Be the (thought) leader your company needs

I’ve always thought of myself as an introvert.

Always shied away from the spotlight.

See social gives you a voice to be heard and it’s no surprise that introverts do well on the platform, the narrowcasting of social creates a bit of a filter. Which allows you to be in control of the conversation.

Modern leaders can put out content at scale and control the narrative around themselves and their organisation.

They need to get over that fear that they might be wrong, or that they will be ridiculed for their viewpoint.

YOU are in control of this narrative and you get to decide what content to put out, it requires discipline, focus and (surprise surprise) strategy.

But it requires new ways of thinking.

The latest Edelman and LinkedIn Trust and credibility report tell us (link below):

"64% of buyers say that an organisation thought leadership content is a more trustworthy basis for assessing its capabilities and competency than its marketing materials and product sheets".

Leveraging the 5 c’s will help.

Context?(who am I speaking to, and what do I want them to take away).

Content?(text posts, image posts, articles, video, how am I delivering that message?).

Consistency?(maintaining authenticity and a single personal brand voice and message across time).

Conversation?(within your content and hopefully progressing to your DM’s and then into the analogue world).

Conversion?(the actual selling part of social selling).

And this all ties in with reciprocity.

The principle of reciprocity.

This is the notion we feel obliged to replicate a favor. Content marketing relies heavily on this principle.?

Depending on the objective, content is used in exchange for attention, trust, action, contact details – and ultimately a sale!

So be in it for the long game. Think of your content as a seesaw, on one side is the value, the other side is the sale.

Now this seesaw needs to be heavily balanced in favour of the value to generate that sale!

Good thought leadership content allows us to create the following.

Pipeline, revenue and growth

Obviously this is a massive driver for organisations.

EBITDA and revenue are the lifeblood of any organisation.

The beauty of using social to position your products/services/thinking in front of people is that it isn’t invasive in the way that cold-outreach used to be.

If I have connected to you and spent time sharing valuable insights and engaging with your content I have hopefully built some trust and this means that there is a stronger basis for a relationship to begin.

Mobilising people across your organisation maximises the chance that those people who are predisposed to listen, believe and help actually are exposed to the messages that you want.

This typically manifests itself as "being in the right place at the right time" more and prospects being much more likely to want to engage in a conversation.

And you can lead the charge on this!

Increased visibility.

It’s a numbers game (partly). If the business employs 2000 people and each of them has 2000 views on their posts each week, that’s two million views per week. Yes…2,000,000 views per week for zero expenditure, except time.?

Now this isn’t revenue but it is visibility (which is what marketing is already doing) it's a massive benefit, and costs a whole hell of a lot less. With stronger results.

This is titanic shift from the usual outbound interruption messaging that organisations undertake.

Trusted advisor status

When people across an organisation create and share content (rather than just marketing) not only is the message more intimate it’s more believable as I, like you, will tend to gravitate to the messages coming from people "just like me.”

As people across an organisation create this niche content (more contextual and more of it than marketing can keep up with) more and more gaps are filled and long-tail phrases are used which in turn makes the communications more easily discovered and more engaging when it is.

3000 pages of unique content per year from a small company!

Again, the numbers don’t lie. If you have a company of 500 staff and just 50% of them write one article per month that creates 3000 pages of unique content per year.

The reason this is so powerful is that the trust in "trusted advisor status" rarely comes from technical ability and comes from the ‘human’ bit…the rapport, the respect, the friendship.

Exploring this element of human nature is not something that a corporate marketing department is either set-up to do nor capable of achieving.

A shared sense of purpose

Recruiting the brightest and best is one thing, retaining them is another. This has always been a challenge because people join, develop, change, grow...then leave.

Imagine if we could hold onto those bright, shining supernovas we help build?

The great thing about using social (in all of its forms) as the framework for an organisation is that people become vary aware of the fact that they are part of something bigger than just them. They feel that they are a crucial part of something and they feel better connected to not just the people they work with but the purpose of the organisation.

The rewards for achieving this change are immense.

The benefits for the employee taking control of how they appear and promoting that on social are:

• Their profile reflects who they are and the effort they have invested, they can be more themselves!
• Their fame increases, they become the go-to person in their niche and they are recognised as such
• Their visibility increases so people come to them rather than them chasing people

The benefits for the organisation of mobilising mobilising EVERYONE in the organisation has a transformational effect on the businesses effectiveness:

• Revenue increases
• Costs decrease
• They become the dominant player in their space

This is what modern leadership looks like.

Craig Mullaney of Brunswick group also says through his research

Our research?finds?that by a more than 5 to 1 ratio, employees prefer to work for a CEO who uses digital and social media. And, by a margin of 9 to 1, financial readers trust a Connected Leader more than a CEO who does not use social media as part of their work. This isn’t about leaders spending more time communicating—it’s about using that time to lead more effectively.

Be the (thought) leader your organisation needs right now.

Lead the way digitally and the rest of the team will follow!