Battenhall

Helping clients and internal teams to implement innovation-related work, such as new and niche social media platform campaigns, and experiments that break new ground in the industry.

Senior Consultant, Innovation

Helping clients develop and roll-out their communications strategy, with a particular focus on social media/community management.

Senior Consultant

Concourse

•	Promoted to new role; helped oversee the redesign of the company website.
•	Defining marketing strategy and creating full marketing plans for the company, repositioning it as a leader in sustainability within the industry
•	Handling all social media strategy and content creation
•	Managing virtual event participation (online trade shows and webinars) and handling press requests

Marketing Manager

•	Managing marketing activations and permanent visibility projects for FMCG clients in travel retail
•	Liaising with retailers to build relationships and ensure full and timely implementation of programmes
•	Working on briefs for internal team and external parties when necessary on behalf of clients
•	Implementing toolkits and brand guidelines within activations and permanent furniture

Client Project Manager

JING Tea

•	Responsible for all trade marketing initiatives in the hospitality sector
•	Liaising with customers and distributors to support marketing activities and campaigns, from the development of bespoke menus to masterclasses and events
•	Agreeing, implementing and evaluating the brand’s participation at relevant industry trade events 
•	Establishing and overseeing partnerships with industry associations and potential brand partners
•	Developing proposals for tenders, head office deals and other prospective customers
•	Managing a Trade Marketing Assistant

Trade Marketing Manager

Beam Suntory

* Brand development in the travel retail/duty free segment for spirits brands such as Bowmore, Laphroaig, Jim Beam, Maker's Mark, Courvoisier, Yamazaki and Hibiki
* Responsibility over customers' marketing budgets
* Managing and implementing promotional activities at airports
* Identifying local opportunities through networking and influencing
* Training staff on brand and category knowledge

Customer Marketing Manager

Freelance Writer and Blogger

* Writing freelance features for a range of publications
* Corporate translation work

Freelance Journalist 

CUBICLE 7 ENTERTAINMENT LTD

* Developing the publisher's presence within social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter
* Managing PR opportunities and establishing contacts within key specialist media outlets and blogs 
* Producing content for the company's website
* Attending trade shows and events
* Short-term contract

Social Media and Marketing Manager

William Grant & Sons

* Brand development in the travel retail/duty free segment for spirits brands such as Glenfiddich, Hendrick's, The Balvenie, Tullamore DEW and Monkey Shoulder 
* Implementing promotional activities at airports
* Identifying local opportunities through networking and influencing
* Managing POS production, order and budgeting
* Attending trade shows and events, liaising with stakeholders of all levels from senior executives to shop staff
* Training staff on brand and category knowledge, being the team expert on spirits

Promotion and Merchandising Executive

Metropolis Business Media

* Redeveloping DFNIonline.com, liaising directly with the IT and design teams
* Responsible for increasing traffic on DFNIonline.com from around 3,500 unique visitors in November 2007 to over 23,000 in November 2012, and for establishing the magazine’s social media presence on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter
* Establishing key contacts with industry stakeholders that led to exclusive interviews and breaking news stories, including retailers and luxury brands
* Liaising with and managing freelance contributors and their output on a regular basis
* Travelling to events, conferences and to chase stories in four continents

Deputy Editor

Sportstranslations

* Translating copy on sports ranging from football to rallying
* Translating official communications from entities such as FIFA to local federations
* Working languages: German, English, French and Spanish to Portuguese

Translator (freelancer)

Revista Paradoxo

* Writing film reviews, culture and entertainment features and interviews for Brazilian weekly webzine Revista Paradoxo.

UK correspondent (freelancer)

At Battenhall, I help clients and internal teams to implement innovation-related work, such as new and niche social media platform campaigns, and experiments that break new ground in the industry. I have over 20 years of experience in marketing, communications, and project management, with a focus on social media and community management.

I am a CIM Member and a lifelong learner, always eager to explore new trends, tools, and strategies in the digital space. I have a passion for sustainability and social impact, and I enjoy working with clients and colleagues who share this vision. I am also a proud geek, a dog lover, and a Wordle enthusiast.

