How To Start Developing Your Thought Leadership – 3 Ways To Do It

You want to establish yourself as an industry thought leader – someone whose perspectives and opinions set the pace for your business sector, but you haven’t promoted your ideas and perspectives before publicly because you aren’t sure where to start. As a marketing and PR professional who collaborates with senior leaders to help them promote their thought leadership on the platform, I have some tips to help you build your brand.

The benefits of thought leadership are many – not only are you able to elevate your personal profile, you can establish yourself as a subject matter expert for your organization. This visibility can lead to speaking engagements, journalist inquiries, and customer interest. One of the things I love about thought leadership is the ability to reinforce your brand story, although this must be done subtly, by weaving in big ideas and brand characteristics you want stakeholders to take note of them with a content strategy.

Here Are Three Ways to Start Developing Your Thought Leadership:

Identify Personal Brand Values

The first thing I do when working on a client’s LinkedIn content strategy is to identify their personal brand values – the things that distinguish them and declare what they stand for.

This is different from the business brand. The personal brand is what makes you become memorable and makes people choose your company because of the insights you offer. People want to connect with and trust YOU, the individual. The razor sharp way you articulate your personal brand values in your content will allow people to get to know you and want to do business with you.

Commenting Strategy: Get Seen

If you have less than 500 connections, haven’t been active on LinkedIn, or want to foster new business connections, then start to build visibility by joining the conversation of people you want to connect with and comment on their posts. That said, take a strategic approach to this by identifying the individuals with whom you want to develop or deepen a connection. For example, I post comments on the feeds of select chief marketing officers of companies I’d like to connect with as they are my target customers. I did this recently and a few days later, I received a connection invitation from that individual. Although it’s common practice to follow competitors on the platform, remember to avoid commenting on their posts which can be inappropriate.

In addition, LinkedIn provides the option to Repost With Your Thoughts. In addition to the above tips, you can also Repost something of interest with a comment. Be sure to tag Comment; Simply enter your comments and tag using the @ sign to draw attention to people you want to see it.

LinkedIn Collaborative Articles

As a means of assisting users in amplifying their voices on the platform, LinkedIn recently added a new feature called Collaborative Articles. You can peruse the business topics that LinkedIn has started Collaborative Articles for here. These include Business Administration, Marketing, HR and more. Note that they are referred to as LinkedIn Pulse. The articles are written with the help of artificial intelligence, but don’t let that detract you. Think of this as a worthwhile opportunity to share your expertise and improve your search engine optimization in bite size pieces and not as a brand marketing piece. I’ve been participating about 1-2 times a month in these and find that it’s also good practice in fine tuning my messaging. Remember to “Like” and or “Share” the articles when you’re adding a comment.

Are you looking to increase your executive visibility and promote your company or brand? If so, let’s talk. Click here to schedule a free discovery call today. Sign up to receive our free monthly PR Tips here.