Small Business Marketing
Jan 19, 2023
Small Business Marketing
Jan 19, 2023
10 Simple Steps to Capture Your Target Audience with Thought Leadership
Are you an expert in your industry? Do people know about your expertise?
Don’t keep your awesome industry insights to yourself. Today is a good day to start your journey toward thought leadership.
Thought leadership is simply capitalizing on what you know about your industry and your target consumers and promoting yourself as a representative of your brand accordingly.
With thought leadership, you can engage consumers before they purchase. It is the backbone of brand awareness and expresses to your target audience why they should align with your brand.
Why Thought Leadership is So Important
Thought leadership builds credibility. Credibility builds trust. Trust brings in sales.
Plus, who doesn’t want to be a little famous in their industry!?
Utilizing your authentic insights about your industry and business will create brand awareness and keep your brand top-of-mind with your target audience.
The internet is so cluttered and consumers crave humanized connections. Stand out and give consumers what they want by implementing thought leadership.
Thought Leadership Elements
Ready for some notoriety? Let’s look at the elements of thought leadership.
- Expertise in the industry your brand is in
- An insightful approach that educates
- Convey your personal journey and experience
- Inspiration to engage with your audience and present new ideas
- Opinionated and takes a stance
- Transparency and authenticity
- Embrace creativity
- Humanized connections
- Originality instead of regurgitating information that already exists
- Consistency in order to reach audiences often and in a variety of ways
10 Actionable Ways to Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader
I know content-consumption time is limited so I am getting straight to the point. The following 10 ways will establish you as a thought leader and you can start implementing them today.
Blog: Blog weekly on your company’s blog or your own blog or both.
Guest post: Identify like-minded publications and reach out to them and ask if you can contribute a guest post.
Create innovative resources: Whether it’s a downloadable eBook or an independent research report on your industry, create content with a lead capture form so that you grow your email list of contacts to nurture your thought leadership.
Digital PR: Reach out to news outlets and trade publications and offer them a quote or resource they can link to. You can also join HARO, an outlet that emails you daily with queries journalists are working on.
Join digital communities: Identify communities on Facebook and LinkedIn that align with your industry and join them. Share your thought leadership content and strike up new conversations.
Host webinars: Share your insights in a live format either hosted by your own brand or you can be a guest at other brands’ webinars.
Speak at conferences: Research upcoming conferences that your target audience would attend and apply to be a speaker. Be sure to network a lot after you speak to get the most leverage.
Advertise in trade publications: There are trade publications in every industry and you can do things like newsletter inserts and banner ads to leverage your thought leadership content.
Be active on social media: Post 5 times per week on every social platform you’re active on. Engage with your audience and provide consistent thought leadership posts. Video snippets are the most engaging and you can record simple ones on your phone.
Partner with influencers: Influencers have an already engaged audience. Partner with influencers in a variety of ways. Have them interview you, ask them to share your content or even just request a quick social media shout-out.
Important! Always Implement Authenticity
Thought leadership works when it is sincere and authentic. Consumers want a humanized connection and to feel like you truly understand their needs.
So, give your strategy some thought. With all of the ways I just listed on how to become a thought leader, they won’t work if you don’t really believe in what you are putting out.
One thing that comes up a lot is that people wanting to become thought leaders get hung up on coming across as super professional, very polished, and using industry jargon. Honestly, I vote for you to be yourself so that you seem authentic.
Share your own journey in your industry, find ways to personally relate to your audience and you do you!
Conclusion: Enjoy the Credibility That Comes With Being a Thought Leader
Are you excited to gain a little limelight while providing thought leadership to benefit your brand?
Just be sure you implement all of the elements of thought leadership and follow the best practices I outlined. You’ll be a thought leader in no time!
Do you have a good example of thought leadership? I’d love to read all about it in the comments below!
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