Fun fact: I once slept through an earthquake in Japan.

Nicole Mezzasalma

I help business leaders and tech sales teams use LinkedIn and Sales Navigator to grow their network, find opportunities and build a stronger professional voice.

Whether the challenge is time, skills or confidence - or a mix of all three - I help people get more value from LinkedIn by making it feel authentic, not awkward.

I focus on three areas:
⭑ Social media strategy and point of view development
⭑ LinkedIn and Sales Navigator coaching for individuals and teams
⭑ Ghostwriting and content creation

I’ve worked in PR and marketing for well over 25 years, mostly agency-side in the tech sector. Having built and led B2B agencies, I found I missed the hands-on work with clients.

So in 2020, my wife Jo and I launched Brightside to help businesses tell better stories through people, not just brand social media channels. We now work with a small group of trusted associates and partner with larger agencies as their exec comms and LinkedIn specialists.

My claim to fame: I founded the sport of ‘extreme ironing’ back in 1997. My competitive days are behind me now, but I still enjoy coaching an under-9s football team and hosting a retro gaming podcast.

Let me know if I can help you or your business get more value from social media, or if you'd just like a chat about your communications challenges. We're here to help!

Phil Szomszor

Best client-agency team ever? I have lots of favourites, but working with Cisco is still up there for me. 

Here's a few of us at some awards thing or other - circa 2016. Can't remember which one it was at, or whether we won or not. 

What I do remember is the people and the sense of teamwork. And being proud of the work we did together across PR and social media. 

Everyone's gone on to do lots of other interesting stuff since then, but they're all still connected on LinkedIn. 

My only regret is not taking more photos through my career. Even the seemingly unimportant stuff, like team photos around the office, my desk or how I got there each morning. 

My Friday message: record the moments, and stay in touch with the people who are part of them. 

📸 Picture credit: Lucas Betés (I think) with Liam Thomson, Sophie Robinson, John Crossley, Yatin Vyas, Abi Bashorun, Samantha Binns, Katie Owen and Sarah Wilson. And hat tip to everyone at Cisco and in the extended team who I worked with 2016-2019.

Helping leaders sharpen their skills and get better results from LinkedIn and Sales Navigator | Co-founder, Brightside

Highlight of the week for me so far: presenting the Winter lecture to the Socially Mobile alumni group.

I was invited by Sarah Waddington CBE CDir ChartPR and Stephen Waddington to run a free workshop, entitled, "How to get LinkedIn to work for you (not the other way around)". 

Socially Mobile is a brilliant initiative tackling one of PR’s long-standing problems: the lack of social mobility and diversity in the industry. They’re helping talented practitioners from all backgrounds build confidence, networks and careers that reflect the society our industry serves.

I won’t lie, seeing the feedback and receiving the follow-up responses has been heartwarming. But it’s also a two-way street, as I got the chance to try out some new material post-360Brew launch.

If you’re curious, Stephen’s written a great summary of the lecture here on the Socially Mobile blog: https://lnkd.in/e6mQbeFk

Massive thanks to Sarah, Stephen and the Socially Mobile team for the invite and everything they’re doing to open up opportunities in PR. My only regret was not meeting everyone face-to-face. Next time.

Doing this also gave me a spark to do more free workshops. I enjoyed helping people with 1:1s last year, but this way I can help more people. Definitely want to do something for freelancers and people between roles, so watch this space.

What happens when you’ve built your career around being really good at one thing, then suddenly find yourself running the business?

That’s what happened to an old friend of mine, Steve Pickering.

Steve left school in the late 80s and worked in his father’s family business selling beds. After decades on the shop floor, it was time for his dad to step back. In 2014, Steve became CEO, working alongside his younger brother, cousin, and other family members at Sussex Beds.

They had big ambitions for where they wanted to take the business. What they didn’t yet have was a clear understanding of the mechanics: KPIs, structure, financial control, and what it really takes to run a growing organisation.

