The CMO’s Executive Reputation Formula

 

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers! If this is your first time listening, welcome, and if you're a regular listener, welcome back. Before I present today's episode, I am beyond thrilled to announce that our second in-person CMO Super Huddle is happening November 6th and 7th, 2025. In Palo Alto last year, we brought together 101 marketing leaders for a day of sharing, caring, and daring each other to greatness, and we're doing it again! Same venue, same energy, same ambition to challenge convention, with an added half-day strategy lab exclusively for marketing leaders. We're also excited to have TrustRadius and Boomerang as founding sponsors for this event. Early Bird tickets are now available at cmohuddles.com. You can even see a video there of what we did last year. Grab yours before they're gone. I promise you we will sell out, and it's going to be flocking awesomer!

Welcome to Huddles Quick Takes, our Tuesday spotlight series where we share key insights from CMO huddles bonus huddles. Today we're talking with Marc Reichel about executive reputation management, what many call personal branding. In just under 30 minutes, Marc reveals the three critical mistakes B2B CMOs make when building their reputation online. Plus, he offers practical guidance on content strategy and engagement. Fun fact: executive profiles get eight times more engagement than company profiles on LinkedIn. That's why understanding this is crucial, whether you're actively job hunting or currently leading a marketing team. Okay, let's dive in.

Narrator: Welcome to Renegade Marketers Unite, possibly the best weekly podcast for CMOs and everyone else looking for innovative ways to transform their brand, drive demand, and just plain cut through, proving that B2B does not mean boring to business. Here's your host and Chief Marketing Renegade, Drew Neisser.

Drew: Hello Huddlers. When I speak to CMOs who recently found themselves on the bench, or as one member of the transition team called it, "fun employed," they have two consistent regrets. First, they wish they had invested more time building and maintaining their personal networks. You don't want to be calling people for the first time in five years when suddenly you're out of work.

And second, they wish they had spent more time establishing and supporting their personal brands. Needless to say, we spend a lot of time in the transition team talking about personal branding and how it can help enhance the appeal of CMOs to prospective employers. To continue this conversation with our broader huddles community, we've invited personal branding expert Marc Reichel to join us. Marc is the SVP of Growth at Qnary, a firm that specializes in executive reputation management. He has successfully worked with Fortune 500 brands and their executives as well as entrepreneurs and SMBs.

Drew: With that, hello Marc. How are you? And where are you this fine day?

Marc: Hey Drew. Thanks for having me. I am in Hoboken, New Jersey right now.

Drew: Oh my God. I could almost throw a rock that far, but not quite. Almost.

Marc: Could almost swim there.

Drew: Almost swim there. Yes, at your own risk. Okay. So this is a question that's sort of become standard and has been really helpful for folks here. Just in case they have to leave early or we want to convince them to stay. Can you provide three things executives typically get wrong when trying to build a personal brand and just sort of list them? And then we'll go through them one at a time.

Marc: It would be target audience, really identifying your target audience first, consistency, and focus.

Drew: Okay. So this is so funny because one could argue that there is no difference between reputation management for a brand and an individual, because if we're talking about target audiences, isn't that usually the way we start with any marketing plan? Talk about that. Go through that. And where, what are they getting wrong? Too broad, too narrow? And obviously we're focused for the moment on folks that are between opportunities, but we can generalize to any CMO.

Marc: Absolutely. So what we typically will find is that there's not enough thought put on the target audience, and so a lot of times it can really be too broad. And when you're a CMO or a senior executive of any kind, you certainly want to cultivate a large audience, but you really want to make sure it's the right audience. And particularly if you're a CMO in transition too, you want to think about maybe different types of audiences that you wouldn't normally think about if you were CMO of an organization, like executive search leaders and recruiters as well.

What we typically find is there could be several audience segments that are valuable for executives. There's the broader executive community, in a sense, so other CMOs and relevant marketing leaders and C-suite—CEOs, Chief Digital Officers, COOs—so other relevant C-suite. Then there's also board members as you look to maybe attract board or advisory roles, or private equity VCs as they have portfolios of companies that could potentially use your expertise. There's conference organizers as you look to maybe do more speaking, or media and journalists as you look to be interviewed.

