If you are leading at any level in an organization, you can expand your influence and scale your impact by creating an online presence to share your ideas and perspective. If you’re a leader, but want to become a thought leader, you’ll need to have a strong point of view and share it with others. As you embark on this journey, you’ll need to incorporate four important commitments to be most successful.
Value
Start by clearly articulating the value you want to share with the world. What topics are you uniquely qualified to share? What experiences, knowledge, or expertise do you have? To create real impact, you must bring information of value to your audiences. Whether you are offering a book or perspective or looking to create reach for a business or nonprofit cause, it’s important to be clear about your areas of expertise.
Then, dive into sharing value. It’s important to establish a website you own where you can create content to serve your audiences. Make sure your areas of expertise are clearly communicated on your site. Consider providing your website visitors with an opportunity to sign up for email-based communications. Creating an email list will allow you to create and share many types of content to fuel your thought leadership. It’s also important to have a social media presence so you can connect with new audiences and expand your following. Social media gives you the opportunity to regularly share valuable new insights and entice followers to visit your website. The more authentic your content is, the more helpful it will be to others.
As you seek to create thought leadership online, you’re entering a noisy space. Differentiating your ideas by infusing your personality and stories will help you connect with your audiences. People who need the content you share will be drawn to you–as they perceive that you have value to offer them.
If you lack clarity, or switch topics frequently, you’ll find it more difficult to draw people to follow you. The more clear you are, the more memorable you can become.
Generosity
Nothing will draw people to follow you faster than genuine generosity expressed through your free sharing of ideas, resources, and support. If you are just beginning on your journey to grow a following, give as much as you can in support of others who are building thought leadership on your topics to both beginners like you and more-established experts. You can be generous to others by quoting their work, sharing links to their articles, and writing book reviews. Your generous sharing of others’ content will help establish your reputation and will make you memorable to others.
Be generous with your own content, too. Give away as much content as you can. While it may seem counterintuitive to give your best content away for free, especially if you want to build a business, generosity in sharing your value helps people discover your value. You can do this through your website, blog and social media activities. Speak at non-profit organizations for free. If you’re an author, consider giving away books. If you have the time, hosting a podcast is a great way to be generous with your ideas, as well as gain traction for your message. In my own business, I’ve seen that giving away content helps me attract a larger following. A larger following means more potential customers for my organization.
Consistency
The only sure-fire way to make sure your desired audiences see the content you’re sharing is to show up with consistency and regularity. Repeating your key ideas and core messages over time helps imprint your unique perspective in the minds of your followers. If you create and share content on a reliable schedule, people will see they can count on you. Whether it’s a weekly blog, newsletter or twice a week social media postings, your consistency rewards people’s interest in you and you further cultivate your audience. If a weekly time frame seems too much, consider a quarterly cadence for your communications. Your followers will begin to expect the valuable reward of your new content and ideas.
Consistency takes commitment, but it will be impossible to draw an audience without it. Brendon Bruchard is a thought leader known for consistency. He writes “Consistency creates the habits and habits create the breakthroughs.” Brendon has posted daily on social media platforms for years.
When you are consistent about creating and adding value, you will amass a body of work through your online presence that is credible, valuable, and useful to your online audiences. You make it easy for people to find you and the value you’re creating.
Longevity
The importance of longevity applies regardless of how old you are, no matter when you start.
The most trusted thought leaders, like the most trusted brands, are the ones that stick around.
At times, you might believe the commitment is too much. Giving up seems to be the best option. Just remember that to create lasting impact, you need to have a lasting presence. If you want to develop a significant following, you will need to show up with value for a long time.
If you are consistent, search engines find you for your topics of expertise. More than that, people will know, recommend, and share your content with others. The more value you offer over time, the more possibilities you create for people to find, appreciate, and share your content with others. And, the longer you last, the deeper and greater impact you will have.
Are you willing to make these four commitments? Which of these commitments will be most challenging for you?
Becky Robinson is the Founder and CEO of Weaving Influence, a full-service marketing agency that specializes in digital and integrated marketing services and public relations for book authors, including business leaders, coaches, trainers, speakers, and thought leaders. Her first book with Berrett-Koehler Publishers titled, Reach: Create the Biggest Possible Audience for Your Message, Book, or Cause*, will be available in bookstores everywhere on April 19th.
*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.