A guide to becoming a thought leader in your industry.

1. Strategy For Your Small Business
CREATING A
THOUGHT
LEADERSHIP
Jonathan F. Williams

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Introduction
If you're a business professional, a CEO, or anybody in a leadership role at a
company, you've likely heard about developing a thought leadership strategy for
yourself or your CEO. For those who don’t know, thought leadership builds your
reputation as a leader in your chosen eld. It's like building an expert celebrity
personality. This personality doesn’t have to be known nationwide. You could be a
thought leader even if you’re just known in a very small niche industry or a tiny
geographic area.
The overall goal is to be known as someone who understands the issues of the day
in their eld of business and someone that the public would want to follow. They’d
be a go-to leader to get advice on speci c topics or a knowledge base about the
eld they are an expert in.
Nowadays, companies aren't just companies. They are very much personality-
driven. And some of the best-known companies have a strong personality leading
them because it puts a personal face on the company.
To successfully do that, most corporations have developed a strategy to help get
that leader out there in the public’s eye and to be this thought leader in their
industry.
So let's do that for your small business. Here are 11 steps you can do to become a
thought leader in your chosen eld.

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1) Develop your personal brand.
So before you can even become a thought leader, you need to understand what your
thought leader’s personal brand is.
To do that, we have an entire course on “Personal Branding” that, when
completed, should help build your ownl brand. For a successful thought leadership
strategy to work, you need to have the thought leader’s brand that resonates very
closely with what you want to be known for.
2) Pick your platforms.
Once you have your personal brand, you should have determined what
communication platform(s) you're going to be most comfortable being on. For
example, if you’re a REALTOR®, you may want to be on Instagram because it
would be the perfect platform to share images of the properties you have for sale.
This is where you need to take a hard look at what type of content you'd like to
post, what platform you'd like to interact with and use, and where your ideal
audience(s) is located. You need to make sure all this works together, so you can
have a successful synergy between them. This is especially true if you're going to
be doing this plan yourself and don't have a team of individuals to help make sure
that your message goes far and wide. Don’t be fooled by many thought leaders like
Gary Vaynerchuk, Richard Branson, or former T-Mobile CEO John Legere - they all
have teams that can take their content and format it for all the di erent platforms.
If you're just starting or you're a one-person shop, you aren't going to have this
team unless you're hiring out, which might not be feasible. So, make it easy on
yourself and pick what platforms make sense.

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You don't have to be all things to all people. You can just go out to the platforms
that make the most sense and get you the most bang for your buck or, in your case,
make the most of the time you have to invest in creating the content.
3) Develop your content calendar
and stick to it.
Just like building a business marketing content calendar, which we have an entire
white paper on how to do it, you'll need to create a personal thought leadership
calendar. And once you build it out, you need to stick to it.
Most people in a company will look at their personal brand and think that this is
secondary to the business. However, one can argue that the content and how you
portray yourself could almost be more important than your business. Because in a
lot of industries, you your business, and having that personal brand is going to
have a compound e ect on bene ting your business itself.
are
You need to develop this plan and stick to it. One of the things people do with a
thought leadership strategy is that they try to do it for a couple of weeks or a
couple of months, don't see any results, and then give up saying it doesn't work.
This is not what you should do. You need to stick to the plan, keep creating
content, keep with it, and trust that it'll grow.
4) Devote time to engagement.
You need to make sure as part of your thought leadership strategy that you are
engaging with people.

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Since it is going to be more of a personal thing, you need to add that personal
touch. You need to make sure you're engaging with other people on the platforms
you’ve chosen to be on, you need to share content, comment on other people's
posts, and respond to people who are commenting on your post.
Ensure that people feel like they have a direct connection with you through the
engagement and that you're not just a person pushing out information on the
platform expecting everyone to come to you. Become involved and show that you
care. That's going to get people to care about you. Plus, the platforms you're
commenting on are then going to favor your content because of your engagement.
5) Invite comments on your posts.
Whenever you post written content, an image, or a video on your platform, make
sure you end with an invitation to share their thoughts. This will again show that
you are interested in other people's opinions, and not just having one-way
communication.
Social media is a two-way communication platform, and going back to the
previous point, make sure then as people are sharing their thoughts, you jump into
the conversation as well. Make sure that people see that you are engaged and
rewarding them for their engagement, because on most platforms, the more
engagement you get on your posts, the better it will perform, thus more people will
see it.

