We spoke with Juan Carlos Santamaría, Director of Communication at Inithealth, a company dedicated to building digital solutions based on health plans. Talking with us, he talked about the power of communication, the importance of personal branding and the new conception of social networks.
Devol: What does Inithealth do??
Juan Carlos Santamaría: We mainly target B2B markets, that is, the insurance world, occupational risk prevention companies, large corporations… that want to develop a digital solution, generally in the format of a mobile application, so that their policyholders, clients, workers… can monitor these health parameters and, based on health plans, monitor them and, through a transversal gamification, have individual or collective challenges or meet certain challenges that can lead them to a Marketplace for redeeming points or discounts in department stores or whatever our corporate client decides.
¿How does someone who comes from an industry like insurance become a reference in the industry and a top voice on LinkedIn??
JCS: I had an evolution of having worked 20 years in commercial positions in the insurance sector or the creation of sales networks, which would be a B2B business through distributors of insurance brokers and agents. The last 13 years in the Init Group, as I mentioned before, with the development of business through communication and social networks of the Inithealth platform, has forced me to get fully involved in what I thought I did not have.
Because I thought I didn’t have social networks, but I did, they just weren’t digital. I had to make a digital and mental transformation. Using the skills of our expertise from the B2B business world and the relational world, applied to the digital world and through publications, opinion articles and participation in different events, you are positioning yourself as a reference in an industry.
Because you are not who you are, you are what others say or believe you really are, and that helps you and motivates you to continue making collaborations, participating in different tables, associations and opinion groups that, in the end, make you move forward. Also apply social intelligence, which would be to keep track of those people who recommend your publications, the comments they make when replying, follow voices that you also consider referents within your sector and that allows you to identify trends and create truly professional relationships but based on the human, on contact… De-virtualize them via coffees, face-to-face events, etc.
And all that is what gives you a level of relationship that, we already did in the 80s and 90s when we had a coffee or attended a trade show, but now we continue to do that, but it is much easier to reach a market that is outside our borders, I was going to say physical, but also mental, and that makes the creation of new business and new customers is not super easy, but it is easier than before.
Juan Carlos Santamaría and Felipe Rebollo.
You are a reference in the world of technology, startups, healthcare… How do you build a solid, professional and personal image?
JCS: We all have a personal and professional image. To have, we do. First we must identify what image we have or what we believe we are conveying to others. And you can also do this by asking people you trust in your environment to tell you how they see you and what your strengths or weaknesses are, to see if it matches your personal and confidential SWOT assessment of yourself.
That will lead you to define how you would want to see yourself or how you would want others to see you. Then, use that, depending on what your personal/professional objective is in the sense of your situation, whether you are the founder of a company or you are a sub-director of a company or a basic worker of any company, no matter how small…
Even a student. I say this also in talks at universities. You can be a student, you don’t have a job yet… Where would you like to work? What would be your goal and what would be your ideal job for the next 5, 10 or 15 years? Or what you intuit, because then you can change and pivot.
With that you can design a communication plan that does not have to be in capital letters, it can be a small communication plan. See to which people I am going to read, I am going to dedicate equis minutes a day. I usually recommend, if you are in a very “I don’t want to, it costs me, I don’t have time…” mode, to dedicate only 15 minutes before you open your email and look at WhatsApp, to see if on LinkedIn you have any notification, any invitation, who suggests you that can be your contact… Dedicate a quarter of an hour to look for old acquaintances from previous companies, fellow students, university professors and people from new appointments in your sector that you have read… And with that you start to enrich your network of contacts.
Obviously, step two that we all recommend is that you’re one of that 0.35% that posts something weekly. Right now, worldwide, I think we have reached 1 billion LinkedIn users. In Spain we are 14 million, but of the 14 million only 0.35% of us publish something weekly. When I say something, it can be something of 200 words, it doesn’t need to be a doctoral thesis.
You must start publishing something, and that start can be as simple as a paragraph making a comment or a publication you have seen giving your opinion. With the passage of time, although you have to be patient, you are not going to become a reference in the sector in one day, unless you invent something or you are a scholar at a university, but it will take some time, you will begin to make your brand project and be a micro influencer within what would be your sector or work environment.
