Are you linked in to the right platform?
Hello? Can anybody hear me?
If they can’t, you’re on the wrong platform.
When you have a professional service firm, your potential clients are looking for expertise. They are also looking for proof of that same expertise. It’s only understandable that they want to verify you are indeed the expert you state you are. And with a plethora of platforms and detail driven search functionality, it’s now easier than ever to validate if your claims are true.
Thought leadership is one of the most important components of qualifying and establishing your position as an expert. The platforms you use to promote your expertise and publish your thought leadership play a crucial role in connecting with potential clients. It also plays a vital role in enabling them to undertake their own due diligence.
The most obvious platform to achieve is the web, but there are many, many ways to use it to your advantage. If you use it right, you can qualify your thought leadership position effectively.
LinkedIn is one of the best ways to achieve this due to the specific design of the platform itself and the way it caters to professionals. With that in mind, here are a few ideas that should help you make your thought leadership more effective:
Ways of improving your thought leadership and evidencing your expertise
First of all, you need to realise that thought leadership does matter. According to a 2019 study, 55% of B2B decision-makers use thought leadership to study firms they want to deal with in the future.
So how can you utilise it fully through LinkedIn?
- Determine if your content is good – when it comes to thought leadership, you can see a significant return on your effort by sharing content and making sure that it’s valuable. The best way to determine whether the content is good is to use a compelling excerpt of it as a status update on LinkedIn and giving your opinion. If you get a lot of likes, comments, and shares compared to the views your post gets, you’ll know you’re on the right track.
- Find your prospects and learn about them – LinkedIn is a great platform for exploring and learning about potential prospects. Use it to try and learn what their interests and concerns are, what groups they belong to, what companies they follow, if they’re following competitors (and then take a look at what makes your competitor’s profile compelling). The better you are at finding, fixing and improving, the better thought leader you’ll be by having your finger on the pulse.
- Focus more on collaborative thought leadership marketing – many thought leaders often fail to utilise the benefits of a collaborative approach. You shouldn’t. Some of the many ways you can use this collaborative approach are to start co-authoring articles, invite prospective clients to podcasts, comment on and share other’s posts, among many others.
Key takeaways
As you can see, if you use LinkedIn in the right way, you can achieve a lot more than you may have thought. Your thought leadership will become more noticeable to potential clients, while at the same time, they will have enough proof of your expertise.