7 Proven Strategies To Establish Yourself As A Linkedin Thought Leader

The Significance Of Thought Leadership In The Professional Landscape

Thought leadership is an important addition to your marketing strategy, positioning you as a go-to expert in your field. When you’re seen as an authority, people naturally come to you for advice and solutions – street cred and lead generation? Sign us up.

Understanding Thought Leadership

It’s generally understood that there are three types of thought leadership:

• Industry thought leadership – exploring news, trends, the future in your industry
• Product thought leadership – sharing how-to’s, best practices and strategy
• Organisational thought leadership – showcasing your company culture, talent development etc

Put them all together and you have a killer strategy. It might take some experimenting to find the right match for you, but if you take the time to understand your content, it can pay off big time.

We’ll explore how you can create a strong strategy further down this article.

The Role of LinkedIn In Establishing Influence

Thought leadership on LinkedIn plays an important role in driving engagement, creating relationships with customers and establishing credibility in your industry.

In fact, a study in Edelman’s 2024 B2B thought leadership report found that nearly 75% of decision-makers put more trust in an organisation’s thought leadership content than its marketing and product materials.

So, by positioning yourself as a thought leader, you can effectively influence conversations and drive sales.

Key Elements Of Effective Thought Leadership

Your thought leadership strategy should be a three-pronged approach, with content creation, network engagement and personal branding at its core.

1 – Content creation: The lifeblood of influence
Addressing industry challenges, finding solutions and flaunting your expertise will attract and retain a loyal audience who care about what you have to say, and most importantly, convert.

Once you’ve got the knack for it, stay consistent. LinkedIn favours patterns, and will boost your posts in return. You can create content through platforms like Canva, which offers free plans, and schedule your posts through apps like ContentStudio, Planner.ly or Hootsuite.

2 – Network engagement: Building relationships that matter
Effective thought leadership goes beyond content, active engagement with your network is vital. Connect with your peers, participate in discussions and collaborate on projects to supercharge your strategy. These relationships add extra pizazz and credibility to you, win-win.

3 – Personal branding: Crafting your professional image
Think about what makes you different, a strong personal brand sets you apart from your rivals, so, if you’re a 3x winner of a local Jenga competition, the tallest man in Bury or made of sand, think about how to use that to create a new voice and perspective to set you apart.

Whatever you do, consistency is key.

Types Of Content To Share On LinkedIn

There’s no end to what you can post on LinkedIn, but here are a few helpful tips to boost your engagement:

How-To guides: Providing actionable insights
Think about an issue your clients face, how can you give them support in a valuable way? Offer them a how-to guide with real actionable tips, show them you know what you’re talking about and offer help, they’ll recognise you as a point of knowledge and expertise. You’re building credibility and fostering loyalty at the same time – two birds, one stone.

Opinion pieces: Sharing your expert perspective
Opinions are like belly buttons, everyone has one – and sharing your perspective on LinkedIn is almost a guaranteed conversation starter. It’s important to not just post divisive topics for the sake of it, engage with topical conversations, but be careful to not alienate your audience – remember, the goal is to spark meaningful conversation, not controversy.

Requests for help: Encouraging community interaction
Two heads are always better than one, so if you’re stuck on a client problem, try asking your community about their solutions. By tapping into their communities and experiences, you’re not only seeing a fresh perspective but also building relationships through good old collaboration.

Utilising Different LinkedIn Content Formats

One of the key strategies to becoming a thought leader is using various content formats, using a range of different approaches, you can appeal to different audiences as well as keep your content dynamic and unique. Here’s how you can use each type to your advantage:

Text posts: Crafting concise and impactful messages

A true staple of LinkedIn, they’re a great way to share ideas, insights and updates. Text posts can be as simple or complex as you like, use short punchy copy to spark conversation and increase engagement, and use longer form text to establish yourself as an expert. This format makes up 48% of all LinkedIn posts, (Recap.com), so make sure to think outside the box and stand out of the crowd.

