How to Become a Thought Leader in Your Niche

The information age is upon us, and the Internet is its wheelhouse. The average American adult spends over 10 hours a day on digital devices. The rise of smartphones and tablets has made searching for information even easier and faster. News and information is accessible like never before, and the amount of digital information is growing quickly.

Even those who are hesitant to purchase online are still doing product research and comparison shopping via the Internet before they purchase. Have you made a large purchase lately? If you have you most likely spent more time on the Internet asking questions and reading reviews than you spent talking to someone knowledgeable that works at a store.

The Internet is powerful. Your prospective customers are seeking information about your products or services, and if they can’t find what they are looking for they will look elsewhere. If you want to sell to them, you need to build digital resources for them to discover. Satisfy their need for information, and you’ll be one of their trusted resources when it’s time to buy.

• 4 billion global Internet users in 2016 (and counting)
• 286 million Internet users in the United States
• 88% of Americans are Internet users
• 10x increase in Internet users from 1993 to 2013
• Tablets outsold laptops and desktops in only 3 years

You’re an industry expert, even if you might not think it. Whatever you do for a living you’ve likely been doing it a long time, and you’ve become an expert over time with hard work and ongoing training. The problem is that not enough people realize how much you know.

That’s where thought leadership comes in. Thought leadership allows you to get yourself out there, to publish your knowledge online so that it may be accessed. The more you share, the more your reach and influence grows, and in the process, you become a trusted resource.

The people that have taken the time to become thought leaders have carefully crafted their respectable reputation from square one, and you can too! But remember, the tallest trees take hundreds of years to grow. Your thought leadership will take time to develop.

Here are a few ways that you can help your thought leadership develop:

Your company blog doesn’t need to remain a mistake you made a few years back. You have to make it a focal point of your marketing efforts to improve results. To do this, you’ll need to create a culture of writing and competition within your office.

Here’s how you can get your blog back on track:

1. Determine the keywords you’d like to compete for and what pages you should link to
2. Establish the products or services you’d like to focus on
3. Build a list of related websites, blogs, and additional resources you can tap for curation
4. Create a list of topics to get everyone started and involved
5. Build an editorial calendar (you can keep track of the publishing of your blog articles through Microsoft Excel or Project Managment tools)
6. Help your writers understand what’s in it for the company and themselves
7. Foster a competitive spirit with something special for a monthly award
8. Lead by example and make sure you’re contributing every month
9. Hold a monthly accountability meeting to review content

We can assure you that if you spend the proper amount of time turning your blog into what it needs to be, your digital marketing efforts will be positively affected.