So I listed kind of a plethora there, but the more focus, the better for sure, and you're mapping that out.

Drew: You can't possibly effectively create reputations that appeal to all of those folks, right? So part of this process is narrowing that down, or at least putting a first tier, second tier, third tier, I would think.

Marc: Yeah. The tiering is really what we find is important because you could create content that is really focused on certain segments, but still be deliberate about connecting in and growing an audience with all of them.

Drew: Let's say we've narrowed it down a little bit. What does it practically mean to have a more narrow target audience? What—I mean, how does that lead to, because we're talking strategy first before we get to execution—what enables us to do? So we have a tighter target audience. I mean, we're talking about creating content, we're talking about actions that we're doing in social. Connect the dots for us.

Marc: Yeah, so one is you want to make sure that you're creating content that's going to actually engage the right audience, the target audience that you identify. So when you have that target audience very clear initially, it really helps with understanding what type of topics and content you're going to be creating so that it's really interesting and engaging to that audience. It also helps you understand who you should be deliberate about in terms of commenting and connecting in with in general.

You may have a system where you're going to engage with X amount of people per week or connecting with X amount of people per week, and you want to make sure that there's focus on that and that it's very systematized, so it's not taking a ton of your time.

Drew: Whether you're full-time on the job or you are looking for an opportunity, there is a limited number of hours in the day. So talk a little bit about, as you work with folks, what is a reasonable number of people to try to engage with on a weekly basis?

Marc: Sure. So, in terms of engagement, it's really interesting because there's different types of engagement, right? There's you trying to grow your audience in terms of connecting with someone. Then there's commenting on people's posts, re-shares, and so forth. So what we find is that the commenting and the re-shares, you want to do it every single week, but the frequency of that could depend because you're also relying on other people to be posting so you can comment on their posts. So there could be weeks where industry news is happening. There's a lot going on and people are quite active. And so those weeks it will make more sense to do more engagement-oriented content in a sense. But then there's going to be weeks where maybe, okay, there's just a little bit less activity in general. You still want to keep it consistent, but, you know, in terms of you're still engaging with people, but on those weeks you may be doing a little bit more original thought leadership, or sharing relevant articles with an insight and a point of view.

Drew: Lots of different ways to go on this, but it just occurs to me that if you are trying to build a relationship with a certain number of specific individuals, if you're lucky, and they're like me, where I'm posting every Saturday at nine or 10:00 AM, you know, but I don't think most people are that way. So the flip side of that is obviously getting to your sort of consistency point, and we can go there, but that is an interesting conundrum is that here you are targeting these folks and if you want to engage with them and they're not posting at the same time, that's a problem. So, I guess it's a lot easier to engage with someone who is really consistent.

Marc: Yeah, and you know, I think it's also just understanding, you know, if your target audience is other relevant CMOs and CEOs of certain B2B companies or SaaS companies or even this specific industry, there's going to be ones you'll probably identify that are quite active and then ones that are maybe less active. But when they do post, you want to make sure you're nurturing the relationship by engaging with them. And then consistency as a whole, right, is super important because, you know, we all know at this point kind of LinkedIn. Just like all other social channels, the algorithms reward directly consistency of sharing content with visibility. They're looking at people who are, they would consider to be highly active users. So that's why you want to make sure you are sharing content consistently overall.

Drew: What does consistent mean? I mean, I know I post every day, but there, my big pieces are Saturday morning. What are we talking about in terms of consistency?

Marc: So what we really recommend is you want to be posting four blended posts per week. And when I talk about blended posts, it's because another thing that's important besides just the consistency is that you're not sharing the same type of post each week or each time. So if every single time you're posting an article and an insight, that's a type of post. It's an article share. If every single time you're just commenting on someone else's post, that's a type of post. You want to be sharing this mix of content four times a week. That would include sharing your own original insights in a short-form post. That would include sharing a relevant article around industry news, but always with the unique insight and a point of view. That would include engaging directly on key people's posts. And then you can take that a little further and you can include video content, you know, you sharing insights. Even like the way that we're talking right now, like I'm at my desk, we're just talking 30-second to one-minute videos where you're sharing industry knowledge and insights in an authentic way. That type of content also does well. LinkedIn polls, as an example, is a type of content. So four blended posts per week is what we find you can really leverage the reward you get from LinkedIn's algorithm, for instance, without oversharing.

