Why You Should Become a Thought Leader

Today I’m going to talk a little bit about thought leadership. How many of you have thought about ways that you can grow your business or further your policy objectives in Washington or even just enhance your personal brand? 

Check out my top three suggestions for getting started in todays video and download our free worksheet here which will help you create your own thought leadership plan.

Curley Thought Leadership Worksheet

Full Video Transcript

How many of you have thought about ways that you can grow your business or further your policy objectives in Washington or even just enhance your personal brand? 

These are all things that thought leadership can help you do, and over the past 20 years, we’ve helped a lot of our clients put together thought leadership campaigns and implement them. And we’ve had a lot of success.

So today what I’m going to do is share a few rules of the road with you so you can think about your own thought leadership.

1. It all starts with the audience and you really want to think about – who’s your audience, who are you trying to reach, and really be specific as you’re thinking about this list.

2. Next, where are these people? Where do these people go for their information? What channels are they on when it comes to social? Are they on Instagram or are they on LinkedIn? Where they go for information on earned media in which they read? Where do they get their information? And where do they go? What kind of conferences or events do they attend? These are all the things you want to put together in a list as you think about how to reach your audience.

3. The next thing you’re going to do is think about the message. What’s the message that you want to convey to these people? What’s going to differentiate you and make you unique compared to your competitors. When you put these three things together, you’re really halfway towards creating your strategic plan.

And the last thing I would say about that is really just be patient. One of the rules of thumb we tell our clients is that a good thought leadership campaign really does take about a year to see some real results, so make sure that you’re patient in the end.

I know this could be a lot. So if you want help, please don’t be afraid to reach out to me. You call or email me directly. As I said before, we’ve had a lot of experience creating these types of programs for organizations, individuals, associations, corporations.

I also wanted to let you know I created a worksheet for you to help guide you through some of the conversations you’re having with yourself about the things you need for a good thought leadership plan.

You can download the free worksheet that I created here.

Let’s stay in touch.