Social Media Mentors with Brian Honigman

On his interview on yesterday’s episode of Smashing the Plateau, Brian Honigman discussed how business and individuals can get smart about social media. As for his own social media mentors, he describes how “The list goes on and on and on! And mostly people that don’t really know that they’re a mentor or an influencer…” Here, he names a few of the people he identifies as being important to the development of his thinking about how to create an effective social media reputation:

1. Sean Gardner, Social Selling Consultant and author of The Road to Social Media Success. (Twitter: @2morrowknight)

From Gardner, Honigman writes, he “learned attention to detail and how to go above and beyond when being generous to your network and clients.” In the podcast, he describes how Gardner has “really made a name for himself in helping nonprofits and small and medium-sized businesses with their social and overall digital strategy. He’s epic on Twitter in terms of the quality and value he delivers to the people that follow him. And from observing what he’s done to position himself in his business throughout his career, I’ve really understood how to better pay attention to all the little details that build upon the impression you leave with others.”

2. Ekaterina Walter, Global Evangelist at Sprinklr  (Twitter: @Ekaterina).

Honigman notes that “From [Walter’s] approach to personal branding, I was able to look at the all the details of what she’s done to build her personal brand: a mix of guest blogging across different industry publications, speaking at different events, doing interviews with the biggest blogs to the smallest blogs… making time to take the breadth of opportunities that came her way to help build a really strong personal brand…. I respect the work she’s done and look up to it as a kind of compass, for how I should continue to grow my personal brand and grow my business with the use of my personal brand.”

3. Dorie Clark, CEO of Clark Strategic Communications and author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future (Twitter: @dorieclark; previously interviewed on Smashing the Plateau—listen or download here!)

“I have so much admiration for her—she has been doing great work her entire career, but has so quickly established herself as a leading expert in her field. She’s a marketing strategist, a professor at Duke, a contributor to Harvard and Forbes, and her book comes out in April—it’s [called] Standout; it’s about how to establish yourself as an industry expert. And that’s something that she’s done very quickly—and I think it’s remarkable what she’s been able to accomplish very quickly—through, again, contributing to leading publications, to teaching opportunities, to interviewing, to being active on social media, to really contributing to the conversations and dialogue happening in the industry. I think she is the real deal and really understands marketing and business, and how to really structure yourself throughout your career as a personal branding expert. Definitely someone who’s doing wonderful work. Anyone can learn a lot by just following and listening to her about these subjects.”

We ran out of time to further discuss Honigman’s mentors, but he adds (briefly!) two more:

4. Eric Samson, Founder of Group8A (Twitter: @ericbsamson)

Honigman writes that Samson “Helped provide advice for starting my own business and gave me confidence to fail.”

5. Matthew Capala, Founder of SearchDecoder.com. (Twitter: @searchdecoder)

Capala taught Honigman “how to experiment with new revenue streams for my business.”