Drew: Boy, there's a lot to go in on all of those individual things. I think one of the highlights that I want to just mention is I see a lot of re-shares where there was no value add and—

Marc: Yeah. That's important.

Drew: Yeah. And so the adding a perspective that adds to your, I don't know why I got this analogy, but, you know, you're a snowball and you want to add to the snowball and if you create, add an insight, and it has nothing to do with anything that you've defined your personal brand as. That's not cumulative. Right. So it's an insight from your perspective that is building to this larger reputation. Right? I mean, hey, this was really interesting. It gave me an idea for how to do fly fishing better.

Marc: Yeah. The other thing I wanted to just highlight too is you want to take the long view when it comes to consistency and not short term. This is really huge. We find people who tend to win when it comes to building a personal brand and the people who become like influencers in their industry and have this large audience, they didn't start yesterday. You know, they've been doing this for some time. So you need to understand, okay, if you're doing four posts per week and you're going to commit to that different types of content, think about that multiplier effect over a year, two years, three years. That's going to be a huge difference. There's, you know, hundreds if not thousands of posts that you've shared at that time. So really also understanding the long-term view of this.

Drew: Okay. So we really are talking about a snowball effect here. Yeah. That it's just one snowflake after another building and eventually creating some critical mass. So that's hard. And it is sort of funny. This is the same conversation that CMOs have about, you know, kind of brand building or reputation building. It's like, guys, is this going to take time? No, no, no. We need our pipeline full tomorrow. Right? And so this, you have to take a longer-term perspective on your own reputation build. How do you know? So, all right, we got, so let's, let's stay with consistency. We've got the types that we've talked about, and then, you know, you talked about, we talked target audience consistently. I don't feel like we've really gotten focused, focused on focus very well. So what, what did you mean?

Marc: Yeah, so with focus, I mean what we do find also is that a lot of executives now, they will tend to post about so many different things, and so it's really hard for people to understand what they're known for. And so what we always recommend is identify really no more than three key topics, three core themes. Now, there could be subtopics within these kind of three core themes, or three — we call them content pillars — but no more than three content pillars so that all the content you are sharing is teeing up to one of those three.

And sometimes that could even be two pillars. You know, in certain situations you'll even see it's one pillar, but no more than three core topics. And that gives you a really good framework to create content that does not go outside of those topics, but you could still hit on subtopics within them.

Drew: Yeah.

Marc: I can give an example.

Drew: That creates its own challenges too, because, you know, like I've kind of iterated on that. Okay, hey, right, and so they have to be broad enough that you can keep creating content.

Marc: Future of B2B marketing — that's very broad, right? Future of B2B marketing as an example. There's a lot of things changing within that. There's AI, you know, there and marketing technology, and consumer insights and data. And so it's like, there's quite a few things you can hit on, but the overall theme is you are a leader and building a leading voice when it comes to the future of B2B marketing.

Drew: A big question is, so I'm a full-time CMO, I've got a big demanding job. I barely have time to say hello to my family and breathe, let alone eat lunch. And what you're describing four times a week, highly thoughtful — there's gotta be a certain minimum number of hours required to do this over time. And when — talk a little bit about just... Yeah, I mean, obviously you guys do this for executives, but how many hours are we talking about to sort of get this flywheel moving that the snowball started?

Marc: I would say when it comes to hours, it can depend. I mean, one of the biggest reasons we've been around for about 13 years is because a lot of executives and CMOs don't have the time to do this. So, you know, it can kind of depend on your industry, how niche it is, how broad you're going, but to do it yourself in a meaningful way, you know, I would say it could be anywhere from, you know, one to two hours, to four hours, you know, a week depending on how much time you want to dedicate to it, the systems that you have in place.