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On most social media networks, Facebook and LinkedIn in particular, there are
actual groups that you can join within the platform. These are micro-communities
of people that engage around a speci c topic.
If you, as a thought leader, become involved in those groups, you can comment,
share, and become part of the discussion while connecting with other people who
likely share your interests. This can have a synergistic e ect on your public pro le
and help boost you and boost your thoughts as well.
7) Search out relevant trending
topics on the platform.
No matter if it's Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram, they all can show
trending topics, show what hashtags are being frequently talked about, and allow
you to jump into the conversation with people that have never heard from you
before.
This is an excellent opportunity to discuss trending topics relevant to you and
become involved in discussions that people might not realize you enjoy.
6) If available, join relevant groups
on that platform.

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Just make sure that the topics you're talking about are connected to your brand and
relevant to the people that you follow, and or you want to follow you. Additionally,
make sure that your commentary is related to the conversation, and you're adding
value. Don't just comment just to comment. Make sure you're adding your
particular knowledge or spin to the conversation. Do this by supporting
somebody’s view, o ering a di erent point of view (respectfully), or anything else
that will build the discussion and potentially show a point of view that no one else
has thought of before.
8) Show vulnerability.
It's bene cial to be vulnerable on social media in your thought leadership role.
Now, this isn't you having a celebrity-worthy breakdown. But this is you showing
that you can learn from your past mistakes, sharing the process with your
audience, and showing people what you've learned from them.
As humans, we are skeptical when we see people that look perfect all the time.
Think about actors or other celebrities that try to show the world their ideal life,
but of course, they're not really. We've all seen their failures play out on the
magazines in the grocery store check out aisles.
When thought leaders are open and share failures, they become real to people,
helping to forge a meaningful connection. Your audience might be in the same
position you were in the past with your failure. They can learn from your mistake,
and in turn, they will likely trust you more because they know that you're open and
honest with them. They'll want to learn more, because they want to hear those
failures and how they can then apply the learnings to their lives and inspire them
to take action.

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9) Make sure you do show your
personal side.
Just like showing your vulnerabilities, which is very personal, you also want to
show your personality and the personal side of your life. This is your family, your
hobbies, etc. All of this should not be the majority of content, but make sure you
show this personal side at least from time to time.
People want to know who you are; they don't want to know you just as a corporate
suit. They want to see what you do for fun, if you enjoy going to the beach with
your family, what your dog is like. All the di erent aspects of your life - they want
to make sure they know you in a full sense.
It doesn't have to be all the great stu . Show your failures, too, if you're
comfortable with that. People want to know that you're human, just like them. So
humanize yourself, because the more you do that, the more people will trust you,
follow you, and want to learn more about you.
There's a saying in politics that the person who becomes a president is the person
that people most likely want to have a beer with. This is very similar in almost any
area of life. People might come to you initially because you're a leader in the
industry. But won’t want to keep that relationship if they can’t connect with you
on a deeper level (and have that “I see myself having a beer with you” moment).
Make sure you’re that person.

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10) Make sure you engage in
personal topics.
So this is not just sharing your photos of you and your family doing stu . This is
showing your hobbies. This is going out there and nding personal topics that you
can share that build out your interests. If you love the St. Louis Cardinals, share
and discuss the St. Louis Cardinals. If you have other hobbies or topics/issues that
you are excited about, share it, show it, and let people know about it.
With this, you can always inadvertently make enemies (i.e., Cubs fans with my
Cardinals example). But if you engage politely, you will likely just have people who
don’t connect with you on certain hobbies but others who will love you because of
those hobbies.
11) Be authentic.
This is the last major point, but it's probably one of the most important. And by
now, you should understand this and know that this is what you should be doing.
You need to be authentic on whatever platforms you are on. People can smell out
somebody who's being fake, or if something happens to come out that is negative,
they're going to immediately know that you're fake and you haven't been
authentic.
Even if your content is curated ahead of time and based on a content calendar, you
still can and need to be authentic.

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If you have to make time to create the content yourself, do it. Don’t have an
underling, agency or employee do it for you, at least until you've developed a voice
that you can then train that other person to help you with creating the content.
Otherwise, you can potentially hurt yourself more than not even having a thought
leadership role.

11. Your
Next
Steps:
Now you know how to develop a thought leadership
strategy. Next steps: Do it, and don’t be afraid to tweak
it as you go along. It’s possible that you’re not going to
immediately know exactly what you like and what you
don’t like. Grow your strategy as you grow your
audience. The only way to really and truly fail is not to
take action.