At Hinge we have been studying Visible Experts℠, people who have attained high visibility and expertise in their industry, creating a personal brand that is recognizable industry-wide. We study them because we want to understand how they attained that status and what we can learn from them. This profile focuses on Mitch Joel, a Visible Expert for digital marketing.
Mitch Joel has been called a rock star of digital marketing, a digital visionary, and a leader and innovator. Simple euphemisms, they are not. Mitch has shared the podium with presidents and CEOs, is a subject matter expert for the world’s most important finance publications, a columnist for several major media outlets, the author of two successful books, a blogger, podcaster, entrepreneur, public speaker and president of Twist Image – one of North America’s largest independent digital marketing agencies. And to think, he made his start in the record industry.
“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do,” Mitch notes, “so I pursued two paths at the same time.” The two paths were a record label and consulting on digital marketing. “Then I ran into these two guys who were running Twist Image. I thought we could help each other. After working together for a few weeks, we realized it would be better to combine. So I put the record label on hold and became a partner at Twist Image.” The music industry’s loss was about to become the marketing industry’s gain.
Becoming a Brand
At Twist Image, Mitch quickly applied his background in journalism and writing to blogging, then still an uncharted territory. He originally reserved the writing for his spare time, before and after business hours. But then Mitch found his blog posts generating interest and landing him speaking requests. Before long, an activity that had originally been conceived as secondary—writing and speaking—became central for the firm. The creative synergy between Mitch Joel and Twist Image had been born.
At Twist Image, “We spent a lot of time working on the question: how do we create a personalized brand that makes us very engaging?” Mitch says. “The answer to that question became me – having me go out in the marketplace and speak and write. Over 15 years we’ve been very successful at it.”
As Hinge’s research has shown, Visible Experts are an enormous asset to the companies they work for, attracting higher fees and accelerating growth and new business opportunities. Besides being a fundamental component of his personal brand, for example, Mitch’s blog, Six Pixels of Separation, is also a key part of Twist Image’s inbound lead strategy. But the firm gives back to the expert, too. Just as Visible Experts shine their star power on their firms, the firm offers a platform for personal growth and expansion—expert and firm boost each other’s brands, hand-in-hand.
SEE ALSO: How to Become Visible, Faster
The Complete Package
From the beginning, “We had a very strong idea of what Twist Image should be,” Mitch says. “We kept asking, ‘How do we make it real and organic?’ We didn’t want it to just be ‘Mitch Joel’s platform’.” And it isn’t. Twist Image has an impressive portfolio of large, multinational brands, which they help to move “from where they are, to where they need to be.”
In order to make that happen, Twist Image has implemented a range of solutions as varied and innovative as the companies they represent. For the Montreal Canadians hockey team, they developed a mobile, hybrid app to keep fans engaged and coming back. For Huffington Post Quebec, they came up with an interactive, multi-platform publicity campaign driven by reader-generated content. And for 100% Canadian milk, they created an online film festival featuring four directors telling four stories about people in the dairy industry.
Mitch sums it up: “There are people who are doing personal speaking and writing, and then there are firms that are mostly focused on client work. We do both. I’m someone who is doing all this outbound creation, but I also have a whole back-end, a firm behind me that can help people accomplish the things I’m talking about. Not many people or firms are doing both sides. We are the complete package.” It was this complete package that attracted the attention of WPP, the largest marketing and communications network in the world. WPP acquired Twist Image in 2013.
Multiple Content Channels
Like most of the Visible Experts in Hinge’s study, Mitch carves out dedicated time for content marketing. While he spends about 70% of his time on agency work—briefings and meetings, business development, client assessment—he saves 30% of his time for content creation and media work. The multiple channels on which he pushes out content make for a very impressive list:
Speaking engagements: Mitch presents at 50 to 70 events per year. “I can knock on everyone’s door, one-to-one, or I can get up on stage and speak to a thousand people at once. It’s a very fertile channel.” Mitch carefully evaluates whether or not to accept a certain speaking engagement based on the tangible benefit it could potentially provide, such as a future partnership.
Blogging: Mitch keeps a breakneck writing pace, blogging almost every day. “I have a nose for news,” he says. “I am always looking for something interesting and new. My blog becomes the home for those ideas.”
Book Writing: Mitch has written two highly successful books, Six Pixels of Separation (2010), drawn from the title of his blog, and CTRL ALT Delete (2013). The books were a direct result of the success of his blog. “Publishers buy into the whole person – someone with some kind of platform,” he explains. “There’s validation that the writer is interesting and can already generate interest. My blog, and my audience, was that validation.” 
Podcast: Mitch’s blog is also supplemented by a weekly podcast, with 50-minute episodes that reinforce his written content in an engaging audio format that listeners can take in while driving to work, sitting in the subway, or jogging.
Radio program: every morning at 7:10 AM, Mitch is a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM, broadcasting a 5-to-10 minute segment on something happening in the world of technology and digital media. The radio station then posts the segments weekly to SoundCloud for those who don’t have the opportunity to catch them the first time around
Expand What’s Possible
For Mitch, the two factors that have propelled him onto an international stage are determination and self-belief. Determination to take big ideas and actually make them happen, and self-belief that he has something unique to say—something that can help his clients and audience, and something that will make clients want to work with him and Twist Image.
“It’s all about helping brands think differently about what they can do,” he says, “helping people think differently about their marketing.” This means guiding people to think differently about the nature of what is possible. Here is where Visible Experts like Mitch Joel, by shifting the boundaries of what is considered to be possible in their professions, truly lead by example.
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