shows in our results.

I appreciate my staff more than I can ever express – you can’t always get along with everyone but I have to say I’ve been very lucky to have had truly great relationships with 99% of the folks who have worked here. Even in tough times when we’ve had to let people go, they’ve remained friends and professional colleagues and that means the world to me – it shows me that we really do work with those of great character and exceptional spirit.

Hiring folks with such commendable attributes translates to a team that has worked together for years, can ramp up quickly for clients and that many clients have had the luck to work with over their careers, even while moving from company to company over a span of a decade+. It feels great to be able to say, “Yes he/she is still here and we can get them on your account” when a former client comes back to hire us again.

So thank you, PPR team, for being not only amazing PR professionals, but just damn great people to know. I am blessed. And truly grateful.