One of my favourite things to do is to give a presentation. 

I love public speaking. It fills me with energy and it's the crowd that feeds me with it. 

But I used to hate public speaking. 

In my first year of university, I had to present on a marketing project in front of the class - about 90 people - and I remember how nervous I was and how my nerves got the best of me. I was sweating, my voice was trembling, I couldn't look anybody in the eyes and I don't think I managed to transmit my message to my public. I was ashamed when it was all over. 

My initial reaction to this 'failure' was that I was never going to do public speaking again. I was terrified and I never wanted to experience this again. 

But after a couple of days, my attitude changed. I decided that I was going to overcome this fear and I was going to become a terrific public speaker. 

I don't know if I am a terrific public speaker but I can certainly say that I no longer loathe giving presentations in front of small and large groups, I love it and I welcome it. The more, the better. 

So how did I do it?

I was a speaker at a fantastic event called DigitalK earlier this year in Sofia that was all about digital and digital transformation. 

As I'm starting a new job at Cisco next week and because Cisco is all about digital transformation, I wanted to look at various things I've written and participated in about and around digital so I remembered this interview I did prior to the conference in Sofia. 

Take a look at what digital means to me and how I see it impacting the business world. 

5 Questions About Digital

How do you see the world in 5 years?

Happy New Year my readers!

I hope 2019 is going to be successful, happy, fruitful, filled with emotions and achievements and the most enriching experiences for all of you! 

As I said last week, I tend to reflect a lot when the year ends. Last week we reviewed the top posts on this blog based on views, this week I want to show you the 12 posts that defined 2018 for me. 

They explore Inbound PR and the book I published about it this year, internal communication, marketing, leadership and social media. 

Below is the selection of my favourite posts per month out of the 51 pieces that I wrote in 2018. 

On to a fabulous 2019 and more PR, inbound PR, marketing and business posts!

The 12 Blog Posts of 2018 that Defined Iliyana's Blog

Almost every day at work, I find myself in a situation where I need to persuade someone to do something and most of the times, this someone wouldn't even report to me. 

As you can imagine, this is extremely difficult to do because others have their own jobs and priorities and trying to impose yours on them isn't as simple. 

I've found that to make someone to agree to a proposal (a pitch for an executive yes or a request to someone to do pieces of work) you need to rely on one particular weapon - influence. 

Becoming influential, though, is a lengthy process that in my opinion revolves around building relationships with people and growing your own reputation. 

But sometimes, even if you are the most influential person in the company, you'll inevitably get pushback. 

Ideally, you should be prepared for such an outcome in advance. A helpful strategy I've used in such tricky situations is analysing and planning with Cialdini's six principles of persuasion. 

"People can’t just be told change is coming and be expected to spring into action. They have to work through it."

I quite agree with this quote. It comes from Beth Comstock's book Imagine It Forward that I just finished reading.

Beth Comstock was the Vice Chair of General Electric and throughout her decades-long career she has gathered a ton of experience in marketing, innovation and change for business growth. 

The book is classified as a business and leadership book, however, for me it was more of a memoir or the GE story through Beth's eyes and experiences from the last couple of decades in a chronological order, detailing meetings, corporate issues and decision-making challenges. 

As impressive and at times difficult Beth's journey has been, I found it hard to identify the practical tips and a clear plan of action to make change happen while reading the book. Maybe that wasn't its purpose but rather to tell a personal autobiography. 

Nonetheless, there were some nice nuggets and important learnings that I noted on my kindle. I want to share these with you today. I've structured them based on some of the key topics I picked up: innovation, change and leadership. 

Innovation