Before diving in, it’s critical to note that these four pillars work together in tandem. You can’t just be outstanding on one pillar and neglect the others. Chances are you’re lacking in at least one of these.
Credibility
The first pillar revolves around credibility. This is when you need to ask yourself:
- Do you trust what you’re saying?
- Do other people believe what you’re saying?
- Do they think you know what you’re talking about?
From a tactical point of view, there are several ways to establish authority and boost your credibility. This means you have other colleagues coming to you for advice and expertise, and, when you give them information, they simply don’t question its validity. That is a form of trust that is earned over time.
Credibility can be cultivated in many forms of authority. It can come in the form of a positional job title, experience, formal education credentials, licensing or certifications. However, it can also come from putting your company name behind yours. It can build the reputation of your company, as well as your own.
Some useful tactics include sharing your point of view on ongoing projects and research, being the spokesperson on behalf of your company, and testing out new tactics and strategies for teams to adopt.
Profile
Next is profile, and this is about how many people know you and what your reach is because, at the end of the day, you want people that amplify the work you’re doing.
For your personal profile, you want to see how many followers you have on social media, what types of outlets tend to ask you to speak, who publishes your writing and what types of information your audience might be interested in.
If you find you’re lacking in this department, you can start by looking at other key figures in your industry. Set aside some time to look up influencers, brands and companies doing the same work as you. Follow them and share their content and try to see if you can also connect with them.
If you’re being reached out to externally, you can accept requests for content and speaking events, and, if not, there’s no harm in going out and pitching yourself for upcoming conferences and panels.
Prolificacy
To build a profile and share your expertise, you need to be prolific. A lot of the time, leaders have the profile and they put in the work, but they’re not sharing it in an effective way.
Ashley says: “So, if you’re not out there sharing, if you’re not writing, if you’re not speaking, if you’re not being creative, and you’re not on social media, it’s going to be really hard for you to build a profile and share your expertise.”
However, on the social media front, this doesn’t mean you have to be on every single channel with thousands of followers on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. Instead, find the channel that fits you the most. For many, LinkedIn is where they engage with their peers the most.
Pick a couple of channels and a couple types of assets, but make sure you’re also looking at the ways the audience wants to consume your content and where audiences spend time.
You can also offer up comments and quotes to be used for the press whenever appropriate.
Depth of ideas
Finally, you need depth of ideas. That means new tactics, new strategies, new visions and methodologies to share.
Ashley says: “One of the big things that people struggle with here is making sure that they have time to codify that, give it to another team to experiment and learn from, and then taking what that other team has learned from the experimentation and incorporating that back into your original concepts or ideas.”
When you’re executing something head down by yourself, it might appear as if you’re leading, but the problem is that you’re not curating a repeatable process for someone else to follow and build from. This might be the hardest pillar to achieve simply because most leaders don’t have the time to strategise and execute in a novel way. However, if this is something you’re struggling with, it’d be best to give yourself enough time to brainstorm before you jump into a project.
While these pillars scratch the surface on what it means to be a thought leader, Ashley goes into further detail in her B2B Ignite USA session, which was a Premium session at our event. Be sure to register for Ignite London if you don’t want to miss another stellar session like Ashley’s.
