Craft your compelling story
Craft your compelling story
The power of sharing your authentic, unique origins with current and future clients
Thought leadership is as crucial as ever in 2024, but if we zoom out even farther, we see it’s going to fall under the even-more-important umbrella of personal branding.
Let’s talk about what that could look like for your business.
Today’s agenda:
🧑💼 Why you need to create a personal brand
📧 The truth about email open rates
⏰ What time to post on social media
💼 Briefly — our quick news roundup
⏱️ Up & coming
💪 It’s time to build your personal brand
The world is oversaturated with content, yet there are still brands that manage to stand out from the rest.
How do they do it? They build a compelling personal brand.
🏆 Why CEOs need a personal brand
LaQuita Cleare, public speaking expert and CEO of Clear Communication Academy, has helped business leaders around the world to embrace and share their unique origin story.
The benefits:
Stand out with an authentic voice
Naturally attract those who resonate with your story
Enhance your profitability
Discover new confidence in your skills
Attract high-quality clients
🏗️ How to build your brand
Cleare says leaders have to evaluate themselves to determine their skills, passions, and view on their industry.
They also have to understand how others view them, and request honest feedback.
Actionable steps:
Craft an authentic personal story that highlights your challenges and successes
Establish thought leadership by sharing your industry insights
Build a strong online presence
Be genuine in your interactions with others
Stay informed about industry trends and leadership strategies
Attend industry events, conferences, and networking functions
Maintain consistency across all your communication channels
Give back to your community
What would you add to the list? Have you started your journey toward building a personal brand?
📭 Interpreting email open rates
There’s a lot of confusion about the validity of email open rates these days, particularly due to image blockers, image caching, preview panes, email client limitations, Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (auto opens), and more.
Digital and email marketing expert Chad S. White says that much like the cries of “email is dead,” saying email opens are dead just isn’t true.
🤔 What marketers need to know
How your email service provider (ESP) reports open rates
How your ESP handles Apple’s auto opens
How to calculate an adjusted open rate yourself (who has Apple’s MPP enabled?)
White says that if you don’t have access to this data, you can still find value in your current open rates with the following:
Measure your click-to-open rates
Track significant drops to uncover deliverability problems
Track your subscriber activity
Have you noticed a significant difference in your email opens in the past few years?
📱 Timing is everything
The best times to post on social media are frequently evolving as platforms, users, and creators evolve.
Search Engine Journal has pulled together the latest stats from multiple sources, so you can share with your marketing team.
🔑 Key insights
Best days to post: Monday and Wednesday
Best times to post: 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Worst days to post: Saturday and Sunday
Read the full guide for data on best days/times to post on specific platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
The best times to post also must take into account your target audience, industry, and analytics.
Briefly
🏅 Check out the top behavioral targeting tools you may want to leverage in your 2024 strategy
🤖 X (formerly Twitter) releases new chatbot Grok to Premium+ subscribers
✍️ Google’s AI-powered note-taking app is now available to U.S. users
💵 November jobs report: Payrolls rise 199,000, unemployment rate falls to 3.7%
Up & Coming
The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index jumped 13% to 69.4, revealing that people are less worried about inflation and more optimistic about economic conditions.
The sentiment index is important because it reveals how much consumers are willing to spend and the potential trajectory of the economy, according to NBC News.
For comparison, the index was 99.3 in December 2019, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. The all-time low of 50.0 came in June 2022.