Karen Tiber Leland

A fundamental paradigm shift has occurred in marketing and branding. Today the most successful CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs and enterprises set their sites on developing a long-term platform instead of a short-term strategy that supports and builds buzz for their personal or business brand. That’s really the key to the new business mindset - the recognition that branding and marketing are an ongoing, steady stream of small efforts, not a series of gigantic pushes. Social media, blogging and other business development activities - both online and off - are about the persistent, ongoing process of building a platform, creating credibility and increasing the number of people that you funnel into your potential client and network pipeline.

Converting those people into clients or fans may take a month, a year or two years, but the new mindset leads you to strategies that will keep that pipeline full. In short, you need to start a bunch of small fires to keep your brand burning hot. How can today’s CEOs, executives and entrepreneurs keep these fires going and powerfully get their messages across, motivate others to action and be authentic - all while simultaneously shepherding initiatives from creation to implementation in high-demand markets?

CEO, executive and team branding are key factors that enable effective leaders to achieve peak performance, gain greater influence in their industries and generate increased engagement within their companies. By creating a brand (business or personal) by design instead of default, leaders and companies bring their brand promise into every interaction across the board.

A personal, team or business brand is not just a single statement or a clever quip but a multilayered, congruent narrative told across multiple channels - online and off - within the organization and to the business community at large. The power is in knowing how to tell the story.

The book will introduce CEOs and executives in Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurs in SMBs to the SMG Brand Mapping Process©, a process that will
guide them in creating personal, team and business brands that work in harmony and parallel with each other.