You’ve no doubt heard of the term “thought leader.”
But what is it and why would you want to be one?
There are many reasons!
First, what IS a thought leader?
A thought leader is someone who is seen as an expert and even go-to resource in their field.
Being a thought leader is a good thing: it helps build your credibility for your company and/or your products or services
How do you become a thought leader?
The short answer: you need to create – and then promote/showcase – educational, helpful content. And you become active (publish) your content in the form of blog posts, infographics, podcasts, video, etc. on your website, via email and on your social channels.
The most important part of doing this?
You MUST create and publish this content regularly
This means you can’t write a blog post once and then write another three weeks later, then six weeks later.
You can’t post videos on Instagram six times in one week and then just one more three weeks later.
You get our drift: you must publish informative and helpful content regularly. So regularly that you followers come to expect the content to appear on certain days and even certain times.
Why thought leadership is so effective when it comes to marketing your services or products
Post help content regularly works because providing your target market value shows how helpful and knowledgeable you are. When they’re eventually read to buy – when they decide they need or want a product or service such as yours – because you’ve been so helpful and knowledgeable, they’ll buy from you first.
Regular, well-thought-out content will increase awareness among your prospects, improve social proof, boost engagement and generate more leads…and then sales!
Steps to becoming a thought leader:
- Know your audience and know them REALLY well!
You can start learning about your target market by creating personas. This entails learning about who your best customers are (and have been in the past): what problems are they trying to solve/what goals do they want to meet or exceed? How old are they? Who are they (what is their title) at the companies you’re targeting? And so on.
Create content that answers these questions, helps them reach their goals or overcome their problems.
- Write blog posts that answer typical questions. Provide tactics and steps that help them reach certain goals you know they have.
- Create videos that discuss these issues or even provide how-to videos.
- Put together an infographic with some “facts you need to know” about their goals/problems.
- And so on.
- Then post this content on your blog/website and provide links to it from your social channels.
- Or post the video on Instagram or TikTok and even LinkedIn or Facebook.
- Send out a regular email newsletter or even SMS text messages to those prospects and customers who have given you their email address or phone numbers with links to the blog posts, videos, etc.
Take a look at your competitors’ content
What kind of content are they producing? How are they broadcasting/sending it to their prospects and customers?
Create VALUABLE content and be genuine
Your content should be original: don’t simply copy, paste and post other business’ content. You’ll lose credibility quickly.
Create content that speaks in your brand’s voice. Content that’s helpful. That shows you took effort to research it, write/tape/create it, etc.
Just as your parents told you as the best way to make friends: be yourself!
Finally – and we truly CAN NOT emphasize this enough: publish it regularly.
At least:
- once a week for a blog post
- three times a week for social media
- once a month for a newsletter
If you can broadcast more content more often, all the better. Just do so consistently.
Doing so consistently can be tough for a small-to-medium-sized business
Contact us soon to learn more.
