Be a Thought Leader to Make Your Marketing Credible

I recently started a series of blog posts on strategies that you should consider to make your marketing more credible. This week I want to look at the next strategy in more detail which is about becoming a thought leader in your industry.

First off, you need to decide who is the best person to become a thought leader. In some cases, it's the CEO of your company. But in many cases it's the founder, the CTO or some technical expert with many years of experience. In addition to knowledge though, this person needs writing and presentation skills along with a lot of time (more on this later) and true dedication to making the industry better. This role is not for someone who is going to fake it or is not willing to give everything they have to help people so choose carefully.

Finding the right person is not easy but that's only the beginning. Not surprisingly, creating valuable content, the strategy I wrote about previously, is a major step in helping you become a thought leader. In fact, creating new, relevant and useful content is the key to being a thought leader so the two are very intertwined. 

In addition to creating and publishing this content, you need to get out there and share your knowledge within your industry. You can speak at conferences, write articles or columns for industry publications, become involved in industry consortium or organizations, write a book or industry-focused blog, or become a go-to person for editors and get quoted in articles. All of these tactics help spread your content more widely and raise your profile with your target audience.

The important point with all of this is that you need to communicate how to solve your market's problems in new and compelling way so you will get calls from editors, get invited to speak at conferences, or get other opportunities to share your knowledge and content. No one is going to call if you only talk about your product.

Essentially, you need to build a personal brand as a respected expert on your industry's trends, with a deep understanding of the problems your target audience faces, and simple, clear solutions to these problems. There are many great example of individuals that have built strong, personal brands and helped their companies become credible through their thought leadership. 

One last consideration which I alluded to earlier - if you think this strategy is easy to implement and that you, or the person you selected, has the desire to succeed and the knowledge to share, you must realize that becoming a thought leader and building your personal brand takes an insane amount of time and effort.

You'll need to continually develope new content to tight deadlines so you get a book published, create a successful blog or write a column in a key publication. You need to travel to many conferences, in some not so exciting locales, not to mention the time it takes to develop the presentation you deliver. You may be interviewed multiple times about a certain topic and only have a small part of that interview appear in the article. It's all of these tasks and more in addition to your day job, as rarely is the thought leadership role a job in and of itself.

So before you embark on any of the tactics listed above for becoming a thought leader, you need to ask yourself long and hard to see if you have the right person. You need to make sure they have the time, dedication and patience to become a thought leader. If the right person is you, then look in the mirror long and hard to make sure you can handle it.

In the end, being a thought leader is not as glamorous as it first seems but it will bring many rewards for you and your company including making your marketing more credible. And, to all the thought leaders out there that we all learn from, you have my utmost respect and admiration. You make your industry better as a result of your dedication so thank you and please tell us your stories in the comments below.

Comments

[Jonathan Trenn]

I think an important part of being thought leader is to have the ability to listen and to challenge one's own thoughts. A lot of top executives consider themselves to be thought leaders but never hear what anyone else is saying. Thus, they never learn from any exchanges.

My two cents.

[Laurie Shook]

Brandon,
Good article. I've observed that the small startup that survives is typically the one that best understood thought leadership. As you mention, it's rarely a standalone position.

[Brendan Ziolo]

Jonathan,
Definitely agree. You always need to be learning and part of that is listening to other's thoughts and expertise. I think you'll find that true thought leaders are the first to want to be part of any exchange of information or opinions.

[Brendan Ziolo]

Laurie,
That is definitely true. Start-ups quite often need to educate the market and thought leadership is a credible way to do that where both the audience and company benefit. That's why you see a correlation between successful start-ups and thought leadership.

[Burcu]

A really good video. I just wish we, in the UK, had a siailmr video for the industry that quoted FTSE and featured more British quotes. However I do understand that the audience would be smaller here than in the US. Somehow we need to educate the UK public in the benefits of Direct Sales/Network Marketing without it being product/services related.