By Amy Stone, Senior Communications Consultant
Speaker ops, social media profile and thought leadership pitching can all help secure more funding for your business.
At Hard Numbers we conducted our own research, Coverage to Capital, in partnership with media intelligence platform CARMA to explore the relationship between the personal media profile of unicorn CEOs and their companies' fundraising efforts. We found that:
So what does this all mean?
It tells us just how important a business leader’s professional profile is as an asset to their business. Their profile gives the corporate story a human face and credibility that stakeholders will want to buy into. But how can you curate and boost your own profile to maximise its marketing potential?
Thought Leadership
Thought leadership is a way to share best practices, discuss learning curves and talk about successes and failures either personal to you or about your business. It is all about positioning business leaders as an expert, or thought leader, in their industry or on a particular subject.
It’s generally written content and can come in the form of long, editorial articles, short comments or even a blog. When writing any kind of thought leadership I would always remind you to use your unique voice as you write and always leave the reader with more insight than they started with.
Use statistics and examples to give your writing context and feel free to be bold with your points. The best way to secure these types of opportunities is going directly to journalists working at the publications you want to be in. You can do this via email or using platforms like Response Source or PressPlugs and even following #journorequest on Twitter can help you spot these opportunities with ease.
Social Media
Our Coverage to Capital research also found that 94% of unicorn CEOs and founders are currently active on LinkedIn and 58% are on Twitter. These statistics tell us that LinkedIn and Twitter are the places to be as leaders in your business. In fact, due to the huge presence we see of C-suite leaders on these channels, it may even be a disadvantage now to not be active on these platforms today.
My best advice to support building your profile on social media is to get to know the algorithms. Understanding how the algorithms work will help you to post content that has the best chance of success and is more likely to get boosted for maximum reach and engagement. Knowing small things like the optimum number of hashtags on Twitter and Linkedin or how likes, comments and shares impact your post’s reach are all helpful details to a successful, professional social profile.
Speaking Opportunities
Speaking opportunities could cover everything from media interviews on live broadcast or podcasts to keynote speaking or panel discussions on stage at events. They are one of the most effective ways to boost your profile. However, media interviews in particular can be quite daunting if you’ve not done them before and unlike written commentary, with interviews there is often no time to draft responses first or make edits after.
So how can you nail a speaking opportunity once you’ve secured it? My top tip is to use personal anecdotes, it makes you far more relatable and engaging. Remember as well that body language is just as important as what you say, that goes for speaking on stage or on TV. And finally prepare, prepare, prepare! Have your key messages and call to action ready to go and know who you’re speaking to - trust me, you’ll feel far more confident with thorough preparation and that confidence will come across as you speak.
Media Training
My parting advice, that will help you across your entire executive profiling effort and dealing with the media, is this:
Don’t underestimate the value of getting properly media trained.
There is more to writing a comment or tweeting or giving an interview than most people realise, so getting the right training to be able to do this well just makes sense. You wouldn’t let an employee lose on your IT systems without the proper training, so don’t treat dealing with the media on behalf of your business any differently.
If you’d like to know more about executive profiling and how Hard Numbers could help raise your profile, please drop me a message on amy@hardnumbers.co.uk
