By April Hudson
Mitch Joel has been named Canada’s Most Influential Male in Social Media, was included on the list of the top 100 online marketers in the world, and has been featured on Canada’s Top 40 Under 40. He is currently the president of Twist Image, an awarding winning digital marketing and communications agency. He recently published his first book, Six Pixels of Separation and sat down with Career Insider Business to discuss his career, new book, and making it big in the digital world.
How did you get start?
My background is mostly in journalism. My first real gig was interviewing Tommy Lee from Motley Crue. That being said, I quickly transferred from journalism to being a publisher of magazines. At the time the internet was still new. I was making this transition constantly towards a connected world; I started publishing [magazines] online in the very early days of the internet.
What exactly do you do on a day-to-day basis?
My real role at Twist Image is being the rain maker. I go out and I try to get clients to want to work with us. The tools that I use are very different from other people; I use tools like blogging and podcasting and Twitter, speaking publicly and publishing, and I use the traditional tools like pitching. Also, once we get clients, I go to the strategy side. I help define what the company should be doing online.
What motivated you to write the book?
Having gone through the blogging/journalism process I realized that the market place was sorely missing this type of book. For me it’s a book that speaks in a more business language to business people. When you read the book you realize that it’s an entrepreneur writing the book; when we started the company in 2002, we didn’t really have anything but the blog, and we used the blog as our unique selling position to build the brand.
How can business professionals and entrepreneurs utilize these emerging online tools in a similar fashion?
The first is your ability to listen. A lot of people think that sites like Twitter and Facebook are about talking when they’re really about being able to listen better. Doing basic monitoring can give you, as a small business owner or entrepreneur, an advantage. You can actually go into a search engine and type “marketing agency” and see who’s saying what about that now. There are some really smart people with some really good voices. People really miss that point. From listening you can join conversations, and become active in an online community.
What does it mean to be active in a community or blog?
It means following constantly and consistently. It means understanding the different voices from the content to the comments. It might mean, at a certain point, joining by adding your own thoughts to the comments. It could mean getting so engaged that you become a recognized authority within that community because your comments add such value. It could also mean having your own platform going on. So when people click on Mitch Joel they go to my blog and they see that there’s more of the way I think over there.
Is it difficult to establish yourself as a recognized authority?
It’s a harder game to play now than it was a few years ago; there are a lot of voices and content. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing. The great [content] rises to the top and the mediocre stuff stays mediocre. You find out really quickly what your unique voice is and how you can use it to better connect and move people.
What are the biggest communities to get involved in?
Every industry has its own community. In the marketing world there are so many. There’s the Canadian Marketing Association, there’s Interactive Advertising Bureau. But you don’t want a big community; you want a small, targeted community. At the end of the day the biggest community for my blog is six chief marketing officers. If I can get six chief marketing officers to follow my blog and hopefully hire my agency, that’s more work than I can handle. So I have a target audience of six. You don’t need millions of followers; you need the five people who are into what you do to push you forward.
In your book, you outline steps for building your personal brand and developing trust within your online communities. What are these steps?
As the internet becomes more indexed, you want to be as easy to find as possible. One of these ways is by adding a level of consistency to your life. This can mean using the same picture and usernames across all platforms. It’s a way of being more branded. I try to communicate that to the world. People forget that we need consistency. What’s great about the web is this idea of RSS where people can subscribe and get all this content delivered to them when it’s published. But if [the publisher] is not consistent with it, it causes that erratic feeling [in the reader], and you never want anyone to feel that.
How do transparency and authenticity factor into this equation?
In a world where anybody can have a thought and publish it instantly for free, it’s hard to lie. Anyone can do a basic search on Google. So transparency and authenticity have been forced on businesses. I believe that to be a very fundamentally good thing. It forces us to live in a world where everything we say is recorded. [This] forces businesses to think differently about how they communicate with people.
You also mention the importance of viral expansion loops in effective branding and advertising. What exactly is a viral expansion loop?
Facebook is a great example of a viral expansion loop. What makes Facebook powerful? How many people you add in your network. And then how many people they add from their network. That’s the expansion loop, where it’s 2+2=90. That’s what I encourage businesses to think about. Don’t just try to create something that people will spread; try to create something that’s useless unless they get everyone that they know engaged and connected.
What do you think will be the next big online trend?
We’re moving towards simpler devices and platforms that make it easier to spread content. The platform and the tools are becoming simpler which makes the viral expansion loop spread that much faster. We’re looking at the iPad, smartphones; consistent pervasive internet everywhere and devices that let you connect. No more wires.
What advice can you give to students coming out of university?
The advantage that people coming out of school and into the workplace have is this clean slate; you can take this book and [create] a platform by which you are indispensable. These tools can actually make you a recognized authority. I’ve seen people come out of school and start blogging and become sensations. That makes them indispensible. Let people see what you’re about and how you think, because you can now publish that to the world. I think that’s a huge difference. And that’s the real advantage of these platforms.
April Hudson is a third year marketing student at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management.
