Account Executives bear a lot of responsibilities.
Deadlines, budgets, and deliverables.
You organize and keep track of countless details. You foster important relationships.
Every Account Executive’s goal is to exceed in these duties. But real success comes when your client … and the rest of the agency … come to rely on you.
To accomplish this, become a thought leader. Know the ins and outs of your client’s industry and the business. And proactively apply that knowledge every day.
Here’s how to become that indispensable thought leader, along with 6 resources to help.
Thought Leaders Are Valuable
Thought leaders bring proactive ideas to his client and the team. Ideas that improve current projects. Ideas that spark new projects.
Thought leadership strengthens your relationship with the client. Your value will rise as she relies on your insight. But your value will also rise within the agency.
And as you become more knowledgeable on the industry and your client’s business, you’ll also become more attractive to other agencies … which may pay off for you in the long term.
How to Become a Thought Leader
There’s no secret to becoming your client’s thought leader. It takes work and an investment in time.
Start reading as much industry news as you can absorb. Read news about your client’s business … the competitors … and the industry. Understand the latest trends. Look for opportunities to incorporate ideas into your client’s business.
Luckily there are several resources to help make this process easier.
6 Resources for Gathering Industry News
Google Alerts
Let the Google search engine notify you of new articles on topics you define. Just set up alerts for keywords and Google will email you links to the articles. Use company names, industry terms, product names … the options are endless.
You can determine how frequently to be emailed, and a number of other options.
Twitter is a great resource for information … but it can be overwhelming. Twitter lists help make industry information more accessible.
Lists allow you to quickly see tweets related to that topic. Set up or follow lists for the corporate account and also people who work at your client’s company. Do the same thing for competitors. Look for people who are thought leaders in the industry and are actively tweeting.
How to Create and Manage Twitter Lists
3 Genius Ways to Find Twitter Lists in Your Niche Industry
Another Twitter resource is to follow hashtags. Look for company and industry related hashtags and follow them. This article explains how to set this up inside Twitter or using Tweetdeck, which helps you track multiple lists and hashtags in a dashboard view.
How To Follow a Hashtag on Twitter
Facebook Pages
According to Facebook, there are 1.49 billion daily active users on Facebook on average. So no wonder Facebook is the top platform for both B2B and B2C businesses. To track companies and topics on Facebook, visit their business page and “Like” it. This will automatically deliver any posts by that company to your feed.
You can also join Facebook Groups related to your business niche… and keep track of the latest conversations related to the topic.
Follow businesses or interests in LinkedIn. Look for the “Add to your feed” section in the right hand column of your LinkedIn home page. Click the “View all recommendations” to find companies or topics to follow. These posts will show up in your LinkedIn feed.
Feedly
Feedly is a free service that allows you to set up tracking for articles based on topics. So you have them all in one place for quick browsing. You can even bookmark interesting articles for later reference.
News Aggregators
A number of free news aggregator services are available for the desktop and/or mobile. Identify targeted categories and follow related sites.
Apple News
Google News
Yahoo News
Setting Up Tracking is Only Half the Job
I recommend you set up several of these resources for tracking. Of course, setting up the tracking is only the beginning. The real work begins when you monitor the resources.
Make it a habit to check your resources regularly. Set aside time each day … or every other day. Bookmark the longer articles to go back and read later.
Before you know it, you’ll have a wealth of relevant industry and company knowledge that you can apply to your work. And your client … and agency teammates … will come to rely on your expertise.
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