“Quality over quantity” is a common phrase that usually holds true. However, when it comes to early thought leadership, quantity is perhaps more important — at least when you first start.
In this article, we’ll explain why, touching upon the importance of establishing authority with audiences and building familiarity with the media, besides much more.
During the early stages of thought leadership, rich and varied content is essential to help you become a recognised leader in your field.
Why obsessing over quality can be counterproductive.
Before becoming a thought leader, it’s easy to envisage what your profile might look like by the end of your campaign.
You might see yourself having thousands of followers and being featured in the Financial Times. But while it’s important to be ambitious, you need to be careful of overestimating the type of influence your thought leadership might have.
Otherwise, you risk over strategising or becoming risk averse, such as when a LinkedIn post underperforms or a journalist doesn’t read your pitch. By this point, you’ll be spending so much time perfecting your content that what you produce isn’t enough to build some momentum.
Unless you’re Elon Musk, it’s unlikely that your first thought leadership post on LinkedIn is going to instantly have an impact on stock markets or encourage consumers to purchase from your company.
So, when your profile is relatively deprived, your main priority is getting content online.
Building consistency.
When you begin to produce content, your best bet is to outline your areas of expertise and select four or five ideas that could have the best impact on your audiences.
Then, consistently produce content that hints at those ideas using topical news hooks or anecdotes from your day-to-day life. This gives your content variety, makes it more engaging, and helps your personality shine through while building familiarity among your audiences.
According to the thought leadership agency Profile, to boost engagement, it’s important that executive thought leaders don’t solely focus on LinkedIn but make use of a mix of social media, images, video content, and media coverage — which we will touch upon shortly.
This is also a great opportunity to experiment, learn what resonates with audiences, and refine your messaging over time. Thought leaders aren’t perfect — they’re people, and making mistakes is all part of the learning curve. Just be cautious about making claims that aren’t supported by research and avoid saying anything that might offend your stakeholders.
Establishing authority.
Frequently sharing content online helps to establish your authority within your field, particularly on LinkedIn. This is because regular posting signals to LinkedIn’s algorithm that you are an active user, which can help increase your visibility within your network’s feeds.
Over time, the algorithm will learn what type of content you’re known for and more accurately match your content with new users who will be interested in it, boosting your reach and engagement further.
Depending on the objectives of your thought leadership campaign, this is essential to secure more investment, attract new employees, appeal to potential partners, and more.
Building familiarity with the media.
Of course, most thought leaders will be most concerned about securing media coverage. Usually, this is the main reason a company encourages its executives to become thought leaders.
However, you can’t expect to appear in a national within your first month. Building familiarity with the media takes time. Your best bet is to target as many lower-tier trade publications as possible to gradually populate your Google search and build credibility over time.
Sometimes executives forget that it’s not just them who want a large readership — journalists do too. It’s how the bigger publications make money and maintain their reputations. If you don’t fit the bill, they won’t want to work with you.
So, don’t waste time overcomplicating your media pitches to convince journalists to cover you. Prioritise a great quantity of content that slowly moves you up the media ladder. Eventually, you won’t have to engage journalists. They will come to you.
Boosting SEO
Executives also need to be wary of undermining the value of blogs, which are often deemed as lower-quality forms of thought leadership content.
Not only are they an easy-to-manage, informal means to regularly contribute to important discussions, but they allow you to strategically optimise your website’s search engine rankings by targeting specific keywords and topics relevant to your industry. Moreover, you can use your blog to showcase your best media coverage and share links to your social accounts.
The more frequently you publish, the more content search engines have to index, further enhancing your online visibility. Think of thought leadership like an orange — you want to squeeze out as much juice as possible!