Thought Leadership Strategy: 4 Quick Tips
At some point, you’ve probably said to yourself: I want to make a difference. This is how most people start their path towards thought leadership.
You may believe that earning advanced degrees will give you the platform to have an impact. Or you may think you need to be a successful entrepreneur with lots of media opps.
People like Greta Thunberg leave these assumptions in the dust.
In high school, she motivated millions of K-12 students around the globe to strike for climate. It didn’t happen overnight, but it did take the courage to do something different.
Thought leadership doesn’t require “expertise” as we traditionally understand it. It’s about impact, independent thinking, and the ability to make ideas spread.
Definition of thought leadership
Thought leadership lies somewhere in the Venn diagram of marketing, PR, intellect, and influence. Cherry pick and combine the best qualities of well-known people and you’ll have a thought leader.
Ingredients:
An influencer’s popularity
An academic’s thirst for knowledge
A politician’s knack for a memorable sound byte
A journalist’s art of urgent storytelling
A leader’s ability to get things done
An average person’s relatable imperfections
Place these items in blender. Press go.
Result: Thought leader.
How Thought Leaders Communicate
There is a big misconception that you need to talk like a professor to influence others on an intellectual level. You don’t.
Thought leaders don’t need advanced degrees, a c-level title, or prestigious awards.
Thought leadership is instead a mix of popularity, relevance, and the ability to inspire action.
These four traits are the most important attributes of an effective thought leader’s thoughts:
Efficiency
Disruption
Impact
Authenticity
Let’s talk about these.
Efficiency with words
You’ll want to keep your message to the point. Write the way you talk or text.
I’m not the only one to say this. Marketing thought leader Sonia Thompson calls it “unscripted content.” Internet linguist Gretchen McColloguh, author of Because Internet, calls it “informal writing.” The Content Marketing Institute calls it “conversational content.”
Here’s why it works:
It conveys confidence. It’s idea driven. You know what you mean, and you’re using the fastest expression to get there.
It shows that the ideas matter to you more than the presentation. It’s leading with thoughts, not empty shells of words or conventions.
It gets the message out. Don’t waffle, just write. Fight imposter syndrome by embracing imperfection.
It can contain feelings. Writing off the cuff brings authenticity and emotion into your work.
I think the original Agile Manifesto is a good example of this. The writers were super efficient with their message!
Tips on efficient communication:
Talk, don’t write. Transcribe your article from a voice recorder and then putting that directly into the post.
Facts resonate. A sentence will do. Link to an external source for those who want to know more.
Use emojis, micro-paragraphs, and incomplete sentences. Throw your English 101 class notes into the dumpster fire.
I’m going to be honest. This point is hard for me. If I can do it, you can, too.
Try cutting through by letting down the formal codes of “expertise.” The internet is a fast and furious place to share ideas.
Disruptive ideas
To build new systems, we have to disrupt the status quo. It’s that simple, right? The same idea applies to thought leadership communication.
You can be the smartest researcher or thinker in your field and still fail to stick in people’s minds. In Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip Heath tells us that “sticky ideas” are:
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Tell a story
It’s the pattern-breaking unexpectedness that separates thought leadership from all other forms of content.
Examples
Climate journalist Emily Atkin’s newsletter Heated got popular and became a $200K+ source of revenue for her. This is thanks to her hard-hitting, angry approach to reporting climate.
Her tagline says it’s “for people who are pissed off.” This alone makes it action-inducing, and it broke from the jaded, apathy we experience when we read about the doom and gloom of climate rhetoric.
Another thought leader takes a different approach. Kamea Chayne aka Green Dreamer thinks solving the environment doesn’t require more tech. It requires therapy.
Healing is an approach to talking about climate that taps into indigenous ways of understanding history and ecosystems. It is the simple, clear, and unexpected twist in her climate thought leadership.
A key element shared by both is they produce solutions-oriented content. This keeps it credible, which leads to my next point.
The best thought leadership content formats for disruptive ideas are:
Case studies
Original research
White papers
Conference talks
Newsletters
Proof of Impact
It’s not enough to have ideas to be a thought leader. Your ideas should inspire action.
Thought leaders get people to take to the streets. They get people to click “buy.” They generate copy cats. They inspire fierce opponents. They leave people scrambling in their wake to do something about what they’ve just said.
This is the true power of thought leadership.
Social proof metrics sometimes indicate impact:
Follower counts
Likes
Shares
Paid Subscribers
Number of speaking engagements
Backlinks to work
Organic traffic
But not always. The numbers can be “rigged” to make thought leaders appear more impactful than they actually are.
In the case of climate, we need more thought leaders to ignite direct action.
We need people to get out to vote. We need businesses to reduce emissions. We need politicians to pass climate legislation.
This is why strategic thought leadership is more important than ever.
How to get people to take action with your content:
Provide checklists
Write instructional how tos
Give people a time and a place to show up and take the action
Share a sense of urgency and consequence, because it matters
Include calls to action
Authenticity and Courage
We’ve all experienced hardship. We’ve all experienced joy. We know that beneath the information we share is a process of transformation and “becoming” in Michelle Obama’s words.
Thought leaders make their personal experience universal.
They are able to build a sense of community around their ideas. Their ideas make us feel part of something larger than ourselves.
In order to do this, they have to be comfortable showing their true selves to others. That’s it. It’s a matter of honesty, courage, and vulnerability.
The more thought leaders can share their bumpy process and their “why,” the more they reach people with their ideas.
Wrapping up
Perhaps you came into this blog post expecting something different. You may have wanted me to focus on the media channels, social media platforms, and work habits thought leaders need.
Instead, I wanted to start with the communication, because it’s crucial. As long as you can embed these four communication principles in your work, you’re bound to spread ideas faster.
As a recap, you’ll need:
Efficiency — This helps you get the message out fast. Don’t worry too much about an imperfect presentation. You can use emojis and say things like ass;lkjddf;l;.
Disruption — Ruffle some feathers. Make waves. Go against the grain.
Impact — Make your thoughts actionable and get people to take the next steps.
Authenticity — Get comfortable being a work in progress and stay transparent. Connect your ideas to universal themes we can all relate to.
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