Great Leaders Leverage Great Messaging
Posted on February 26th, 2010 by admin in Branding & Identity, Crisis Management, Mediums & Markets, Personal Branding
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
Great leaders understand the power, influence, and leverage created by great messaging. Do you ever find yourself sitting back and marveling at those leaders who always seem to have the right thing to say? Contrast this with the feelings you have when you hear an awful sound-bite that makes a leader look either uninformed or unintelligent. The difference between the two aforementioned examples is that great leaders have mastered the art of finding the right message regardless of the medium, market, or constituency being addressed. In today’s post I’ll share some of the messaging secrets used by the best leaders…
In a comment on yesterday’ post, Mark Oakes (
Are you shooting yourself in the foot with your pricing strategy? The simple truth is that most executives avoid the topic altogether. Let me be clear; Pricing Matters…Do you have a pricing strategy, or do you set your prices by some ethereal or arbitrary method? It is my opinion that issues surrounding pricing decisions are root level drivers to a successful business strategy. That said, I’m always amazed at how many corporations and professional advisers seem to pull their pricing out of thin air. Moreover, of those that actually go through some form of disciplined process, many of them seem to believe that once they have set the initial pricing that their job is finished and that the topic of pricing requires no further attention – nothing could be further from the truth. In today’s post I share my thoughts on how to develop a sound pricing strategy…
In honor of President’s Day, I thought I’d take this opportunity to examine the leadership characteristics of the two Presidents for which the holiday is celebrated; George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. It is an astute person who studies history and then applies the lessons learned to their present day life. In the text that follows I’ll look at the unimpeachable character of our first President, and the unparalleled resolve of our sixteenth President.
Determining whether someone is a social media expert or a just another wannabe can be a difficult task for the typical consumer. There is a tremendous amount of noise out there being created by a plethora of ”consultants” professing expertise in what I refer to as the new social sciences: personal branding, social networking, social media marketing, etc. I just did a Google search for the term social media expert and had more than 96 million returned search results…give me a break. So my question is this: what constitutes a “social media expert,” and how do you tell the posers from the players? Which of these professed miracle workers are true professionals, and which ones are simply attempting to gravy-train a rapidly growing market niche in pursuit of a quick buck?
Whether you want to admit it or not, competition is part of your world, and likely a bigger part than you’d care to admit. Granted, exploiting the competition is not a novel concept. Even so, it is still very common to hear many executives adopt a competition neutral position. These executives simply don’t believe competition to be a significant factor in the execution of their business plan. While this may make for a nice sound bite, I don’t buy it, and if they’re truly honest with themselves, neither do they. In business you can either choose to deal with your competition (even if that means partnering with them), or you can opt to stand idly by and let the competition eat your lunch. In today’s post I’ll share my thoughts on the proper way to view your competition and how to identify competitive threats…