- Let's be honest,
there's never been a better time to become a thought leader.
With all of the tools out there at our disposal,
either cheap or free,
and with an almost unlimited audience,
the possibilities are endless.
The problem, endless possibilities
inevitably mean confusion.
Where do you start?
Lots of people who want to become a thought leader
don't really have a strategy for it.
So they product social media aimlessly for a bit,
get no traction, get disheartened
and then give up.
That ends today.
We've built Exposure Ninja through thought leadership
since we started the company back in 2013,
and it's gone fairly well.
Today, we're a team of over a hundred
with multimillion turnover.
In this video, we're gonna share four steps
to building your thought leadership strategy.
So it's actually a success.
Ready? Cool.
The first thing that you need to do
is identify the topics that you want to be known for.
Now as with any marketing thing,
we want to start from our target audience and work back.
Okay.
So Exposure Ninja, we're a digital marketing agency.
What does our target audience want to know about?
They want to know about
how to generate more leads and sales
through their website.
So that is exactly our topic.
That's what we talk about.
Let's say that I was a wedding photographer.
Now, I might get really passionate about photography
and all the aspects of photography
and lenses and lighting and all this type of stuff.
What does my audience want to know about?
They want to know about how to look great in photos
or how to have a wedding photo album
that they can be proud of for the rest of their lives.
So that wedding photographer
doesn't wanna talk about lenses or any of the stuff
that they might be really passionate about.
They wanna talk about the thing that is most interesting
to their audience.
So start from your audience
and think about what are they most interested in learning,
which you also have expertise in.
Now, your topics may change over time.
If we think about some of the best known thought leaders
in the world today,
people like Tim Ferris, for example.
Well, today Tim Ferris is known for his podcast
all about sort of maximising human potential.
But that's a really broad topic.
That's not where he started.
He started with "The 4-Hour Workweek,"
which is a book about basically making money online
through new tools and automation.
So that's where he started.
He was able to get traction
because that tapped into something that people wanted,
more money working less.
And then he was able broaden his topic
over time to other things like health.
And then eventually this very generic topic
of maximising human potential.
But that's not where he started,
he started by addressing a particular need
that audience had, and then expanding over time.
Now, once you've got your topic
the next step is to write your manifesto.
This sounds very grand and complicated
but it really doesn't need to be.
This is about condensing your thoughts and beliefs
in this area about the topic that you've chosen.
So for example,
when we were talking about digital marketing
and when we were designing
Exposure Ninja's thought leadership plan,
our beliefs are that digital marketing is fundamentally,
it's actually pretty simple.
It's also really fun.
Business growth is really exciting
and that we believe it should be plain English.
We saw that there was a lot of jargon news
to kind of muddy the waters.
So our manifesto, really simple,
digital marketing is fun.
Boil it down into its simplest parts,
and use plain English.
That then means that we can take this approach
to any of the thought leadership work that we do,
whether it's writing a book or podcast or YouTube videos.
So your manifesto doesn't have to be anything grand.
It can be as simple as a few bullet points
in the notes app on your phone.
And that is exactly where our manifesto started too.
The important thing is to get your thoughts down
and start ordering them.
What do you really believe in this space?
Do you hold any beliefs
which are contrary to the rest of the market?
If there's something different about your perspective,
that's a great thing to include in your manifesto.
So once you've got your manifesto,
it's now time to think about your communication style
and choosing your communication strength.
Most people find
that one or two of these different communication styles
suit them.
So for example, you might be great on video.
You might be a confident presenter.
You might have had feedback from people
that you're very engaging in presentations.
So video might suit you.
Even then, you've got to think about
does short form video suit you?
Are you best in an Instagram reel or a TikTok video
where you can get an idea over very condensed
in a very short space of time?
That is a very particular skillset,
or if you're a bit more like me,
you might be more of a rambler,
you prefer to give more detail,
in which case longer form video,
either on YouTube or through webinars
might match your communication style better.
You might also find that written is a strength of yours.
So you might not be so confident on camera,
but you might be much more confident
when you can think through your thoughts
and write them down in a nice orderly way.
And that's completely fine.
Then you need to think about
which length is gonna suit you best.
So are you gonna suit short form?
Like, do you write really great social posts
which are nice snappy ideas condensely explained,
which can, you know, get some viral traction,
or are you better suited to long form posts,
like longer descriptive blogs or interviews or guides.
That's a really useful technique to have,
and that can help get you some traction
and get content ranked on Google.
Or do you suit ultra long form?
Like, books.
If you can do that
then you can build these content assets, books,
which can generate you lots of revenue.
And there's lots of credibility associated
with having books.
So think through whether your short form,
long form, or ultra long,
if your writing is your preferred style.
Thirdly, your communication style might be speaking.
So you might not like being on video,
but you might be much more confident speaking,
either audio only, like, in a podcast
or in audio book or on a stage in front of people.
If so, that's absolutely cool too.
So find out which one of these communication styles
suits you best.
You'll always get more traction
with the style that matches your natural strengths.
And you might find that over time
you're able to expand these and add in others
as you become more comfortable,
and as you start building your audience.
The fourth thing that you want to do
is you want to design your route to market.
Now, if you are new,
if you don't have much visibility or profile yet,
then you are going to want to start practising ,
testing how your message falls.
So for example, you might start off
by writing some posts on social media.
You're gonna test some different types of posts,
test some different types of message.
See what gets the most traction,
what seems to resonate with your audience.
You might also decide that you want to start testing
by getting some podcast interviews
and having people interview you about your topic.
