How can you stay motivated when you're not seeing immediate results in your Thought Leadership promotion?

Building up muscles doesn't show up in a day, so it is in thought leadership. Building something solid and sustainable takes time. Quality resides in here where you set realistic goals, be sure it may not be immediately yielding or rewarding but it is going to work out. That is why realistic goals setting is a must. SMART approach can be adopted to further help in this.

Control what you can control. You can’t dictate how the algorithm will work. You can work to improve what you say, if it incites curiosity, and showing up predictably in your niche ??

Building thought leadership is a continuous journey and a long-term process to build credibility, authority, and influence with content and area of expertise. This can't happen without clear goals and most importantly a plan to achieve those goals. We can set hundreds of goals, but without having a clear systematic plan to achieve them it won't be realistic. You must have long-term goals and break them down into monthly and weekly plans, even daily. Then continuously monitor progress and adjust the plan of action as needed by keeping goals constant.

One thing that's worked for me is to keep reviewing progress with my team. Setting achievable goals to be reviewed every week or 2 weeks and identifying any impediments to traction. This keeps my eye on a new task every week in anticipation of achieving the end goal. It also helps to recognise at the very beginning that delayed achievement of the goal is a risk I may have to deal with. I try to mitigate this by ensuring all stakeholders needed for decision making and executing are aligned on the project and how they plug in for its success.

As you set your goals, you can create an internal editorial calendar for your posting efforts. This will help you get creative on topics, platforms, mediums, and ways of pursuing your thought leadership initiatives. It will also hold you accountable so that you can track the metrics you set forth. For example, did you achieve the ten posts you planned for the month on LinkedIn? You'll be able to better assess what's working and what's not and track your progress to find what works best for you and what you enjoy the most.

Just quantity, and less quality is not going to work surely in establishing your Thought Leadership. Frequent consistency and Quality both are important, for you to establish your thought Leadership. If you disseminate one quality content ( a podcast/write up/video) in 3 months and then forget about it, no matter how good the quality, people will forget. To be perceived as the "GoTo Person" for your domain, you need to be right on top of recall. Therefore frequent consistency is very important. Of course frequency can vary as you grow from a New Thought Leader to someone well established.

The key principle is to "Add Value". Your first and foremost focus should be, how to add value for the audience. As long as you work on your content with this principle, you won't divert from quality to quantity. This also has a direct impact on your planning. You have to ensure you plan enough time for each content that you want to produce. Also, seek help from a mentor and some more experts in the same field to validate the content initially.

Sometimes, posting content feels like a rat race; however, it's better to slow down and be very intentional about what you're putting forth. You want to ensure that you are highlighting your most quality work versus sharing shattered content. The more intentional you are, the better your results will be.

Never hesitate to reach out to someone who has done similar work in your field. Having the right guidance in the path of thought leadership is very important. Always looks for association with a similar mindset of people and the best way to get it joining local user group communities.

Finding and working with mentors has been instrumental in my growth. They are extremely helpful when they are working on similar efforts or have in the past. In addition to mentors, seek feedback from those on LinkedIn, in your network, and applicable to your content. Having diverse perspectives helps shape your narrative and define what's effective. Seek support from these individuals as well as friends and family when you're feeling unsure about your content. Be sure to be there to encourage their efforts as well :).

As a senior product manager, I feel that thought leadership can be a solitary journey, but seeking feedback and support can empower you to succeed. Join or create a community of like-minded professionals, mentors, and peers for advice, encouragement, and constructive criticism. Gather feedback from your audience, clients, and colleagues to refine your content, delivery, and promotion. Embrace feedback as an invaluable compass, fueling continuous learning, skill development, and unwavering inspiration.

Seeking feedback and support becomes essential, anchoring us in a network of fellow visionaries and mentors who understand the challenges we face. Engaging with like-minded individuals offers invaluable advice, encouragement, and perspectives that reignite our motivation. Moreover, feedback from our audience and peers becomes a compass, guiding us toward improvement and innovation in our content and approach.

While you celebrate your wins and learn from your losses, you must also learn from other wins and losses as well. In the journey of Thought Leadership, you need to stay with right association and learn from each other successes and failures.

I met a senior leader who during a coffee chat told me how he celebrates his failure more than his success. He said that the best learning often comes from failure and that helps in making oneself better equipped to thrive in the brave pursuit of excellence. Often not, folks have the tendency to get dejected but this often looks myopic. He further added that with celebration, there should be introspection and clear actions on how to ensure that it is not repeated or at least done better next time..

Often not, I find myself in the midst of deciding on what next. As a Thought Leader, I recognize that the path to success is a continuous journey of learning and growth. I never allow myself to settle for what I already know; instead, I actively seek out new challenges and opportunities to expand my knowledge and perspectives. I immerse myself in a world of content from diverse sources, including books, articles, podcasts, and webinars, absorbing insights from fellow Thought Leaders, experts, and industry leaders. These valuable resources serve as a catalyst for inspiration, information, and challenge, pushing me to think critically and expand my horizons.

Learning is the essential pillar of Thought Leadership. You have to continuously learn and adapt to the changes. Most of the time our bias does not allow us to explore the areas we don't know. But, we must overcome that cognitive bias of the brain and start exploring new landscapes. T

If your incremental thought leadership content is not producing results, you probably need to create a more impactful asset, i.e. a book. When I was doing expertise PR, I worked with a thought leader to create a large volume of content supporting his framework. We promoted the heck out of it and it was well received. The problem was that it wasn't moving the needle in terms of revenue so he said we had to stop working together. Fair enough. As we wrapped up the engagement, I urged him to take the content we had created and roll it up into a 175-page airplane read and he did just that. That book opened doors to opportunities and top tier clients that his excellent incremental content could not.

Honesty, transparent communication is very key, set right expectations and have clear plan for deliverables. Its very important to have trust and commitment

The effective use of thought leadership is not a short term commitment. It's not a campaign. It needs to be a mid to long term investment. It takes time to see the benefits but when you do there's certainly a fly wheel effect that happens.