Episode Details

Identified in CMO.com’s Top 10 Marketing Thought Leaders and Forbes’ Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers, Neal is a social media strategy consultant, speaker, and podcaster. He works with companies to audit their social media initiatives and creates effective social media strategies while hosting a show called the Maximize Your Social Influence Podcast. 

Considered a regular at Social Media Marketing World having been a speaker every year since its inception, Neal is also a published author of books on social media marketing.  His most recent book “The Age of Influence: The Power of Influencers to Elevate Your Brand (2020)” received a stellar review from John Lee Dumas who calls it “the manifesto for influencer marketing”. 

We talk about:

• His new book: “The Age of Influence” and what made him want to write it
• The gap between what most people consider to be influencer marketing and what its reality and actual potential is
• Why he highlights being an influencer yourself just as much as using influencers in his book
• Leveraging employees and real people to become influencers because people want to do business with people
• How to pick the right influencers for your brand and the number one thing to do if you want to become an influencer for a certain brand
• Shifting from using celebrity influencers that don’t seem very authentic to nano-influencers that are actual users and already have brand affinity to your business
• His career trajectory, the wake up call that convinced him it was time to start his personal brand, and his growing digital footprint today
• The four content mediums that help with generating influence
• The 90-9-1 rule that is seen across different social media platforms and how to make use of this pattern to your benefit
• Why building your personal brand through content creation while you’re still employed is a good career insurance 
• HIs trick for maximizing LinkedIn and getting people outside of your network to see your content
• Why he attributes a training on the Deming Cycle and a former colleague as influences to the way he does his work now
• His decision-making criteria in terms of where he puts his energy as a brand that seems to be doing well on various major platforms
• Picking a platform and doing it well until you wield influence there VS spreading yourself too thinly
• His two personal mantras that highlight showing up and not having any regrets about the past

Books Neal authored that were mentioned in this episode:

• Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing: An Unofficial, Practical Guide to Selling & Developing B2B Business on LinkedIn (2011)
• Maximize Your Social: A One-Stop Guide to Building a Social Media Strategy for Marketing and Business Success (2013)
• The Age of Influence: The Power of Influencers to Elevate Your Brand (2020)

For more of Neal’s work, head on over to his channels:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Neal-Schaffer/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nealschaffer/ 

Podcast: https://nealschaffer.com/maximize-your-social-influence-podcast/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NealSchaffer

Website: https://nealschaffer.com/

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