The term ‘thought leader’ was first coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman, editor-in-chief of the Booz, Allen & Hamilton magazine, Strategy & Business, for an entity that is recognised for having innovative ideas. According to commentators such as Elise Bauer, a distinguishing characteristic of a thought leader is “the recognition from the outside world that the company deeply understands its business, the needs of its customers, and the broader marketplace in which it operates.”
Thought leadership makes a perfect bedfellow for LinkedIn, the social platform for business professionals that facilitates networking. By having unlimited access to like minded individuals in your industry and beyond, the potential for sharing ideas through group discussion is limitless. Why build your own platform when you have a first class one, populated with millions and ready to use?
For a brand to take advantage of this opportunity, the following points should be considered –
- Who is your audience? If thought leadership is about addressing the needs of certain groups, you need to be clear who these are, no matter how niche.
- What are their needs? And more importantly, do you have the knowledge and resource to be able to answer them?
Reaching your audience
LinkedIn makes it easy for anyone to start a group. Successful groups will grow organically via word-of-mouth and search. But what if you are after a niche sector? Philips wanted to position itself as a thought leader in healthcare and wellbeing, specifically targeting healthcare professionals. It teamed up with LinkedIn to work together on a ‘Featured Group’, targeting the relevant audience via InMail and display advertising (InMail being LinkedIn’s member-to-member communication tool). You may argue that if you are a true thought leader, you should not need to ‘push’ people to you. However, I would suggest that an initial ‘push’ to raise awareness about your activity will help people make their own judgment on whether to join you or not. After that, you are on your own – your content has to be enough to keep them there.
Keeping your audience
This is the hard part. LinkedIn has recently improved the ‘Group’ experience, making it both easier to manage and to be a part of. To utilise their platform for your thought leadership programme consider the following best practise guidelines:
1. Be transparent and honest. A professional audience can see straight through marketing speak. This is not a platform for selling your wares. It’s about offering value through insight.
2. Have a clear proposition for the group. This will make it easy for the right people to recognise the benefits and join.
3. You host the group, you do not own it. Invite discussion, follow up on questions and recognise that not all conversations are going to fall within your content plan. Go with it, learn from it, and be flexible. You are the catalyst that has brought the group together, not the reason.
4. Use the LinkedIn Polls and Answer features to drive engagement and give you and members a clear understanding of opinion.
5. Say something new – thought leadership is about innovative ideas after all.
One final thought, initiating a thought leadership programme on LinkedIn, or indeed, creating any group or network needs to be a long-term commitment. While it’s hard work getting people to be part of a group, the hardest task is keeping them there. Remember it takes time to shape opinion and create true value. It takes dedication from you to feed the group relevant content and cannot be viewed as a short-term win.
Phillips now has over 19,000 members, with daily discussions, announcements and much more. They are continuously looking at how to improve the user experience and offer more value. They are in it for the long term. They are also one step ahead of most.
