What kind of thought leader are you?

Priscilla McKinney: Hello and welcome to Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing Company podcast. I'm Priscilla McKinney, CEO and mama bird over here, and I'm your host. Today I'm going to talk about a topic I really love to discuss, and that is about thought leadership. In fact, the title of this episode is going to be, Kind of Thought Leader Are You?

So before you start rolling your eyes and saying, I'm tired of thought leadership and people publish things that aren't even thought leadership, just whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're gonna talk about really what it means to tap into your own natural style in a way that can help you produce content. In fact, maybe my subtitle of this should be not only what kind of thought leader are you, but, and how you can use that bit of stuff. my gosh, come on. So the topic of this podcast is what kind of thought leader are you? But my subtitle should be, and how you can use that bit of self-knowledge to amplify your brand and be heard above the noise.

Listen, we write all day long. You can get stuck. We even have a name for it, writer's block. Or maybe you could just be feeling that you're not a good writer at all from the beginning. But when I hear these kinds of comments from people I know, have something to say and they can say it well, I get the sneaking suspicion that they're not writing in their natural style and that's what's causing blocks and problems.

When writing for a brand, it's easy to become focused on production rather than the overall strategy. It becomes output, output, output. Listen, love one of my mottos is get shit done. Start that paragraph again. I write for a lot of brands, and I'm telling you, when you're writing for a brand, it's easy to become focused on production and output rather than overall strategy.

Consider the last time you and your team reviewed your published content with a critical eye. Sometimes it's so exciting that we're producing and publishing content that we fail to take a step back and ask ourselves, that this is truly the best content to meet both the short-term and the long-term company goals. But even if that content addresses these goals and you've got that down pat, sometimes it falls short of amplifying your brand's expertise or prestige as a leader within your industry because the tone is off. Content goals often deal with brand awareness and then lead generation. But the secret ingredient to taking your brand recognition up a notch is the use of thought leadership in your content strategy in your natural voice.

It really makes a difference. I talk to CMOs, marketing managers, CEOs every day, and the reality is that a lot of people are confused about how to integrate thought leadership into day-to-day content output. Sometimes there are multiple leaders on a team whose thought leadership could be highlighted. And this can create some confusion about the uniformity or the cohesive nature of the content. But more often than not, people are simply stuck on one stereotype of thought leadership, like a visionary type of thinking.

And they think that's the only proper thought leadership. But you do not have to be a visionary and predict the next major shift in your industry to be considered a thought leader. In fact, there are many. of thought leaders and there are multiple gifts these people give us and you can integrate them into a successful, unique, authentic, and therefore very powerful strategy. So at Little Bird Marketing, I dug into my cultural anthropology bag of tricks and I identified four types of thought leaders.

Now this is my version. It's a system I created and I give it to you now. The first one is the visionary. This is the most commonly identified thought leader. The visionary is focused on the future and all the conversations are framed by what could be.

We get asked sometimes as leaders to participate in a end of year, what is gonna happen next year type of thought leadership writing that's very common. And. of this year. The visionary. Now, this is the most commonly identified thought leader.

The visionary is focused on the future and all conversations they have are framed by what could be, right? I think you know this person and this person often gets asked to weigh in on what's going to be the trend for next year, right? You've read those types of thought leadership blogs often. But. The visionaries day to day is fueled by the goal of accelerating and streamlining the path to the bright future they envision.

Do you know this person in your life? When we think about it in terms of celebrities, think Sir Richard Branson or Elon Musk. The next one is the revolutionary. Now with a deep love of history, revolutionary thought leaders tell the story of the past only to ensure we don't repeat mistakes. They really interrogate history and facts, and they question authority until the truth becomes apparent.

They shake it out of the truth. It's like some people who really like to query the data and get to the bottom of it. So I know you know people like that in your life. That also sounds like Malcolm Gladwell or Seth Godin, right? The next one is called the radical.

Now, radical thought leaders are catalysts. They make the right connections to elicit the necessary blowing up of previously held beliefs to make a path for the new and better way. If you've ever had your mind blown by Simon Sinek or Brene Brown, then you know what it's like to be in the presence of radical. Once they explain it to you, it's like you can't unknow it. It can be that good of a revision of your thought.

It's that radical. The last one I want to talk about is the inspiration. Now, when we read thoughts of an inspirational speaker, we don't necessarily learn anything new, but we rearrange our priorities based on the new conviction that we too could focus on the positive and bring about that thing that we desire so much in ourselves, in others, in the world, right? Often that inspirational speaker has humility. and they call for a deep personal responsibility and say, with that, you could do better.

