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To be relevant in today’s world of work, career-minded leaders need to create valuable thought-leadership content and make it available to the people they want to impact, influence and impress. That can be easier said than done. Being a thought leader can be time consuming and expensive. Focus on the tools that will make it easy for you to be regularly visible, available and valuable to your target audience. Here are my 5 favorite ways to make that happen.
1. LinkedIn Newsletter
I was a skeptic. Who has time to read all these newsletters from their LinkedIn connections? But I changed my mind after conversations with thought leaders I respect. There are about 63,000 newsletters on LinkedIn, providing a way for authors to create and distribute regular content to their subscribers. Maintaining a newsletter on your own platform can be draining, and building an audience is challenging. But LinkedIn provides an easy-to-use system for producing and sharing your content. Bestselling author of The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier delivers his “How To Do Stuff That Matters” newsletter to nearly 30,000 LinkedIn members weekly.
2. Press Coverage
Publishing your own blog or newsletter is a valuable way to have a regular, ongoing relationship with your followers, but nothing screams credibility like being quoted in renowned publications. Of course, paying a monthly retainer to a PR agency is out of reach for most small businesses and individual thought leaders. That’s where Adogy comes in. They leverage their relationships and give you an accessible way to reap greater rewards from your thought leadership articles through featured quotes in key media. They’re also experts in using SEO to help direct new audience members to your brilliance.
3. Presenting
When you can be there in person, TalkBook helps you stay in contact with the people who attend your presentations. When you’re onstage at a professional association event, you get to share your point of view and demonstrate your expertise. But what happens after the event is over? How do you stay in touch with the fans you acquired when you enthralled them with your wisdom? Enter TalkBook. This wonderfully efficient service helps you create a unique web page for each presentation you deliver—a valuable repository where you can house a PDF of your slides, supplemental information, and links to your website and social media platforms. Participants go to the page and enter their email address to unlock access to these valuable tools. This helps you stay connected with these new fans so you can continue the conversation long after the event is over.
4. Video
Video is the most powerful medium for demonstrating thought leadership (next to being there in person, of course) because it allows you to deliver a complete and compelling communication. And, because viewers remember 95% of a message when delivered by video, but only 10% when delivered by text, video helps you stay top of mind among those you seek to influence.
Videos can now easily be created in a number of ways, including just with a smartphone or camera. For an all-in-one online solution for remote and local recording, consider Riverside.fm. This platform is the next best thing to having your video own recording studio – making it simple to produce and edit your thought leadership videos. You can also separate the audio track from the video track in your recording, yielding two formats of content you can use to inspire your audience depending on their preferred way to tune in.
5. Podcasts
There are about 150 million podcast episodes out there. That’s a lot of content. Getting people to engage with your show is becoming more challenging as the popularity of podcasting has soared. Headliner lets you create a little audio tease (audiogram) for Instagram, LinkedIn and other social media platforms to get people to check out your podcast. Jordan Friedman, creator of the stress reduction podcast The Chill Factory, says, “Since I started using Headliner audiograms to promote The Chill Factory, I have seen a steady rise in listenership.”
Time is a precious commodity, and these resources will help you maximize the delivery, impact and value of your thought leadership. By showcasing your expertise, you can shine a spotlight on your unique promise of value and grow your personal brand.
William Arruda is a keynote speaker, co-founder of CareerBlast.TV and creator of the 360Reach Personal Brand Survey that helps you get candid, meaningful feedback from people who know you.
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