How to Become a Thought Leader in Your Niche

If you have been building a business online, odds are that you’ve heard the phrase “thought leader.”

Becoming a thought leader doesn’t have to include writing an award-winning book or giving a viral TED talk. If you have confidence and expertise in your field, you can start your journey towards becoming a thought leader right now.

What is Thought Leadership?

Thought leadership happens when you are regularly giving valuable information to your audience and establishing yourself as an expert in your field. A thought leader is someone who becomes a trusted source of information about a topic.

While becoming a thought leader is particularly appealing to people who have built their businesses around a service, like coaches, many people can benefit from the trust and positive reputation that can come from being a thought leader.

Building Trust With Your Audience

You can’t be a leader without followers! One of the most important things you can do when trying to become a thought leader is to gain people’s trust.

Show your audience your face regularly. Let them hear your voice. Create videos, be a guest on podcasts, go live on Instagram — let people get to know you and your experience in your niche.

The more conversations you have, the more you’ll be able to impact and educate the people who come into contact with your business.

Creating Your Reputation as a Thought Leader

As you build people’s trust through great content, you will begin to develop a reputation. One way to help this along is to write content for other people’s sites. Guest posts, published articles, and features will help people to associate sources that they know and trust with your face and message.

Interviews are another great way to grow your reputation. Being a guest on podcasts and shows that have loyal followings can get your name out there, showcase your knowledge, and widen your network.

Long-Form Content and Thought Leadership

It is important to build up a collection of quality content when you are establishing yourself as a thought leader. A good way to do this is to create a good amount of long-form content.

Long-form content includes:

• Podcast episodes
• YouTube videos
• Blogs
• Ebooks
• Published Articles
• Recorded Webinars

By creating as much of this content as possible, you are honing in on your core messaging, building a collection of material to pull from for repurposing, and growing your following by sharing quality content that provides value.

The great thing is that aside from writing a book, all of these longer-form content options won’t take days and days to complete! Building a good collection of content is easier than you think.

Micro-Content and Thought Leadership

Once you have a collection of long-form content, you can take your leadership to the next level by providing daily micro-content on your social media platforms.

Blogs and ebooks can be broken down into quote cards and captions. Podcast episodes can be turned into audiograms. Webinars, YouTube videos, and Instagram lives can be turned into video clips with a headline and your logo.

Breaking larger pieces of content into smaller bits makes it easier to reach people who might not have the time or interest in tuning in for your longer events.

How Can Content Repurposing Help?

Becoming a thought leader is great, but you still need to be able to focus on the day-to-day tasks of running your business. As you grow your reputation and your collection of content, one of the best ways to save time and energy is to outsource your content repurposing and social media strategy.

At Power Creative Media, we spend all of our time repurposing podcast episodes, YouTube videos and more to create a consistent, effective social media presence for our clients. One hour of video or audio can help us create enough social media content for an entire month!

Interested in learning more about how content repurposing can help you on your journey to becoming a thought leader? Book a call with me today!