Do you struggle with marketing? How about networking? Many people struggle with both, for good reason. What if there is an easier way to do both? That's exactly what I spoke with New York resident Mark Herschberg.
Mark is the author of the book The Career Toolkit: Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You. From tracking criminals and terrorists on the dark web to creating marketplaces and new authentication systems, Mark has spent his career launching and developing new ventures at startups and Fortune 500s and in academia. Here are some highlights of our conversation.
Writing A Book Was Essential
When Mark started writing his book, he first reached out to his friend, Dorie Clark. Dorie has written a number of bestselling business books. She said the key was to go on podcasts. If you think about it, when some big celebrity comes out and they’ve got a new movie, what do they do? They go on the late night talk show circuits. Podcasts are the standard for authors. Mark approached it very systematically and created a list of over 500 podcasts from the topics in his book.
In the career toolkit, he covers 10 different skills. There’s a chapter on networking, a chapter on negotiations, a chapter on leadership. So he had 10 different topics to choose from and then he just looked for top podcasts on each specific topic. And from there he looked on websites.
Marketing With A New Twist
Mark says that he thinks no podcast opportunity is bad. Think of it as follows. If you’re doing traditional marketing, you’re likely using Facebook or Google. then you’re paying a CPC cost per click. Only a few people might click out of a thousand. But when you’re doing a podcast, even if that podcast only has 10 people listening to an episode, you have 10 people who are actively engaged with your content.
That audience is actively listening to you. They hear about your book, your service, or your product. And it’s going to register far more than just some ad that popped up in the corner of their screen. So even when there seems to be a tiny number of listeners for the investment of time, you’re going to get just much more attention and much more engagement.
Networking In A New Way
Mark says that most people think about networking in a very transactional way. They think I need a job, so I have to go network. However, networking is relationship building. And so when you go out and network, don’t think of it as I have to go network today to get a job. Build relationships with people so that down the road, when you need a job or something else, then you can reach out to your network.
You’re going to want to build that relationship over time. The way you think about doing that is by asking a few questions. What do we have in common? What might be of interest to this person as well as myself? Once you figure that out, you want to do some exploration to understand what is important to this other person. Then you can talk about topics of interest or find activities or common interests for both of you.
Have you ever tried podcasting? I have, and I can personally can tell you that marketing and networking are some of the key benefits to podcasting. Networking and marketing are so much easier when you are having great conversations with others on a regular basis. Thanks to Mark for taking the time to talk with me, I really enjoyed it.