And that's part of the reason, you know, that we've kind of built our solution is because that — that's, I'd say, a huge problem that we're solving for. It can really range, I — it's hard for me to say this is the exact amount of time you want to dedicate, 'cause it can depend quite a lot if you're in a super niche technical industry versus much broader.

Drew: So let's just put four hours on the table for a second. So, you know, over the course of the year, that's 200 hours. And what I'm wondering is what's a realistic — so I've done this — what should I be thinking about from a measurement standpoint and ROI standpoint? I mean, 'cause I could have spent that other — that four hours a week just on the business nose to the grindstone, helping the business grow. I'm taking that time away from something, so I need to be able to rationalize to myself or to the company that this is worthwhile.

Marc: Yeah. So, you know, it's one of those things where there's gonna be a few benefits in terms of like overall outcomes. One is you need to invest in your personal brand and your overall career — this is going to ensure that you're staying top of mind, highly relevant, and you could have specific goals, like I want to attract board advisory roles. I want to attract my next role. I want speaking engagements, media and journalist interviews, and there's way to tie in those outcomes to your overall strategy.

Business development for sure, however. What you want to do again, is you want to look at it in the long term. So if you've been doing this over the course of a year, let's say one year, you've been doing it consistently outline before what those few ideal outcomes are. And of course there's social media outcomes, right? Like follower growth, engagement, reach, and that's something that's also, of course, quite important to track.

But now we're actually talking about business outcomes or personal goals and outcomes — identify those. If after a year you haven't come close to achieving any of those personal, you know, outcomes or business outcomes or goals, then something needs to be shifted and changed. So that's what I would say.

And then of course, you also want to be tracking audience growth, follower growth, engagement, 'cause that all shows that you're moving in the right direction as well. And I also would really recommend kind of almost like benchmarking yourself too against other relevant leaders in your industry so you can get a sense of within your industry, how your presence is growing and building.

And the way that we find is really valuable for that is you identify other peers at your level that are doing it really well, that are doing it where you think to be like, okay, and then are not really doing it at all.

Drew: One of the things we know, so this is really interesting thing. I'm a CEO, I'm looking at my CMO, they're sort of building a following on LinkedIn. I'm kind of feeling, yeah, great, good for them, but how's it good for the company? And it is good for the company, but the — the mindset they — there's an educational process, which is people don't really engage with companies on LinkedIn. Right. And engage with people. And so the whole story is you need executive reputations. If you want to brand on LinkedIn, there's no other way.

Marc: Totally, totally true. And I mean, LinkedIn's even put out — there's a lot of studies they've put out. The most recent one I saw was executive profiles, individual profiles get eight times more engagement than that of company and brand profiles.

Drew: I gotta repeat that. Wait. Individuals get eight times the engagement that a company does.

Marc: Yeah, and, and to be honest. I know it's eight times, but I could have sworn I saw one more recent that was 12 times. But let's just go with eight just in case.

Drew: Yeah. I mean, if I look at the engagement of a post, the same exact post on CMO Huddles as LinkedIn profile versus mine, it's probably 30x.

Marc: Yeah, totally. And it's to your point, Drew, it's what you said. People want to follow other people. They want to hear from other people. They want to hear from industry leaders and experts versus company and brand profiles. And especially if you're trying to engage decision makers and a senior audience, they're way more likely to engage with the key leaders versus a company and brand profile.

Drew: Right, and this isn't just about you, the marketer, building your profile. This is you understanding how to build it and experimenting to do it so that you can do it for your CEO, assuming they're game. You can do it for them, or you can hire a firm like Qnary to do it for some person so that you are established as thought leaders in the industry. And it's hard to be a thought leader if you have no followers.

Marc: Totally. And then the other way we find it's a great way to scale thought leadership for your company because you now have multiple channels sharing content, right? You have the company profiles that are sharing more like branded content. Then you might have several executives that are sharing content and thought leadership around the mission of the company and trends and insights, but also sharing content around their specific area of expertise. So you build vertical thought leadership for the company. So now the company could be known not just for the specific product or service, but also as a digitally innovative company because, you know, this person who's a leader on digital transformation or this person who's a leader when it comes to customer experience. So you can scale that thought leadership. And if you're a smaller company and you're competing in a space where there's huge companies, you can actually really help shift the perception of you, your voice in the industry through leveraging the executives.