In this short clip from my latest Brightside Podcast interview, Steve talks candidly about that moment, realising what they didn’t know, and the changes they made that set the business up for long-term success.

Jo and I have put much more focus on the commercial side of our own business recently, including appointing new accountants in 2025, so this part of the conversation really resonated with me.

You can watch the full interview on YouTube, where Steve also talks about his LinkedIn journey and his approach to running meetings that actually move the business forward.

If you’re working in retail or running a family business, Steve shares a lot of this stuff openly on LinkedIn and it’s well worth a follow.

Have you cracked the code for which LinkedIn posts will fly, and which will die?

Me neither. And I’ve been doing this for myself and clients for over six years.

I put the question to my latest podcast guest, Steve Pickering, CEO of Sussex Beds. He’s been sharing his journey as a retail business owner for a couple of years now and enjoyed the ride so far.

But he still can’t predict 100% which posts will take off.

What Steve does know (and he’s right) is that the ones that do best are always the most authentic. Not just in terms of reach or likes, but in how they shape your reputation and how people see you over time.

Sure, there are some weighting factors. Posts with natural people photos usually outperform AI-generated ones. And spacing your text is better than writing in blocks. But that’s just optimisation, not a crystal ball.

So if anyone says they know for sure what will work and what won’t, I’d call BS on that.

Can you relate to what Steve says here?

🎧 Search "The Brightside Podcast" on YouTube for the full interview.

The Edelman Trust Barometer 2026 is out. And if last year’s was sobering, this one feels resigned. But there was a ray of light in the gloom.

If you've read the report or seen any of the coverage, you'll know the core theme this year is that our societies are becoming more insular. A reaction to economic strain, misinformation, culture wars and all the other dark stuff happening around us.

But one idea stood out as an antidote: “trust brokering”.

Edelman uses the term to describe people who build bridges. Those who stay curious, listen across divides and bring others into dialogue instead of retreating into echo chambers.

I saw this in practice yesterday in a conversation with a US entrepreneur. He’s an active Republican, though not a Trump fan (to put it mildly).

He was thoughtful, measured, and surprisingly open-minded about what’s worked and what hasn’t under different administrations. While deeply worried about recent ICE developments, he even acknowledged that some of Trump’s ideas had merit, and understood the fears from both Republican and Democrat voters.

It reminded me that trust doesn’t just happen through leaders at the top of organisations. It’s built one conversation at a time, usually when you least expect it.

This isn’t about giving Trump or any populist a free pass. It’s about trying to understand what makes people think the way they do, and finding the common ground you share.

Let me know what you think of this idea, and how you think it can be applied in practical ways.

Did you know LinkedIn is now the second most-cited domain by large language models?

That’s according to research from Semrush, which analysed over 230,000 prompts across ChatGPT, Google’s AI Mode and Perplexity.

No surprise to see Reddit and Wikipedia near the top; they’ve long been the go-to training sources for open discussions and factual grounding. But LinkedIn’s rise is the interesting bit.

Semrush’s team spotted a sharp drop in Reddit and Wikipedia citations on ChatGPT in September, which some SEOs linked to a Google change (“removing the num=100 search parameter”, for the technically curious). 

Whatever the cause, LinkedIn quietly gained share while others dipped.

This shows that LinkedIn isn’t just influencing buyers on the platform itself, but it’s having an even stronger effect within LLMs, where buyer research is also happening.

I know I’m biased, but LinkedIn should already be a priority for gaining influence - whether that’s for profile-building or sales. I’ve seen first-hand its impact in search engines, and now LLMs are coming to the fore.

Worth keeping an eye on Semrush for updates and adding its blog to your bookmarks. 

---

Thanks to Austin Brailey for flagging this research to me. The research was actually out before Christmas, but I missed it at the time. Noticed a few social media big guns like Hootsuite's CEO Irina Novoselsky and Becca Chambers sharing it this week, so it's getting the attention it deserves.

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Phil Szomszor

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The Battle

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Phil Szomszor

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Phil Szomszor's LinkedIn Performance

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