Gerry Moran, Head of Social & Global Content at Cognizant - The B2B Marketing Leaders Podcast

Gerry Moran is the Head of Social & Global Content at Cognizant Gerry started his marketing career at HBO, where he worked at for 16 years. He then transitioned to the agency world before joining SAP in 2011 and helped them build their social media team and sales enablement programs. Currently, Gerry is responsible for social media and the global content strategy for Cognizant (http://www.cognizant.com/). Gerry has over 80K followers on Twitter (https://twitter.com/GerryMoran) and is considered a top B2B marketer and social selling influencer. Click play to hear Gerry Moran share his MarketingThink (http://marketingthink.com/) wisdom in today's B2B podcast: How do you balance your full-time job along with your own personal brand? Gerry says that luckily for him the two overlap, his hobby has become his job. Gerry admits that because he's just starting a new role at Cognizant he hasn't been able to blog as often as he would want to. He does plan on starting again once he gets settled in. After all he says: "A personal brand is to really help me tell the story of the company I work for. This is for Cognizant." - Gerry Moran (http://theb2bpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/cognizant-287x300.png) To develop an "eye for content" Gerry recommends doing a lot of reading and using Feedly (https://feedly.com) to stay informed. Ask yourself these three questions when consuming content. * How can I learn? * How can I learn from the research that’s out there? * How can I learn from the techniques? [Tweet ""I wake up every morning eating social media for breakfast" - @GerryMoran"]   What are the best B2B brands doing? People are looking for insight and smart content. They don't want to see chest-pounding content that only talks about you. The best B2B brands are instead seeking to better understand the particular problems that their target companies are going through and then see it through the lens of their executives. The best B2B brands also understand how to deliver personalized content and know how to leverage each individual channel but can still provide an integrated experience.   How do you see the marketing/sales alignment working? Gerry believes that companies should be hiring more sales people that truly get the social selling culture and understand the marketing process. "There’s a lot of real time interaction that needs to be done." - Gerry Moran Gerry recommends that the marketing team get more involved in listening to what’s going on in the sales trenches and to use a feedback system to inform content creators of the type of content the market wants. You need to think as a team of "smarketers" if you want to hit quotas at record speed. [Tweet ""Sales can’t do it alone, marketing can’t do it alone. -@GerryMoran" "]   What makes content standout? All the research (http://www.triblio.com/content-personalization-statistics-2015/) says that customers are looking for a personalized approach.  Customers want to get the information that they’re looking for at the right time and in the right context.  This personalized approach at a regular cadence will deliver consistency in your voice and message, thereby instilling trust in your brand.   What content marketing trends do you see? * Content Personalization (see Triblio (http://www.triblio.com/)) * More visual and audio content. * Better understanding of marketing and sales triggers. Connect with Gerry Moran Gerry on Twitter (https://twitter.com/gerrymoran) Gerry on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerrymoran) Gerry's Blog (http://marketingthink.com/)