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Three Steps to Becoming a Thought Leader
This is a two-part series on thought leadership. The first article looks into defining thought leadership, what it takes to be one, and the benefits it brings to your business. The second article explores the steps in becoming a thought leader.
Read the first part of the series – What it Takes to be a Thought Leader and Why Should You Care here.
You decide your company has what it takes to be a thought leader but what’s next? It’s time to strategize and take action. Here are three steps to enable your company to reach thought-leadership status.
Develop Your Personal Brand and Voice
To enable your company to stand out, you need to develop a consistent brand personality and voice. This is an essential step to becoming a though leader. Brand strategist and author Laura Ries defines a brand as “a name that stands for something in prospects’ minds”. Ries says the best way to start developing your brand is to define who you are and your unique abilities. Next, you need to understand other people’s perceptions of your company. This exercise requires speaking with different people in your life and industry to understand their perceptions.
Developing your voice comes next. Kuno Creative, an international leading inbound marketing agency, suggests asking yourself, “What is it that I want to say, and how do I want to sound when saying it?” For example, the voice you adopt for a fashion brand would be different from an academics company. Discuss the voice of your company carefully with your team and take your subject matter and audience into consideration.
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Create and Maintain an Awesome Blog
According to Pamela Vaughan, author and manager of optimization and growth of HubSpot's blog, “Launching a blog that covers important topics relating to the industry in which you’re selling is perhaps the best way to establish and uphold your image as a thought leader.” Aside from getting more credible industry presence, Vaughan believes a well-managed blog will also improve lead generation and boost search engine optimization (SEO).
Before you start writing and posting zealously, it’s important to take the time to build a blogging strategy. The strategy should be based on your brand and the issues that matter most to your audience. Forbes Magazine’s Russ Alan Prince points out that strategizing is a key piece to the challenging thought leadership puzzle. Without a strong plan in place, it’s impossible to build a long-term approach to your blog content. You need to ensure your team understands the importance of enacting the strategy as this will be a major contributing factor to the success of the blog.
As mentioned by Vaughan, well-maintained blogs will also help boost SEO. This is because Google and other search engines continue to favour websites that produce informative or entertaining content on a regular basis via blogging. When you start blogging, try to post often and be consistent. It’s fine to start small as long as the it’s quality content, and you have the goal to increase the quantity in the near future. As for content, do bear in mind that thought leaders always offer a unique perspective on industry happenings so avoid regurgitating industry facts without providing your take on the situation.
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Produce Interesting Content
Aside from blogging, do consider creating advanced content such as whitepapers, webinars, infographics and industry cheat sheets. These content demonstrate your knowledge expands beyond short blog posts, and prove you’re capable of thought leadership on an even greater scale. These resources will help other professionals in your industry and in turn help boost your credibility and SEO.
What other steps do you think would make a successful thought leader? We would love to hear from you. Drop us a comment or feedback.
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