By the way, this is also a great way
to nail down your beliefs and your story.
Because podcast interviews will ask you the things
that they are most interested in.
These are often also the things that your audience
will be interested in.
And by repeating your stories over and over again,
you'll begin to kind of refine these
into a well-trodden sales patter if you like.
This is how you can build a really good story.
You might also want to start testing
with some written interviews,
and magazines or articles,
whatever communication style you choose,
getting some stuff out there and testing it
is a really good idea.
Now, by the way you're doing this
because the first 10, 50, 100
are probably going to be rubbish.
You're gonna take some time to find your flow
and find what works for you.
So don't get too hung up at this stage.
And by the way,
you are not looking to go viral with any of these.
Let's say that you start posting on social.
You are not looking
to get thousands and thousands of interactions
to show that you've got some potential.
What you are really looking for is impact.
You might only get one view or one comment
on your video for example,
but that comment might be, thanks so much!
This was really useful.
That's the sign that you want to say,
right, you found something that your audience really values.
So you are looking for a depth of reaction
rather than a breadth of reaction.
You're not looking for millions and millions of eyeballs
at this stage.
You're just looking for those little signs
that say, right, you're onto something here.
This is gonna mean something to people
when it's scaled up.
So once you feel like you've got your message sorted,
and you feel like, you know your pattern,
now it's time to build what we call
thought leadership pillars.
These thought leadership pillars
are like evergreen pieces of content,
which you can then drive people to.
So for example, in the early days of Exposure Ninja,
in fact, before Exposure Ninja ever existed,
I wrote a book called "How to Get to the Top of Google."
This became a thought leadership pillar for our business
because once we'd written this book
we could then drive people to it.
When I was being interviewed
or when I was writing an article or anything,
I could point people at the book
and it became a sort of its own entity,
which summarised our manifesto
and our way of working.
It then drove leads to our business.
So that's one form of thought leadership pillar, the book.
Tim Ferris, "4-Hour Workweek,"
the book was his first thought leadership pillar as well.
Another type of thought leadership pillar
that you might create would be video.
So your YouTube channel
or a webinar or a series of webinars.
And again, this can be something
that you can drive people to.
We've done this at Exposure Ninja.
Once we had the books,
we then built the YouTube channel,
where we could drive people to,
and they could come in here,
and they could understand
how we think about marketing.
And they could, I guess, feel our passion about digital.
And then they could come to our business
if they felt that this was right.
Another thought leadership pillar that you might start
is your podcast.
So obviously this is audio only,
but this can be something that you can drive people to
and they can start bingeing.
A great way to think about thought leadership pillar is
what can you give people so they can start bingeing
on your content,
anything like that
that they can really sucked into and spend loads of time.
And that's gonna really increase the relationship
that they have with you
or the relationship that they feel with you,
which is a great first step
to kind of monetizing that.
Another type of thought leadership pillar
might be your social channels,
whether it is your LinkedIn page
or your Instagram page or your TikTok page,
whatever social platform that you feel most natural
and where your audience is spending their time.
This might be your thought leadership content pillar
that you can drive everyone to.
So once you've got all of these things,
it's time to start building those
thought leadership pillars.
Now, once you have at least one of these,
now it's time to start promoting,
build it and they will come absolute garbage.
That's not the case at all.
You need to think about how you're gonna promote these.
So first thing I would think about
is who else has an audience,
which matches your target audience?
How could you get in front of them?
This might be collaborations on social media.
This might be bringing people onto your podcast
who already have an audience of your sort of crowd.
Well, when you bring them onto your podcast
if they then promote that episode to their audience,
you now get in front of their audience as well.
Maybe this is collaborating through video,
might be another way of getting in front of
someone's audience.
Another way of promoting your pillars
is to think about SEO.
Now I'm not just talking about SEO on Google,
I'm to talking about SEO on Amazon for example.
If you've got a book on Amazon
or a series of books on Amazon,
how do you optimise them
to get your thought leadership pillar
in front of the sort of people
that might be a good fit for your business?
You might optimise for YouTube.
How do you make sure that your videos are ranking
for people that are searching for this topic?
What you're really doing with SEO
is you are getting your thought leadership
in front of people
that have already expressed an interest
in this topic.
Now you may even choose to pay to advertise
your thought leadership pillars.
For example, we sell a whole bunch of books on Amazon.
We take all of that cash
and dump it straight back into selling more books.
We're not looking to monetize the books.
We wanna get our thought leadership out there
because we know that when people read the books,
they come to our business
and that's where we make our money.
So if you find that one of your thought leadership pillars
is profitable for you,
another example would be YouTube.
Let's say that you build a successful YouTube channel.
You might put all of that YouTube revenue
back into advertising
so that you can build your reach even more
so that you can expand your audience.
That is a perfectly legitimate way
of building your thought leadership reach.
So there you have it,
four steps to building your thought leadership strategy.
I hope that's been useful.
If you've got any questions at all,
drop me a note in the comments.
Also, lemme know in the comments,
what's your plan for thought leadership?
What are the topics
and how are you gonna go to market with this?
What are your thought leadership pillars
that you're gonna build?
I love to read about them.
Don't forget,
also, if you want some help with your digital marketing
then the team here at Exposure Ninja
offer what we call a free website and marketing review.
We call it that
because it is free and it is a review.
Boom with geniuses!
All you need to do
is go to exposureninja.com,
fill in a bit of information about your business.
We will then record a video showing you
how to generate more leads and sales
through your website.
This service is completely free.
So go to exposureninja.com,
click the button to request your free review today.
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See you next time.