Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader on LinkedIn With These Steps

Thought leadership exploded during the pandemic. As the hard stop on in-person sales meetings accelerated the shift to digital selling, B2B marketers found themselves vying for organic attention in an entirely new way. 

An unfortunate result of this rapid change is that the quantity of thought leadership content quickly outpaced the quality, creating yet another level of noise for buyers to filter through. 

Still, decision-makers and business leaders crave content from thought leaders. As self-education becomes a normal stage in the B2B buying process, it’s important to have your brand well represented in this space. 

One of the best places to do this is on LinkedIn. As the most trusted social media network (for five years running!) and the online platform where business gets done, it’s already the place executives, buyers, and influencers turn when they need insight ahead of making their next big business decision. 

Become a Thought Leader on LinkedIn: 5 Key Tips

These tips and strategies will help you rise above the noise and hang your shingle as a thought leader in the marketplace of ideas. 

Find Your Niche

Your contribution to the thought leadership space should fill a void in the market. This is where doing a little preliminary research can help. 

Look for other thought leaders from your industry or area of expertise and see what they’re focused on. Search hashtags you’d like to be associated with and see who’s using them regularly. Understand what space is already being occupied by others so you can create a space of your own.

Your niche should fall somewhere at the intersection of:

• Timely industry trends 
• Customer pain points
• Your company’s growth priorities

Also: don’t be afraid to be contrarian. Approaching a known problem from an unconventional angle is the attention-grabbing edge that can attract an eager audience.

Give Your Profile a Thought Leader Refresh

Your LinkedIn profile is a great tool for signaling to your followers that your thought leadership content is backed up by real expertise. 

In addition to following the standard LinkedIn profile best practices, you should include additional information and resources that are relevant to your niche. 

Don’t sell yourself short, either – one of the things many people fall prey to is misplaced humility. If you have accomplished something great, say it! If you’ve written something industry-shaking, share it! 

Things to consider including in your profile:

• Links to eBooks you’ve created or contributed to
• Case studies you’ve been involved with
• Whitepapers you helped author
• Presentations you’ve given
• LinkedIn Live events you participated in

Engage With Other Thinkers

You’ve already done the homework – you know who the other thought leaders are in your industry. Engage with them on their LinkedIn feeds! 

Comment on their posts, especially if they’re inviting input and feedback. Ask them questions to get a conversation started. Share their content to your feed, and add some thoughts about why their ideas are worth a look.

Building a community of thought leadership is a great way to stay connected, learn, and challenge yourself. Most importantly, you will be seen as a peer, which can garner invitations to present at events or be on an expert panel. 

Finally, when you’re active in conversations with prominent thought leaders on LinkedIn, you improve your chances of getting noticed by their followers.

Curate a Well-Rounded Feed

You want people to slow their scroll when they see your profile go by in their newsfeed, so make time to curate interesting content to share. 

While this content should regularly tie into your thought leadership niche, this is also an opportunity to garner trust and build relationships by sharing content that elevates others and humanizes you.

Create Captivating Content 

Original content is a must if you want to be a thought leader. People need to hear from you in your own words. 

Here are some important steps for crafting strong original thought leadership content:

1. Consult with internal teams to target customer pain points

Your sales and customer relations teams hear directly from your customers. They know what problems arise that prompt businesses to seek out your solution. 

Understanding what is happening in your customers’ businesses will help you craft content with empathy and resonance.

2. Understand what is going on in the broader industry

As a thought leader, you need to stay on top of changes in your industry. Know what’s coming next, what the next potential pain points might be, and what new technologies and strategies are about to shake things up. 

3. Humanize your content

People know when they’re being sold to. Make sure you honor the humanity of your audience by engaging with them authentically. Feature stories from real employees and real customers. Open up personally in vulnerable ways and give weight to your hard-earned lessons.

4. Keep it concise

Executives and senior decision-makers are busy by nature, so it's all the more important to make brevity a standard. Tell short stories, offer bullet-point insights, or share thoughts in quick-hit videos.

Also, make sure to lead with something catchy – LinkedIn and Edelman’s research found that more than half of buyers will move on from a piece of content if it doesn’t grab their attention within the first minute.

Demonstrate Your Confidence and Credibility

Confidence is the magic ingredient for being a trusted thought leader. When you truly believe in the wisdom you share with the world, it naturally attracts an audience. 

When your confidence is backed with a true depth of knowledge and delivered via well-crafted content, you will quickly rise in the ranks of valued thought leaders on LinkedIn.

Learn more about what today’s decision-makers want to see out of B2B thought leadership content.