Founder of ShankMinds: Breakthrough
Peter Shankman
Speaking Fee: Varies.
Travels From: Available Upon Request
Peter Shankman At A Glance:
Called “a public relations all-star who knows everything about new media and then some," Peter Shankman is a spectacular example of what happens when you merge the power of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder with a desire to improve the world.
Called “a public relations all-star who knows everything about new media and then some,” Peter Shankman is a spectacular example of what happens when you merge the power of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) with a desire to improve the world. A bestselling author, entrepreneur, and speaker, Peter is recognized worldwide for radically new ways of thinking about the Customer Economy, Entrepreneurship, Social Media, PR, marketing, advertising. And ADD/ADHD.
Peter is best known for founding Help A Reporter Out, (HARO) which in under a year became the de-facto standard for thousands of journalists looking for sources on deadline, offering them more than 200,000 sources around the world looking to be quoted in the media. HARO is currently the largest free source repository in the world, sending out over 1,500 queries from worldwide media each week. HARO’s tagline, “Everyone is an Expert at Something” proves over and over again to be true, as thousands of new members join at helpareporter.com each week. In June of 2010, less than two years after Peter started HARO in his apartment, it was acquired by Vocus, Inc.
Peter is the founder of ShankMinds: Breakthrough, an online entrepreneurial community, with members in more-than ten countries. Peter also hosts an award-winning podcast on ADD and ADHD, Faster Than Normal, which is helping to turn the conversation around ADHD from curse to gift, by interviewing successful people who have made ADHD their secret superpower.
Additionally, Peter is also the founder and CEO of The Geek Factory, Inc., a boutique Social Media, Marketing and PR Strategy firm located in New York City, with clients worldwide. His blog, which he launched in 1995 at shankman.com, both comments on and generates news and conversation.
Peter’s Customer Economy and Corporate clients have included American Express, Sprint, The US Department of Defense, INCOMM, Starwood Hotels, United Airlines, Royal Bank of Canada, Snapple Beverage Group, Saudi Aramco, Foley Hoag, LLP, NASA, Haworth, Walt Disney World, Abercrombie and Kent, The Ad Council, Discovery Networks, New Frontier Media, Napster, Juno, Dream Catcher Destinations Club, Harrah’s Hotels, and many, many others.
Peter is the author of four books: Zombie Loyalists: Using Great Service to Create Rabid Fans (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2015,) Nice Companies Finish First: Why Cutthroat Management is Over, and Collaboration is in (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2013,) Customer Service: New Rules for a Social‹ Media World (Que Biz-Tech 2010,) and Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work–And Why Your Company Needs Them (Wiley and Sons, 2006,) and and is a frequent keynote speaker and workshop presenter at conferences and tradeshows worldwide, including South By Southwest, TEDx, Affiliate Summit, BlogWorld, TBEX, The Public Relations Society of America, CTIA, CTAM, CES, PMA, OMMA, Mobile Marketing Asia, and the Direct Marketing Association.
Peter is an angel investor in early stage startup companies, sits on multiple advisory boards, and is honored to sit on the NASA Civilian Advisory Council, appointed to his position by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.
A marketing pundit for several national and international news channels, including Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, Peter is frequently quoted in major media and trade publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, The Associated Press, Reuters and USA Today. A proud Boston University graduate, Peter started his career at America Online as a Senior News Editor, helping found the AOL Newsroom and spearheading coverage of the Democratic and Republican 1996 conventions, which marked the first time an online news service covered any major political event.
Born and raised in New York City, Peter still resides there with his beautiful wife and daughter, and cats NASA and Leeloo, all of whom consistently deny his repeated requests to relinquish the couch. In the few hours of spare time Peter has per month he’s completed 22 marathons, seven Olympic distance triathlons, four half-Ironman triathlons, and one full Ironman Triathlon. He’s also a “B”licensed skydiver with over 400 jumps. In 2011, Peter authored a tweet that was voted as one of the Top Ten Tweets of the year by Twitter, out of more than 160,000,000,000 tweets sent.
-
The Economy of the Next Fifty Years will be run by Customer Service
The days of begging for likes are over. The customer economy is all about doing likeable things. As the network gets smarter and smarter, it'll know your favorite places before you do, and share those with the world - when the world is looking. So if your friends are looking for a doctor in New York City, and you live there, it'll show them who you use, automatically, because logic suggests that if you go there a lot, you like the place, and your friends usually like what you like. It's not private if you're already posting from there, remember. What does this mean for your business? It means that it's time to start focusing on the customer experience - Without that, no amount of advertising, marketing, or SEO will save you.
Your audience will learn:
• The five rules of the customer economy
• Why speed matters
• How to stay "top-of-mind" in every customer's mind, from beginning to end
• How millennials, as well as Generations Z and Alpha are consuming content, and how you can get in front of them -
How the Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality Industry Can Win the Customer Economy Wars
Other than a marriage, there is nothing that is shared more throughout the social landscape than a vacation. Whether it's an Instagram of your plane's wing in the air to announce that you're going somewhere and your friends aren't, to a sad face as you're leaving the beach for the last time before you go home, vacations are made for sharing, sharing, oversharing, and sharing some more. But... This also leaves you wide open for any negative experiences, as well. The key is NOT to ask for a review, or beg for a like. The key is to refocus your energy not on chasing the likes, but on doing more likable things. In the end, the days of Yelp are numbered. Instead, the network will know what we do as we're doing it, and will gauge our happiness or dissatisfaction based on the sentiment of our shares. When people in our network start looking for vacation or travel ideas, they won't have to look for reviews - their friend's vacations will simply appear in front of them. In other words, the network will know what they want, and only show them recommendations from people they trust, who have already had good experiences. (Hint: Google is already doing this.) What does that mean for the travel, tourism, and hospitality industry? It means you need to start thinking about how you're treating your customers offline, long before they go online.
Your audience will learn:
• The five rules of the new customer economy
• Why "nice" matters
• How to stay "top-of-mind" in every customer's brain, from before they plan their trip until long after the return home
• How millenia travel, and how generations Z and Alpha are plotting to take their travel to the next level over the next fifty years. -
Catering to the ADHD Economy
In addition to being a bestselling customer service and marketing author, Peter also hosts the award-winning podcast Faster Than Normal, where he discusses the benefits of ADD and ADHD. Put the two together, and Peter will offer your audience unique and proven techniques to reach your audience in the 2.7 seconds of attention span they first offer to you.
Your audience will learn:
• What five keywords will hold a consumer's attention
• How Peter's first company went from 0 to 250,000 users with a 79% daily engagement rate.
• How to create content that your audience simply must share
• How to get your audience to do your PR, sales, and marketing for you! -
Putting on your own oxygen mask first: Entrepreneur Self-Care
Designed for today's startup culture, Peter leads an engaging and truly needed conversation on the world of the startup-entrepreneur, and how it could secretly be killing you. Entrepreneurship is an exciting road, but a lonely one, as well. In this honest and open talk, Peter shares his successes, his failures, and what he needs to do every day to make sure he stays on track, and doesn't wind up imploded on the side of the road.
Your entrepreneurial audience will learn:
• Five "must dos" each morning that equate to success
• The top ten habits of repeatedly successful entrepreneurs
• How to take care of your brain and body in eight minutes per day
• Why being open about what you do is actually more beneficial than not sharing
• How to build your trusted support system
