Does Writing this Article Make Me a Thought Leader?
By Mariela Azcuy
Refreshed April 19
No, writing this article doesn’t make me a thought leader. Neither does that blog I posted three months ago. Or the fact that I included the phrase “Thought Leader” in my LinkedIn bio. (I didn’t do that. But lots of people do and it blows my mind.)
You can’t deem yourself a thought leader. The market does that for you, and it only does that for you after you consistently share ideas and stories that make people pause, interact, and share.
Thought leaders also must have the experience – the cred – to validate their ideas. And finally, they should have a healthy mix of humility and pride.
I follow a few thought leaders on thought leadership (meta!!), and these are their formal definitions of the term:
Thought leadership definition number one from Atlassian’s Ashley Faus: “It’s that combination of smart, deep ideas that can help shape and change someone’s organization or execution or mindset. They also share those ideas [so] that others can consume them and put them into practice.”
Thought leadership definition number two from House of Bold’s Erin Balsa: “The practice of sharing original ideas that shape the conversation.” (She challenged herself to define it in 10 words or less.)
Before I get into how to become a thought leader, maybe you’re asking: Why should I care?
It’s because of one of my favorite phrases, which I believe Seth Godin originated (but Luk Smeyers called to my attention): “abundance of trust-stuff.”
As in, most prospects are checking you out – multiple times – before they decide to work with you. So, you better have an abundance of easily accessible, trust-stuff that “confirms how good you know your business, understand your target clients, and solve problems.”
I’d add to that: Trust-stuff confirms that you’re a real person (not an organization) – with thoughts and personality – they want to do business with. Your ideas and the way you communicate them shed light on what kind of partner you’d be.
Here is some guidance on your journey toward thought leadership.
How to Become a Thought Leader
Pull from your Experience
Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz calls this your “earned secrets.” You can go to minute 8:07 of this podcast to hear him explain it through the story of Airbnb’s Brian Chesky.
I’ll share the main takeaway of his thought leadership definition: “You did something in your past to solve a hard problem and learned something about the world that not a lot of people know.”
Nurture those earned secrets to the moon and back. Here’s a helpful exercise:
Write down a belief statement about the world or your industry that comes from your experience.
Answer questions tied to that belief statement. You can be messy. At this stage it’s more thinking than writing. This is you working toward clarity.
Why does this idea matter to your target audience? What will they feel, think, or do, with this information and does it align with what you’d like them to feel, think, or do?
What proof points do you have to support the idea?
Tell me an anecdote that brings this idea to life.
What could challenge this idea and why? How would you respond to that challenge?
Who are others who share your idea? What would negate your idea?
How has that idea evolved over the years?
Where will the idea stand five years from now?
Now, focus on refining the writing.
Other ways you can pull from your experience include reacting with your expertise – what do you have to say about a just-released syndicated industry report or a major industry move? Or being proactive instead – what sort of report can your company design and deliver that nobody else can and will help your target audience achieve their goals?
If you ever feel like your expertise is too obvious to be shared, here’s a video that might make you reconsider.
➜ Real-life thought leadership example of Pulling from Your Experience:
One of our clients shares her earned secrets around her role as a three-time tech founder and CEO. Her purpose is to extend the ladder down so others can dream, build, and lead so much of her storytelling revolves around the topics of management and culture, fundraising, leadership, and equity in tech. She’s received a LinkedIn “Top Voice” badge because of it (and, no, not the ones they give anyone for answering a few “Collaborative Article” questions).
Make People Pause
A content curator is hardly ever a thought leader (unless that’s an aspect of what they do). A serial rehasher of ideas is also not a thought leader.
Thought leadership content makes people pause because they are new or different from what audiences have heard; it adds to the conversation or helps people envision future possibilities. Sometimes thought leaders make people pause because they offer a contrarian point of view or are provocative.
Just be careful that you are not being provocative for no reason. Stay focused on bettering your industry and providing value to your target audiences. If your contrarian POV leads with that goal in mind, your ideas have extra fuel behind them.
➜ Real-life thought leadership example of Making People Pause:
One of our clients wrote a white paper encouraging product and engineering teams to move away from measuring productivity and performance to measuring outcomes. And he’s used these ideas across many channels to continue sharing and developing his ideas and gaining traction.