You could be better. Mother Teresa, anyone? Anise Kavanaugh and Esther Perel are also good modern examples. So whether you write from a company voice or multiple leaders are contributing, consider getting a mix of these different thought leadership styles into your content schedule. Seriously.

I'll do that paragraph again. Whether you write from a company voice or multiple leaders are contributing, consider getting a mix of these thought leadership types into your content schedule. That doesn't mean that you're being inconsistent. It's mean. Whether day to day you're needing to write from a company tone of voice or you're adding multiple leaders that are contributing to a blog, consider getting a mix of these thought leadership natural styles or approaches into your content schedule.

Of course, you want to be consistent with the brand voice and tone, but different natural styles can be very helpful for people to stay interested in your content. So now that you're ready to add those to the mix, here are some very specific tips and best practices I want to give you for greater success in the effort of blogging, social media, and maybe even podcasting efforts. Before addressing these individually, remember that no matter what platform is used, all content should be written with a persona in mind. If you need a resource, we have plenty of free resources at littlebirdmarketing.com slash resources. There are several in there about developing a persona.

But knowing your ideal client slash persona and speaking directly to their needs, concerns, their goals, their aspirations, that will kick the amplification of your brand and your message to a new level. I guarantee you. For the purpose of the advice that I'm going to give, we'll assume that you've already done this very foundational work and that you're ready to write. and be read. So when we come to blogging, the first task that most people start with when implementing thought leadership is blogging.

It's just very common. We have a website, we need a blog, right? Research shows us that having a blog gives your website 434 % higher chance of being ranked on search engines. That's just dumb math because you need that content to be considered an expert. and authority and to have timely updates on your website.

So you can't miss out on this fundamental of content marketing. And it's not going anywhere, even with the advent of AI, it's just as important. The fundamentals matter. All of the large language models are being trained off of the internet and what we actually post digitally. So that is only the beginning, but we start here first.

Anyone can write a blog. Few companies are writing great content intended for their ideal client that builds rapport, leads with giving, and nurtures them along a buyer's journey and also functions as a foundation for search engine optimization. So while you were just saying a minute ago, well, of course, everybody has a blog. Just consider that not everybody is doing it correctly. Having a blog itself is not going to do the trick.

So if you want your content to be found organically and to drive direct visitors to your site, then you should think about keywords, topic clusters, proper use of photos and videos, and effective social media promotion and blah, blah, blah, blah, right? That's not what this particular podcast is talking about. I have a lot of free resources around how to do that. But I'm going to give you three very quick top tips, I'd say. to make sure that your blog gets heard above the noise, even as you bring in different natural styles of thought leadership.

So first of all, think topic clusters, okay? If you've blogged in the past, then you've become familiar with the concept of trying to use identified and highly used keywords in order to increase your ranking. You want to show that you're an expert on a particular narrow topic first. and then expand out from there. And you want to speak with authority on it, right?

And so that means other people need to refer back and backlink to your information, which means it has to be compelling, right? But search engines just continually make changes, right? And these changes signal a need to shift away from just the use of keywords, no matter how organic you made them sound, to the use of topic clusters. It means. The internet is trying to understand intent.

AI is mastering this idea of what is someone searching for, right? What are they intending to do? So in short, search engines are now more effective at understanding the overall expertise provided on your website. And they're ranking now based more keenly around your field of expertise. And that's good news for great writers.

The biggest takeaway from changes we've seen lately is that you should arrange your blog content around what you identify as your core competency as a brand, right? Find new ways to talk about it within your industry. Take different approaches, but stay closely associated to the topic and you'll find over time that you'll create a significant content cluster. that is easily identifiable by search engines or LLMs or AI agents to bring you potential clients who are searching for your area of expertise. And the quality of the thought leadership is just going to make it that much more compelling, right?

But this is a foundational truth. Okay, number two, please identify the images. One of the biggest mistakes I see when I analyze someone's content is the absence of alt text. in images and videos and you're already winning when you put a photo or video into your blog. But if you forget about the alt text, then a search engine has no idea what the content is.

It doesn't know what that picture is. It's a black box to them. So you need to include some text so that those images you used to perfectly highlight what you're trying to say aren't all for nothing. Now, AI is getting smarter about understanding what it is a picture of. And so some people are walking away from this saying, no, I'm just going to go ahead and post it and let AI determine that.

But to me, that's like getting in an Uber and just telling the driver, just take me anywhere you want to go. We don't do that. Just because we're using a particular vehicle doesn't mean that we're not going to direct it turn by turn. So video is a really big player in content marketing. Video is a big player in content marketing.

