9 Hacks to Creating Great Thought Leadership

You can develop outstanding thought leadership without ever posting a thing. Write just for yourself. Don’t show it to anyone until you go through the following 9 steps to bring your thought leadership up to where you want it to be — attracting new and existing clients — and enjoying the process. I recommend the following 9 hacks:

Write a Haiku — every day for 30 days

Train yourself to write short, concise thoughts. Over time you will learn to connect your thoughts in new ways. You will learn to create short, thoughtful, and easy to read content. The more you practice, the more natural it will become. The haikus also become fun to write.

Don’t write without a subject line

Start with a premise. Drive to the premise. Take turns if you need to — and go back and change the subject line. Starting thought leadership of any type and size without a clear direction is likely to leave you wandering with your words.

Look for unique words to use

Use words you don’t see often. Your writing will look different from everyone else — a key element in getting noticed and read. AI bots can be helpful as can a thesaurus. Set a goal of 2 novel words per piece.

Don’t publish — practice for 20 days to 3 months before thinking about publishing

Get your sea legs first. Write for yourself. Don’t let it see the light of day. But just start writing. The more you write, the closer you get to developing your voice and rhythm. You also gain the benefit of developing a good inventory of thought leadership pieces.

Go back — review and improve

Wait 3 days to review your writing. Go back and look at it with fresh eyes. You will immediately see how and where to make small improvements — with substantial impact.

Challenge yourself to write in a unique style

Try unique styles on. How does it make you feel — how does it sound? You will inevitably like some of what you see and adopt it. This approach also has the benefit of helping you think about the subject matter in a new light.

Put it in an AI Bot — but don’t use let them rewrite

Ask your favorite AI Bot what they think of your piece. Ask them to make it better. Review the suggested changes which usually serve to dilute the piece — but you will find 1 or 2 amazing insights you can include.

Publish

Place your thought leadership on LinkedIn and repurpose it at least 7 times to catch a good audience. You may not feel ready, few authors do. You will learn more from posting — and posting again.

Rinse and repeat

Plan to use these hacks on a continuing basis. They work for novices and the most advanced thought leaders.

Thought leadership will only continue to gain more client mindshare as they look for answers and flock to LinkedIn — stay tuned for more on this. Start writing today or start tomorrow. Starting is the hardest step — and then making it a part of your routine is the 2nd hardest. Only then does it get just a tad easier. And then, the inbound leads start to flow.

Please send me your Haikus if you are so inclined.

My Haiku for today:
Give your words power
Invest time for the reward
The world wants your voice