Be Consistent
The path to thought leadership is the opposite of going viral. Going viral is one moment in time that gets amplified and gains instant popularity for a myriad of reasons. LinkedIn’s Editor-in-Chief Dan Roth has even publicly said the platform makes efforts to suppress virality; instead, they strive to boost educational content.
Getting to a point where you are considered a thought leader is a slow but steady process -- one where you are unafraid to take risks and share opinions along the way. You share and share often.
The medium isn’t as important as the consistency. You could pitch reporters, write LinkedIn posts, sit on conference panels, join webinars, author blog posts, distribute X threads, participate in Reddit AMAs, send out a monthly newsletter, commit to an illustration a day – or do all of the above.
The point is you can’t say something once – three months ago – and expect to be considered a thought leader because of that. The public profile of your ideas has to be sustained over time.
➜ Real-life thought leadership example of Being Consistent:
One of our clients regularly posts on LinkedIn giving a behind-the-scenes on the collectibles industry. This frequency has led to results like relationships with new licensors and reporters quoting his feed and digging deeper into the stories he’s shared.
Grow Followers Willing to Share
By followers, I don’t mean a specific number of LinkedIn followers or newsletter subscribers. Instead, get to the point where your ideas make people want to come onboard or stick around for more. They want to hear what you have to say next. They see you as so quotable that they call you for that next news story comment or ask you to participate in their conference.
You can gauge your success here by tracking metrics like:
LinkedIn follower growth
Blog page views in the first 30 days and over time
Time spent on page
Newsletter open rate, CTR, and direct responses
Survey responses after speaking engagement / webinars
Your ideas being referenced by others
Typically when a client starts on that slow and steady thought leadership journey, the early distribution efforts are mostly proactive – meaning, the agency pitches the byline idea or the client’s participation in a conference.
You’ve reached a turning point when those opportunities start coming your way. At that point, it’s about making strategic decisions about where to build relationships, how to spend time, and in which direction to grow.
➜ Real-life thought leadership example of Gaining Followers who Share.
We always recommend sharing ideas in a much bigger proportion to company events, for example. Because when you do, your target audience will care much more about your events since you’ve built up trust. Here you can see how one client’s shares doubled on LinkedIn over about a year of working with each other.
Be Humble and Proud
We have a client who shies away from prolific thought leadership because he doesn’t want to come off as narcissistic. And we understand that hesitation. Keeping your audience’s best interest as your north star can help overcome that.
When you are sharing your expertise to help others, your audience will thank you. This is a form of leading with humility. It’s not about you; it’s about what your POV can do for them. Other ways to lead with humility are:
Asking others for input, like workshopping an idea with a crowd
Building in public, like expressing how your opinions have changed over time and why or showing what you’ve learned as you’ve progressed toward a goal (build a product, bought your first house, started a company)
Admitting when you don’t know something
Sharing a mistake or failure
But humble doesn’t mean hesitant. A thought leader is confident because they know their earned secrets have worth. Their target audience doesn’t need to make the same mistakes they did as they figured some things out.
➜ Real-life thought leadership example of Being Humble and Proud:
Here one client admits he doesn’t know a term he read in an industry journal. So… he asked his network about it and it turned into a popular poll that he’s revisited in different ways.
Collaborate with Your Agency
We’ve had clients in the past who listed thought leadership as a goal but had no intention of acting on it. They saw that as the agency’s work, didn’t show up for meetings, and just sat back and asked: What’s your new idea?
And agencies can and do have ideas out of the wazoo (try us!). However, the agency is primarily the filter that extracts and shapes a client’s ideas, prepares those ideas for consumption, and helps those ideas find audiences.
Here’s a chart that breaks down a few different ways we collaborate with clients to build and execute against a thought leadership platform. Two things to note: the list isn’t meant to be comprehensive, and there’s a reason client and agency appear on every line item. It’s a partnership.
You Become a Thought Leader by Combining All These Efforts
No one of these levers will magically transform you into a thought leader. It takes a concerted and orchestrated effort. And, for some people, a lot of help.
But the benefits are clear. When we hear from a client that they often win deals in a crowded marketplace based on “culture,” we know thought leadership played a part. So keep on that “trust stuff” train.