People love watching videos. It's performing very, very well. And you need to use it to your advantage. Videos accomplish so many things at once. They allow for blog content to be shorter, as the text within the article essentially can be just a set up for the video within it.

And they automatically, you know, I'm going to start that paragraph over again. Number two, please identify your images. One of the biggest mistakes I see when I analyze someone's content is the absence of alt text in images and videos. You're already winning when you use a photo or a video in your blog, but if you forget about the alt text, the search engine itself has no idea what that content is. Now, LLMs and AI, they're getting smarter about this and they are going to look at some photos now, which they were not able to do in the past and decide what is this a picture of?

But letting them decide that is like getting in a cab and telling the cabbie, hey, just take me anywhere you want to go. Well, that's ridiculous. But you need to include the alt text so that you can describe the images that you took time to perfectly place within your blog. It makes things meaningful. It makes things more findable.

So video is a big player in content marketing. And people love watching videos. It performs very well in algorithms, but just in human experience. People like watching videos, plain and simple. So use it to your advantage.

Now, videos accomplish several things at once. They allow for the blog content to be shorter, as the text within the article could be essentially a setup for the video within it, right? Let's do that again. Video is a big player in content marketing. It's performing well.

And people like watching videos, plain and simple. So use it to your advantage. Now, videos accomplish several things at once. They allow for the blog content to be shorter because the text inside the article could essentially just be a tee-up for the video coming. But I have to say what I love about video is that nothing conveys your tone and your natural style better than video.

The last idea about blogging is that you need to make sure that you self promote. It seems crazy to say this, but once blogs are written, optimized and published, your work is not done. If the content was worth writing, it's worth promoting. So there are some time sensitive blogs that have to get done. And most of what is written in longer formats for blogging is truly My third thought about blogging is that you need to promote it.

Once blogs are written, optimized, and published, your work is not done. And it seems crazy to say this, but if the content was worth writing, it's worth promoting. Now while there are some time-sensitive blogging that has to be done, maybe around a conference or around trends at a particular quarter or a particular year, Most of what gets written for business is written in longer formats and it's truly evergreen. It's not going to materially change year over year. And that means that if the piece of content was worth writing, it's worth sharing over time.

So I'm going to cover some best practices for spacing out posts, but let's make sure that the mindset shift is made about this. one and done mentality, right? The easiest way to promote your blogs is through social media channels, but it's not the only way and it's not always the most effective in other cases. So there are lots of ways of promoting your blog content, right? I'm gonna tell you a few of them, but get rid of that one and done and then think about maybe not only one and done, I'm only gonna post about it once, but also maybe I could post about it on different channels.

So one thing I tell people is that they need to communicate the expectation that your team shares the blog as a reason maybe for reaching out to a significant client that's been quiet lately or maybe a new prospect. It allows them to lead with giving. Instead of asking for business, they can actually share something that they think would be relevant to them. So you're actually sharing it maybe on an email message or maybe in a LinkedIn email. Consider using that valuable blog information on LinkedIn, not only as posts, but as private messages.

You could also send a blog to an industry trade magazine and offer it to them to establish and. You could also send the blog to an industry trade magazine and see if they'll pick it up. Syndicated content is really good content. You want to have the opportunity to let someone else introduce your work to a new audience. The other thing I tell people to do is to calendarize a specific email as a quote unquote blog roundup and try and do that maybe once per quarter to highlight recent blogs and things that have been written.

that maybe people might have missed, right? People aren't just waiting in the morning to see what we put out at Little Bird Marketing. Sometimes they miss really good content. So we want to come back and re-promote it and give people an option to see it again right after we think we're done promoting it. You need to make sure you extend it.

OK, another place that we use thought leadership is in social media. Now, the easiest way to promote your content is through social media. We know that to be true. The biggest mistake I see companies make with this is that they promote it once, like I said, and then they just expect it to be seen. And it takes me a little bit to explain to them and get them comfortable with the fact that they need to have a multiple sharing cadence, right?

So I mentioned that one and done mentality, and it really makes your blog a wasted opportunity. But you don't have to write the same post and bore people to death. Please don't. Schedule different messages at different times over the course of a year using different hooks and different images to get people interested in the content. And over time, you'll be able to measure what works better.

And then you kind of get a sense of what's more interesting to your audience. And then you can start honing that right voice, that right time, that right pitch that works. So I'm often asked right after they agree to resharing and, know, let me start now. Right after I get clients to agree to share the same piece of content multiple times, I'm then asked, but how much posting is too much posting? And it's just from that anxiety that people have at one end of the extreme or the other.

