Hi, I’m Katherine, I’ll be your thought leader.
I know you’ve never heard of me, but I’m an expert. See? It says so in my Twitter bio, LinkedIn profile, Google Plus page, and yes, on my business card, too. So now that we’ve established my credibility, you should follow my teachings and share my content everywhere.
Wait a second…what’s going on here? Doesn’t this seem like role reversal, me telling you that you should consider me a leader because I said so?
Are Thought Leaders Born or Manufactured?
Allow me to explain why I’m tackling this topic. I belong to several professional marketing groups, and lately I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. Several of my colleagues in the freelance and advertising agency sectors mentioned conducting “thought leadership” campaigns for their clients. Apparently the plan consists of collecting authoritative articles to spew in LinkedIn groups in the hopes of appearing like you know what you’re talking about. As you spew, you mix in a few of your own articles/blog posts, except they’re not really written by you. The agency or a ghost writer handles that hard stuff. If all goes according to plan, people become captivated by your wisdom, and feel compelled to follow you, share your content, etc. In essence, you build a strong following of minions who distribute your content for free, while you just sit and grin—the money will roll right in (Fang/Nirvana reference).
Suffice to say the above description is pure fantasy. But why? What’s wrong with this formula for internet marketing success?
I firmly believe that leadership status is determined by the audience, not the promoter. Basically, I think it works like this: you post content, other people read it, evaluate it, and share it if they like your voice or your message. They may choose to sign up for your blog or follow you on social media on the spot. But more often than not, they’ll forget about you and move on to the next thing that catches their attention. When the former happens repeatedly (total strangers sharing your material), then you know that you’re connecting with your audience. And said audience will tell you that you’ve achieved the coveted thought leader position.
In other words, people are attracted to your talents and ability to communicate your ideas. With so many thousands of content marketers writing about the same topics, these people choose to listen to you, and trust that you won’t lead them in the wrong direction. They might disagree with you at some point, but they still value your contributions and respect your opinions. In case you can’t tell by now, not very many people fall into this category, especially when compared to the amount of people publishing online content. So the notion that you can get to this point by having an agency take the reins for 3 months is absolutely absurd.
Matthew Parker: The Anatomy of a Printing Industry Thought Leader
I believe the best way to drive my point is to a take a real world example from the CMYK world. I can name a handful of thought leaders in the printing industry (Deborah Corn, Jamie McLennan, Vladimir Gendelman, Sandy Hubbard, Bill Michael, etc.), but I want to zero in on Matthew Parker of Profitable Print Relationships. I picked Matthew for a couple of reasons, mainly because he’s one of the first people I encountered online when I got hired here at PrintFirm. I saw one of his articles on LinkedIn, and was immediately impressed with his writing ability. And I’m definitely not the only one—I see Matthew’s articles everywhere I go in CMYK land. Aside from his natural aptitudes, I think Matthew exhibits the following traits that collectively make him a thought leader:
Experience: Matthew didn’t become an industry darling overnight. He’s got over 20 years of specialized experience under his belt. People listen to him because he’s earned their attention through decades of hard work.
Reputation: I don’t know Matthew very well (we don’t know each other at all on a personal level), but I’m confident that he didn’t wake up one day and think, “Gee, let’s give this thought leadership thing a try.” Instead, he forged a good name by building relationships with several printing and publishing companies. He’s worked with brokers, buyers, and suppliers along with marketers. He spent most of his career earning their trust. That trust equates to his role as an authority figure.
Guidance- Matthew sticks to his mission to drop the knowledge on us printers. His posts mostly focus on how to grow your business and present solutions to common issues associated with print sales. Now who wouldn’t want free advice from someone who clearly knows what he’s talking about? Matthew serves as a great example of adding value for your readers, and that’s really key in terms of leadership.
Passion- This goes along with the notion that he probably didn’t set out to become THE print sales expert. He used his first-hand experience and turned it into a model to help others succeed. Reading his posts, you can tell that he genuinely wants to help you improve your business. You can’t fake that.