If You’re Stuck Asking ‘What is Thought Leadership?’, Here’s What You Need to Know:
Thought leadership isn’t a race.
It’s not about who can share the most content on the most platforms in the least amount of time. Being heavily active in your industry doesn’t inherently make you a thought leader — not even close.
Real thought leadership revolves around one thing:
Providing your audience with quality content.
Quality content is what separates real thought leaders from wannabes.
Pick any major industry and think of the outright leader (or leaders) in that space.
Whoever you thought of came to mind for a reason. They could be your greatest inspiration or your biggest competitor — or in some cases, both. Either way, they had an effect on you — otherwise you wouldn’t have thought of them.
I guarantee that person is contributing valuable content to their industry on a consistent basis
Maybe they write opinion pieces for major media outlets or live-chat their customer base on social. Maybe they dedicate one month every year to keynote speaking. Maybe they’re always on industry-related podcasts.
Regardless, everyone knows they’re leading the charge because of the quality and consistency of content they put out.
If you want to be on that level, you need to do the same.
Quality needs to be unique, valuable, useful.
Regardless of how you choose to contribute to your industry, your content needs to be unique, valuable and useful.
If what you put out doesn’t provide some sort of value — something your audience can use immediately or can’t get anywhere else — it’s a complete waste of time.
Think about it: how much content do you sift through every day? How many times have you deleted an email before opening it, scrolled past an article after reading the title or stopped listening to a podcast because you got bored of it and wanted to listen to something else?
You do those things when content isn’t unique, valuable or useful.
So what makes you think your audience won’t do the same to you?
Whatever your industry, there are thousands — potentially hundreds of thousands — of people publishing millions of content pieces every single day. And every single one of those pieces is competing for consumer attention. If you want to be a thought leader you need to stand out — plain and simple.
You do that by publishing valuable, useful and unique insight as often as possible.
And if you’re wondering, “Where the hell am I gonna come up with enough content to do that?” don’t worry — it’s a lot easier than you think.
Just share what you know.
This is something my mentor Nicolas Cole constantly preaches here at Digital Press.
Part of our philosophy is to help CEOs, founders, c-suite execs share what they know through executive writing. The goal is to establish them as thought leaders in their space through quality content — content that comes directly from client experience.
At the end of the day, your audience wants to learn from you — that’s it. If you’re an executive or a CEO or a serial entrepreneur, people want to know how you did it. They want to know what they need to do in order to get to that place.
So teach them.
Tell them about the worst mistake you made as a founder, or about the time you landed your biggest client. Teach them skills you’ve learned along the way. Show them what it’s like to walk in your shoes, and how they can do the same thing with the right approach.
Too many wannabe thought leaders take another route. They try to advertise their company, brand, product or service, flaunt their “expertise,” and make people pay for the rest.
It’s entirely counterintuitive to everything you’re trying to accomplish.
People know when they are being sold to. The minute they feel that’s happening, they’re going to tune you out — remember: you’re competing for consumer attention. At the end of the day, they don’t need you — there are plenty of other resources they can pull from.
Thought leadership is an extremely simple concept:
People follow people adding value.
Ask yourself if the content you’re about to publish adds value to your industry. If so, share what you know for free. And do it as much as possible.
The next time someone thinks of your industry, you’ll come to mind.
