Melanie Borden Podcast Transcript
Melanie Borden joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Melanie Borden. Melanie Borden uses the strategy and tools she built for herself to help C-Suite executives align their real-life expertise and LinkedIn presence to create opportunities and relationships at scale.
She has worked in marketing throughout her career from public tech companies to private startups, retail, and now has established her own marketing consulting agency, The Borden Group. Just a few years ago, everyone around her was losing their job. She didn’t know where she’d turn if she lost hers.
Melanie Borden turned to LinkedIn to start building her personal brand opportunities and a business. Melanie successfully created marketing strategies for her employers, tech companies, retail, and high growth startups. So, she leveraged those skills to build her own. Melanie used her experience in marketing oversight, social media strategy, reputation management, and others to make her own brand visible, approachable, and attractive to customers.
And it worked. Melanie grew her platform, her reach, and her bottom line. Since then, Melanie worked with brands, including C suite executives, companies, and nonprofits to expand their reach, amplify their messaging, and increase their marketing effectiveness. Melanie has been featured in LA Weekly, Good Morning America, Daily Mail, CXO Outlook, The Epic Times, Working Mother Media, Hip New Jersey, New York City Biz List, New York Weekly and Fast Company and the Wall Street Journal. She is also a Forbes agency council member.
Well, good afternoon, Melanie. Welcome to the show!
Melanie Borden: Thank you for having me!
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I appreciate you jumping on a podcast. First thing I know being an hour difference is not a huge deal, but I do this quite a bit around the world and I just so happy you’re here today and get to talk a little bit about you, your story, and we can get this out to our audience.
So, Melanie, jumping into your first question. You’ve effectively used LinkedIn to build your personal brand and create opportunities. Can you walk us through the initial steps you took on LinkedIn when you were starting out and how you positioned yourself to stand out?
Melanie Borden: Absolutely. That’s a great question.
And it’s usually one of the most challenging steps. I will call it in the process of building your own personal brand online and transferring it, as I say. From the real world to the digital world, which in essence is the same thing. But when I originally had started. My main goal was to create a name for myself in my industry.
And so, the way that I wanted to do that was by connecting. And really posting as much as I possibly could. I will tell you that early on when I had started, I knew that I had to do something and I wasn’t exactly sure the best way to go about doing it. A lot of it was as I call trial and terror. Where I just tried different strategies, I tried different techniques until I really got into a flow, but setting a goal for myself was really the 1st step of what am I looking to achieve?
And then how am I going to measure it? So, at the time, I was looking to essentially grow my name. It was during the pandemic. I had no digital footprint. I had no social presence anywhere, which is very common with many entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, executives, et cetera. So setting the goal for myself and then connecting with individuals and just networking as much as I possibly could was really how I started my process.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And, you know, obviously you make it sound so easy, but we know where you are today and what I see you’re doing and some of the success you’ve had. I can tell you it wasn’t just something that you just kind of turned on and hey, we’ve made it. I get it been there done that.
So, I appreciate the story. Melanie, the next question I have for you, you’ve got a rich background in marketing for tech companies, retail and startups. What are some of the key marketing strategies that you believe are universally effective across these diverse industries?
Melanie Borden: One of the things that I have seen work, regardless of the size of the organization, the industry that they’re in, or really what their goals are, is.
To come together as a team. So, whether that being a company wide effort, or let’s say, for example, an executive team effort in doing what I call synchronized messaging and what that means when it relates to marketing, whether it’s an organization, it really ties in with their personal brand because you can effectively have a goal for the organization.
And then, as contributors to the company, each individual can also have their own goal goals, and they can be connected and whether it’s going on podcasts, whether it’s writing blogs being featured in articles. Posting videos on YouTube or on Instagram or on LinkedIn, whatever the social channel is. It creates a wave of visibility, not just for the individuals, but also for the organization where it will seem, especially on a platform like LinkedIn, which is all really based on engagement.
Where everyone in your industry, because when you have a company that’s in a specific industry, and you have their employees, or you have the executive team, they all have similar, but connected networks. So, what happens is it creates this wave. Where people are saying to themselves, I’m seeing you everywhere.
How are you doing this? And especially with a company where they have competitors who are kind of keeping a close eye on them. And they’re saying, how are they doing that? So, really synchronizing efforts really works well, and you can also leverage. You know, any go to market strategy as well, whether it’s paid ads, you know any type of traditional advertising events, et cetera.
Brian Thomas: Thank you really appreciate sharing some of those gems. Obviously, you know, you’re an expert in this area, and this certainly will resonate with many of us in our audience. So, I appreciate that Melanie. And Melanie, based on your extensive experience with social media strategy and reputation management, how has social media marketing evolved in recent years, especially concerning professional networking and brand building?
Melanie Borden: It’s such a great question. One of the things that we do all the time, regardless of the position that we’re in, or the role that we have, or the company background, whether it’s B2B, B2C, Everything is what we call H to H, human to human. So regardless of who your audience is, people buy from people they know, like, and trust.
And you can effectively create that trust through storytelling and it is much more of a buzzword that I see a lot of specifically on LinkedIn with regarding professional networking, et cetera. But it’s really true and it’s the tale that is as old as time that people learn from stories stories really, you know, they sell and facts tell.
So, 1 of the things that I always talk to clients about is to think about their stories and how it can impact others. And 1 of the things that I also really believe is that when we share stories. On a platform like LinkedIn, they’re essentially someone else’s business survival blueprint or guidelines, because what I’m learning as an entrepreneur might impact you as well and vice versa.
So, storytelling is 1 of the best ways that someone can do that. And it has been. More than just a trend, it has been core for my business where storytelling has been, you know, a cornerstone in my marketing strategy.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. That’s awesome. I love that. We talk about the brand, you know, people do trust like and buy from people, not necessarily companies.
And that is so important, but I appreciate again, some great nuggets here around the storytelling. And Melanie last question of the day as a member of the Forbes Agency Council, you’ve insights into the cutting edge of marketing. What trends do you see on the horizon in digital marketing that businesses should start preparing for now?
Melanie Borden: That’s another great question. There was an article that someone had posted within the Forbes Agency Forum. And the question was, is brand building the new lead gen? And I thought it was very interesting because it really is true that B2B companies are realizing that brand. Maybe more important than performance marketing.
And there’s a lot of talk behind that right now. And it goes back to what we were just talking about, about storytelling and synchronized messaging. It’s all connected because people want to work with people. And it’s one of the best ways, in my opinion, that you can build trust. If you look at a company like Tesla, people follow Tesla, but more people follow Elon Musk.
For example, Steve jobs, you know, a lot of people followed him. Less people followed Apple. It’s people who want to learn from others. They want to know about they want to be educated. They want to be entertained, you know, they want to learn something. They want to be impacted. They want to think. And so that’s what you do with.
Any sort of marketing the goal is, is, you know, to really convert someone from just a customer to someone who’s loyal to a fan. Who’s a raving fan who is completely loyal to your brand. So, a lot of companies are looking at this right now and saying, well, what else can we be doing? To, you know, tie back into, you know, our base and our customers.
But that is one of the topics that I was really interested in seeing. Recently, because again, it goes back to people work with people they know, like, and trust and how our leaders going to be effectively doing that. And it’s through sharing their stories and storytelling and networking and connecting with others and finding that human component.
Brian Thomas: Thank you again, Melanie. Love that again, bringing it. Back home with that brand building and that foundational word we call trust. I really appreciate that. And Melanie, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Melanie Borden: Thank you so much.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Melanie Borden Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
