Growing Your Thought Leadership Program: Individual Thought Leaders

In previous articles, I’ve emphasized the importance of establishing a thought leadership program within your company. Nurturing individual thought leaders within a company can give individuals a platform to share their expertise and provide a unique and complementary perspective to your brand’s voice. Here we’ll cut to the chase and get straight to these steps needed for growing individual thought leaders.?

Look at expertise within your organization

Who makes a good thought leader? Start by taking a look at the people in your organization. Who has expertise in a business area you’re looking to highlight? What unique experience, skills, and knowledge do they have, and how would these shape their perspective? How does their expertise complement, but not carbon copy, your brand’s voice??

Think beyond just one individual. Ideally, you’ll want to leverage multiple thought leaders to showcase the breadth and depth of your company’s expertise to further highlight why your brand is a leader in its field. Having a range of opinions brings diverse viewpoints that may resonate better with different segments of your audience and helps you reach more people.?

Remember, developing a thought leadership strategy is a gradual process. After you’ve started establishing your brand as a leader, you can slowly encourage internal experts to join the effort. Some may jump on the chance, many will need structure to get going, and others may have no interest at all. The progression may happen naturally, too. As your company grows and shifts focus, you may find team members who are passionate spokespeople about a specific segment of your business. Be flexible here, offering guidance and support without forcing people into the role.?

Create exceptional content?

So now you’ve got some great candidates in mind - or maybe you’re interested in establishing yourself as a thought leader. Either way, these leaders need a way to share their thoughts. Creating content is a good place to start. But it can’t just be any old content. It has to hit the mark.

First, determine your focus area of expertise. Do some research on your industry and your specific audience, then use this research and your own experience to offer guidance on some industry challenges. You’re not selling anything here, so keep the content about the question or problem. Along the way, you will offer valuable insight into your brand story.

Data is your friend here, especially as you work to build credibility. Supplement the data with your expertise to shape ideas or draw larger conclusions – and don’t be afraid to shake things up a little. One study of almost 500 marketers shows that 64% of respondents believe challenging the way others think is an important part of thought leadership. The goal is not to be provocative or sensationalize questionable data but to inspire people to see things in a new but realistic light.?

Now, this might feel overwhelming. Maybe you don’t have the time or skills to research and write. Consider outsourcing to help you get started. It’s still your voice; you’re just getting some help along the way.?

Customize For Your Audience

Having nailed down your content, it's time to tailor it to your audience. How can you ensure that your content strikes a chord with your target persona? How much polish is needed? What type of tone is effective? What terms and language will resonate with your industry—and what jargon should you avoid? If you don’t consider these things, you may waste a lot of time developing content that is overlooked or, worse, discredits your expertise.

If you have multiple thought leaders in your organization, each may choose to have a slightly different voice and tone. One may use humor, slang or emojis; another may use a hard-hitting or formal tone. Having individual leaders use different voices than your brand (and each other) is fine, as long as it’s professionally acceptable for your field, positively reflects your organization, and utilizes accurate and credible data.?

For real-time events, like podcasts, live webinars or conferences, customizing content for your audience still applies. Consider industry nuances beforehand. Practice ahead of time, especially if you are new to public speaking. Work on your pace and gestures, and toss in a well-timed joke if it feels appropriate. Understand who you’re talking to, and focus on the issues or topics that will keep their attention. Live speaking engagements may seem daunting, but with a strategic approach, they can be an incredibly effective platform for establishing thought leadership.?

Share work across platforms

Once content is created, it’s time to share it. You can start by writing blog posts, LinkedIn articles, social media posts and email newsletters. Be open to interacting with people in the comments. Nurture conversations with more thoughtful and engaged commentators. This shows that you are open to new ideas, which may encourage others to continue following your work.?

You can expand your audience through guest blogging or contributing articles on other sites. You could be a guest on a relevant podcast or webinar panel. Once you’ve established credibility, you can also start speaking at conferences and events. There are a lot of ways to engage with your audience – the trick is learning how to measure the success of your efforts, which brings us to the next point.?

Continue to evaluate and improve

Thought leadership is never a set-and-forget strategy. If you want to remain a leader in your space, it’s important to be at the forefront of new trends and continually improve upon your campaigns. Stay up to date with credible research as it’s made available, or do more research on your own. Keep talking to your industry peers to understand all the latest cycles, trends and challenges.?

As your thought leadership program gets underway, evaluating your previous work and seeing how things can improve is important. See how different platforms and tools are doing regarding engagement and reach. Maybe your blog posts are generating traffic but your LinkedIn metrics have decreased in engagement – can you adjust and optimize? Continuously tracking, measuring, and optimizing will help you get the most return on your thought leadership efforts and goals.?

Developing individuals as thought leaders doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, patience, and careful planning, but a thought leadership program pays dividends for B2B companies looking to build trust and brand awareness over time.