123: Staying on the Bleeding Edge – Featured Interview with guest expert Mitch Joel

Award-winning Social Media Expert and President of Twist Image

Social Media Expert Mitch Joel talks to Bill Ringle on My Quest for the Best about brand recognition, Walmart, and the biggest changes in the industry since the 1990s.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth. My Quest for the Best is a top-rated small business podcast with over 300 episodes of thought-provoking and insightful interviews with today’s top thought leaders and business experts. Host Bill Ringle’s mission with this show is to provide the strategies, insights, and resources that will unlock the growth potential of your business through these powerful conversations.

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Interview Insights

Listen to this interview to learn:

  • How when you help brands stay on the leading edge, you often have to stay on the bleeding edge
  • Changes that are occurring between the pure play ad agencies vs. the digital agencies
  • Impact of reaching customers when they have many choices of screens, from desktop to iPad/tablet to mobile
  • Fundamental tenets of customer engagement that still guide online marketing strategies
  • What Walmart did differently to engage customers around a Mother’s Day campaign led by Twist Image

Read the Show Notes from this Episode:

  • 1:07 How Joel started his career as a rock journalist and how that experience allowed him to “cut his teeth” on writing and marketing.
  • 2:23 “My real role is business development, everything I do is sort of filtered back to the agency.”
  • 2:45 “I thought, well, I love to write and I love to publish and communicate so why don’t I put my thoughts about the marketing and media landscape out there and see if that attracts a certain type of client?”
  • 3:51 “Helping brands stay at the leading edge forces us to be at the bleeding edge.”
  • 4:26 “Brands want to connect more to their consumers, they want to build more loyalty, they want to create more attention, they want to get customers to spread the gospel for them.”
  • 5:06 Joel recounts the biggest changes in the agency world since the 90s.
  • 5:52 “I think for us it’s been the exploration of other interesting areas of products and services that we can bring to clients.”
  • 7:23 [On engaging customers] – “It’s not just about putting a marketing message in front of them with these tools. These tools allow them to be hyperconnected, completely untethered, and they’re doing things in different environments.”
  • 8:15 How a change in platform allowed Walmart to do a successful Mother’s Day marketing push that effectively engaged its audience.
  • 10:31 “If we do everything right, we have to be prepared for success. Most brands aren’t prepared for success.”
  • 11:26 “Anyone can have an idea and publish that idea in text, images, audio, and video – and what that means is that suddenly you have the ability to publish content, because you can, but to connect in a very real way.”
  • 11:50 “While everybody’s getting more connected in more and more places, brands are still trying to disrupt or jump in on it, versus trying to figure out how to connect within it.”
  • 12:30 “I believe that the winners are the people doing compelling things, and actually it’s a very slow, long, hard, and arduous process to build connections.”
  • 13:21 “Instead of chasing how many likes people have of your company, why not go out and like your customers?”
  • 14:25 “There seems to be a friction between the B2B world and social media, which to me is somewhat quizzical. I think the primary driver of B2B sales is driven by relationships and white papers and testimonials and that sort of more robust marketing endeavors. [It] seems to me that social media is a more compelling platform to share and distribute that type of content in a much more personal way.”
  • 16:05 Joel discusses visions of a future world with products without brands.
  • 16:57 “There seems to me like there’s this interest and burgeoning trend around indie brands and people connecting to things that are less about the logo…and more about the individual.”
  • 17:26 “I think all trends are worthy of paying attention to.”
  • 17:48 “The lessons for me are really about just being aware of new things and I think it’s the new things and how they connect to one another that makes branding and marketing and communications that much more interesting.”
  • 18:28 “I get really excited about the possibility about what it means to have a relationship with a consumer.”
  • 18:58 “Marketers can create things.”
  • 19:22 The phenomena of “Utilitarianism Marketing.”
  • 20:10 “It is staggering to me what one person with a laptop can do.”

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Expert Bio

Mitch Joel is President of Twist Image, an award-winning Digital Marketing, and Communications agency. He is also a blogger, podcaster, passionate entrepreneur, and speaker who connects with people worldwide by sharing his marketing insights on digital marketing and new media.

Marketing Magazine dubbed Mitch the “Rock Star of Digital Marketing” and called him “one of North America’s leading digital visionaries.” In 2006 he was named one of the most influential authorities on Blog Marketing in the world. In 2008, Mitch was named Canada’s Most Influential Male in Social Media, one of the top 100 online marketers in the world, and was awarded the highly prestigious Canada’s Top 40 Under 40. Most recently, Mitch was named one of iMedia’s 25 Internet Marketing Leaders and Innovators in the world.

His first book, Six Pixels of Separation, named after his successful Blog and Podcast, is a business and marketing bestseller. His next book, CTRL ALT DEL, will be out in Spring 2013. Mitch is frequently called upon to be a subject matter expert for BusinessWeek, Fast Company, and many other media outlets. His newspaper business column, New Business – Six Pixels of Separation, runs bi-monthly in both The Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun and he also has a regular column, Media Hacker, on The Huffington Post.

Contact Info for Mitch Joel:

Business Phone: 514-987-9992

Published by Mitch Joel:

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