Drew: You could be perceived as more influential than you might—your market share might justify. Yeah, which makes a lot of sense. I want to talk about the thing I notice a lot of CMOs do is they share a lot of content that comes from the brand, and that content is very product-focused, and it's very, "Hey, we just announced our new blah, blah, blah," or, "We have a webinar coming up on this," and there's no insight, there's no value add. It's just, "I'm a shill for my company. Here's something that they said," and then I'll see it and I'll see it five days a week. I think I have a feeling that's probably not a prescribed way of growing your personal brand or even helping the company for that matter.

Marc: Yeah, no, and you actually used a word that I've used too, which is the word "shill," and I think that's the perception. You need to have a balance there because especially as a CMO and even as just a senior executive, you do want to share company insights and initiatives at times. But what we usually say is like 70 to 80% should be focused on thought leadership and insights where you're adding value to your audience. And that can tie up to the mission of the company and the industry. But it shouldn't be sharing a company-specific post, especially with no insight. So then 20 to 30% of the content you share, I would say, be company-specific so it doesn't just look like you're an advertisement for your company and there's no—it's not genuine, it's not authentic. And we'll talk about authenticity too.

Drew: Well, and I just want to build on this for a second because there's a difference, like when I see a CMO posting, "Hey, we just had a customer conference and there's a picture," or they're thanking the team and there's a picture of the conference or there's a picture of the CMO with a couple of customers, those do great.

Marc: Yeah.

Drew: And it's funny because it's like you got—you are with people, you're showing a picture. It feels very authentic. It feels very real. So I'm not saying you can't post and share stuff about your company, but it's like, what makes it personal to you? What makes it part of your brand? And how are you bringing value to your community through this share? And I don't think that filter is used very often.

Marc: Yeah, and I think to your point before, you always want to be adding an insight and a point of view and adding something to a reshare. And then as CMOs, you can do what most CMOs do best, which is tell a story, and that should go through—I think all the content is tying it back in a, through a good storytelling way to personal experience or insights. The other interesting thing, because just because you highlighted like, you know, they're at a conference with their team. We've done some research and we found that images with people in them do better. So if you have images with people in those images, it does better than just a product. So there's certain little things there that make a big difference in terms of engagement. Also, if you're sharing an image, you know, sharing a post with you with your team at the image, you're probably tagging your team in it. And they're getting notified, they're engaging, and their audiences are seeing it. So you're going to get more overall engagement typically. But it's really important that you think through the company content that you're sharing, that it's not an overwhelming amount of just branded content with no insight or tying back to anything personal that you can add to it.

Drew: Well, there's a lot more to unpack about executive reputation management, and that's exactly what we did in the rest of the conversation. If you'd like to hear Marc's advice on getting tagged as a top voice, the ideal number of people to tag in posts and his recommendations for platforms beyond LinkedIn, continue watching on CMO Huddles Hub on YouTube. We've included a timestamped link in the episode description that picks up exactly where we're ending now. To hear more from Marc, I highly recommend connecting with him on LinkedIn or visiting qnary.com. And if you want to participate in future bonus huddles, and you are a senior marketing executive, visit CMO huddles.com to join our free starter program. I'm Drew Neisser, and we'll be back with another Huddles Quick Take very soon.

Show Credits

Renegade Marketers Unite is written and directed by Drew Neisser. Hey, that's me! This show is produced by Melissa Caffrey, Laura Parkyn, and Ishar Cuevas. The music is by the amazing Burns Twins and the intro Voice Over is Linda Cornelius. To find the transcripts of all episodes, suggest future guests, or learn more about B2B branding, CMO Huddles, or my CMO coaching service, check out renegade.com. I'm your host, Drew Neisser. And until next time, keep those Renegade thinking caps on and strong!