Either they never share their own work or they barrage their social media streams. And my answer is, who do you like to hang out with at a cocktail party? the guy who talks about himself ad nauseam, or the guy who makes interesting suggestions or insights about your interests. The answer is obvious. And social media should be metered out with that obvious answer in mind.

Sure, you can talk about your company, your services, and you can talk about how you're awesome. But you have to balance that with things that show you oxygen. Sure, you can talk about your company, your services, and even how awesome you are and how you deliver them better than anyone else, but you have to balance that with things that truly show you care about the audience. At Little Bird Marketing, we use what we call the Rule of 15 when posting on social media. If you want to strut your stuff, consider doing 14 actions that show you care in some way, and then you get a chance to pitch exactly what you do.

And I break it down a little bit more granularly like this. 10 posts need to show that you are interesting to your audience. Four posts need to show that you are interested in them. And what I mean by that is give them something of value about their challenges, their problems, something very prescriptive, something overtly helpful. You really have to build that rapport.

And again, go back to the beginning of this podcast to really hone in on the fact that in order to do that, you need to know your most ideal client. You need to have done the persona work. You need to understand the challenges of that avatar so that you can speak intelligently to them. And then for those 10 and that four, boom, you get one post. You've earned it.

You need to be clear and highlight your key differentiator. You need to be clear and say what you do. whether it's a product or a service, you wanna say that you wanna do business. Some people are so shy about saying that they do business, but we do business. We're in the business of business, so quit being shy about it.

But don't go to one extreme or the other, get a balance. And this is the balance you need for effective social media strategy so that you can earn the right to ask for the business. And you can have the best thought leadership you want, but if it's just, really preaching at people and it's not really considering how they need to hear it and how it relates to their problems, then it's not going to be heard over the noise. Okay, another format that we use for thought leadership is podcasts. Here we are on a podcast.

Now they've gained popularity and then they kind of took a little bit of a downturn and now they are back. They're back in full force and in fact there's so much paid subscription and extra engagement going around podcasts, it's proving to be a very good investment for your time. Now, I'm not saying that's true for everybody, but if you don't have your own podcast, it doesn't mean you can't be on someone else's podcast. So please don't hear this as I think everybody needs to have a podcast, but they provide a very accessible and inexpensive way to gain authority and have leaders in your organization get the opportunity to express their knowledge in a very engaging and intimate way. Not only does getting on a podcast give you the opportunity to establish your expertise and authority, but it also provides additional content.

When you're on someone else's podcast, boom, here's the link, right? And many think, yeah, I'm gonna take that link and send it out to social media and announce this. But there are other things you can do. The interview can be transcribed with the approval of the podcast host, and you could create a different blog with it. You can cut it up and slice it and dice it all different ways.

But the key is to speak to your ideal client and keep the interviews around your desired topic clusters. And be sure to use that one interview as a basis for creating a lot of different promotional activities. But it is such an amazing way for people to hear your actual tone of voice, literally, and get to know a little bit about why you are different, why you are unique, right? So these are the different places we can put our. These are the different places we can put our thought leadership because having a strong marketing strategy in place that incorporates thought leadership with brand awareness and lead generation and other purposes of our content is the key to really gaining clout in your industry.

And if you do it properly, it creates somewhat of a snowball effect as people begin to see you as the authority, not only about your products and services, but the entirety of the industry. Of course, focusing on quality over quantity is always going to yield the best results. So let's come back up to the top of this podcast where I talked about the fact that people want to do thought leadership, but often they have a block. And what I want to suggest to you is really quite simple, that oftentimes people are blocked not because they don't have something to say, or that their team can't come alongside and follow all of these great pieces of advice about how to distribute it and get heard above the noise. But often I find they are trying to write in a voice that is not their own.

And so when we think that something like a visionary is the only approach to writing solid thought leadership, we might just keep trying to write like a Malcolm Gladwell and it never works well for us. And so we give up. But maybe you're a radical and you need to write in that natural style. So I created an interesting, very, very simple six question quiz. I mean, it's kind of fun to take, but it'll literally take you one, one and a half minutes to do.

And it's at littlebirdmarketing.com slash thought hyphen leadership hyphen quiz. It's super fun to take, but what you're going to learn is that thought leaders come in a lot of different styles. Some inspire, some predict the future, others have radical ideas and lead us to changing the way we see the world, and others call us to change the way we show up in the world. So. The important part is that when you write thought leadership, you're writing it in your own natural style.

So take the quiz, find out what kind of thought leadership you are, and then you'll have a better chance at radical success with thought leadership. From all of the peeps here at Little Bird Marketing, have a great day and happy marketing.