Trust is Earned, Not Given

There’s never been a better time to start building your personal brand using thought-leadership. It goes far beyond just an extension of your content marketing strategy, and it opens up endless opportunities to interact with your network, harness your company’s potential, and develop your voice in a targeted, impactful way.

One of the most basic principles of creating thought-leadership content is establishing trust with your intended audience. You can’t just start sharing your opinion on topics and expect people to follow and engage with you and your business in a positive, organic way. Instead, you have to be willing to share your depth of knowledge or insight on a particular topic and do so with the intention of bringing real value to your audience without asking anything of them.

Trust isn’t something that just appears overnight. It requires consistency, quality, and most of all, authenticity. You have to earn it, and when you do, you’ll be amazed at what doors it opens up.

Below are some of the steps you can follow to start your thought-leadership journey:

Find Your Audience

The first step is also one of the most important ones as you go about planning your thought-leadership content. A recent survey of decision-makers and thought-leadership producers found that only 29% of respondents report that they gained valuable insight from thought-leadership content at least half the time, and bridging that gap is one of the biggest initial challenges. You have to first find out who you’re speaking to and what you can speak to them about in order to be successful.

A good place to start is to take a deeper look at your personal network, company, and the wider industry. What are people thinking about? What trends do you see online and in the news? What are others around you interested in, and how can you contribute something new to that conversation?

By deciding who you want to speak to, you can also decide what you want to say and how you want to say it. And you don’t even have to look too far outside your own network to do this. Often, starting with a small target audience and staying focused on a few great topics delivers the best results.

Hone and Craft Your Voice

Now that you’ve started looking at your target audience and topics, you have to really focus on choosing an effective tone and voice that can best communicate your points. When you look at your audience, what do you think will speak to them? Will they respond more to a charismatic and humorous tone? Or does it make more sense to speak authoritatively and in a straightforward voice?

Start by looking at what other thought-leaders in your chosen area are saying and how they are saying it. While you don’t want to imitate anyone else and should strive to come up with your own unique voice, it can be helpful to listen to the ways they communicate their ideas and how they use different terminology, inflection, and emotion to amplify their voices and earn the respect of their audience.

Most of all, you have to look at yourself to truly understand what voice is going to work for you. If it’s not something you would say in everyday life, or you’re reaching too far to adopt a voice that’s out of line with your personality, your audience will know. Keep it simple, authentic, natural, and true to yourself, and you’ll be able to craft a thought-leadership voice that stays consistent and makes an impact.

Always Think Ahead

One way to be successful with your thought-leadership content is to always stay up-to-date with the latest topics, developments, and news stories pertaining to your area of expertise. This will require consistent research, strategizing, and planning long after you’ve built a solid platform. Try your best to look ahead to what’s on the horizon, as well as what’s happening today.

If you let your curiosity guide you, then you’ll have no shortage of topics to cover and will always discover new ways to think and speak about things. Before you craft any piece of content, research it thoroughly, and try to predict how it will most likely be received by your audience. If you stay on top of the ball and always think ahead to what’s next, you’ll stand out even more as a trusted voice in the thought-leadership space.

Aim to Inspire

In the same survey outlined above, 89% of respondents said that thought leadership content influences their perception of a company despite also reporting that most of the thought leadership content they consume is mediocre at best. This means that good and effective thought leadership not only impacts someone’s views of your company, but also has the potential to offer real quality solutions, ideas, and insights.

You have a big opportunity to really make an impact with your voice, and it goes far beyond just an extension of content marketing.

Thought-leadership pieces should aim to inspire readers, broaden their minds on a topic, or leave them wanting to know more about you, your business, and also your thoughts and opinions.

It gives you a platform to demonstrate why you’re a great leader and offer something tangible and valuable for your audience, while also keeping them interested in what’s next.

There are so many reasons that starting to think about thought-leadership content can elevate you and your business to new heights, and as long as you follow these steps, you’re sure to deliver something that’s authentic, powerful, and memorable.