Top of Mind: Use Content to Unleash Your Influence and Engage Those Who Matter To You by John Hall
John Hall is a popular keynote speaker and is co-founder and CEO of Influence & Co., a very successful content marketing agency that helps companies and individuals extract and leverage their expertise to create, publish, and distribute content to their key audiences.
John has weekly columns for Forbes and Inc. magazine and has contributed to more than 50 publications, including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, The Washington Post, and Mashable.
John has been called “one of the most powerful people in media who you’ve never met” by Inc. Magazine and a “must-see keynote speaker” by Forbes.
The Host’s Perspective:
At the beginning of Top of Mind, John Hall tells a traumatic but formative story about a conference he attended soon after starting his company. He was attending a networking session at the conference and he didn’t know a single person there. And something wasn’t working.
He was getting stonewalled by everyone there. He couldn’t connect with anyone to save his life. Everyone seemed very guarded. The sense of not being able to get through to a single person was overwhelming.He felt like the kid in gym class who was the last to get picked for a dodgeball team.
Afterward he realized that people seemed guarded and he couldn’t connect with them because nobody trusted him. No one was even familiar with him. It wasn’t enough to be charming – he had walked into a room full of strangers with nothing to show that he was worthy of their trust.
He was just another random guy making a cold pitch – the human equivalent of a pop-up ad.
In Top of Mind, John Hall explains that these walls of distrust – or trust barriers – exist everywhere. No matter what field or niche, or company size, trust barriers exist. And they are the biggest factors that prevent you from building relationships with the audiences you’re trying to reach.
Top of Mind walks you through how to knock down those barriers and build the level of trust that influences people to think of you in the right way at the right time. At its heart, the book reveals that one of the most effective ways to enrich the lives of your target audience is to help fulfill their hunger for relevant, engaging information and insights.
The book explains why that is and very clearly how to do it. It’s a great read that can have a big impact on your career and your company.
And it will definitely get you picked first for the dodgeball team.
Listen to the Interview:
Show Notes
Top of Mind: Use Content to Unleash Your Influence and Engage Those Who Matter To You by John Hall
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant
All about “Top of Mind” (Topofmindbook.com)
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