Videos: Engaging your audience visually

Across all social media platforms, video is king. It can return some great engagement for you, as well as build a more personal connection with your audience, however, it’s not always a sustainable content platform as it often takes a lot of time and commitment to create a strong video strategy. If you have the resources, create case studies, give a behind-the-scenes look at your workplace, and showcase your brand. Keep the videos short and sweet and you’re onto a winner.

Newsletters: Establishing a consistent communication channel

LinkedIn allows you to send your audiences regular updates via newsletters once they opt-in, it’s just another form of email marketing, but on social. As you would with standard email marketing, focus on value-adding content, like long-form insights, curated resources and trend analysis in your field.

Creating A Compelling LinkedIn Profile

Think of your LinkedIn profile as a business card, it’s the first point of contact for your audience so it goes without saying it should be optimised.

There are 5 things you probably need to fix:

Use a professional profile picture and banner.

A photo of you and your friends on a lad’s holiday isn’t selling you as anything other than a top legend. If your company has headshots, use that, think professional. Try to use a banner photo that’s implemented across the board at your workplace, it’ll unify you with all the other business activities.

Create an attention-grabbing headline and engaging summary that showcases expertise.

It’s tempting to knock out a summary about yourself without much thought, but be sure to showcase your experience and skills, maybe even throw a little tidbit in there for personality, but keep it professional.

Detailed (and relevant) experience and skills.

Add your work experience with relevant details about the role, what you did and anything you’re particularly proud of, this backs up all your other experience, giving audiences more trust in you.

Highlight any accreditations or awards.

Ever received an award? Participated in a 3-day seminar? Add it to your achievements section for extra proof.

Make sure your contact information is up to date.

There’s nothing worse than trying to contact someone but the email is bouncing back, the number’s out of service and they don’t respond to direct messages. Make sure customers can contact you when they’re ready to convert.

Engaging With Relevant Communities

Finding your audience can be tricky, but with a bit of research, it doesn’t have to be. Start by asking yourself ‘Do I follow or know about any influencers in this industry?’, ‘Which online communities are popular?’, and ‘Where do my peers spend time online?’.

If you’re not fully immersed in the digital world of the industry, you might feel like a fish out of water – so it’s important you ask your peers or connections these questions too. After all, two heads are better than one, especially when it comes to creative strategy.

You can analyse competitors, create personas, use web analytics, or conduct surveys to help you understand your audience to their core, helping you create a rock-hard strategy.

However you do it, you need to be able to answer 5 key questions:

• Where do they live? England? Australia? The moon? All of these answers require a wildly different approach in tone of voice and dialect, so it’s important you know how to let your audience know this content is for them.
• What do they think? By understanding their thought process, you can better understand their values and how to create messaging that resonates with them.
• What challenges do they face? Identifying audience challenges means you can create solutions.
• What drives them to convert? Think about what motivates them to purchase, what objections they might have and how you can help them overcome these objections.
• What makes them feel? The trick to highly engaging posts is creating emotion, so what makes them laugh? Cry? Panic? Understand this and you’re onto a winner.

Once you know these answers, you’ll be able to join groups aligned with your industry, participate in discussions to demonstrate knowledge and network with thought leaders and influencers.

Tracking Performance Metrics

Analysing engagement rates on posts

Engagement rates can be calculated in several ways, the most standard, however, is (reactions + reposts + comments)/ followers x 100. Engagement is the easiest way to see how your audience is responding to your posts and gives you further insight into what is working for you, and what isn’t.

Refining content strategies based on feedback

Having a killer social presence isn’t just about throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks, it’s about continuously refining your content strategy based on real analytics. Pay attention to which posts have high engagement, these are the topics your audience is enjoying, so give them more of that, and less of the rubbish.

You also need to pay attention to comments, if people generally comment ‘hm, not sure about that’, it’s probably time to rethink your strategy.

Setting measurable goals for growth

KPIs are key performance indicators, and they’re super important to make sure you can accurately measure the performance of your posts. Think about your wider goals and how you can use these to inform your social strategy.

It’s easy to get caught up in vanity metrics, like follower count and likes – and why wouldn’t you? They look great on the surface but rarely tell the whole story.

So what metrics should your goals focus on?

• Engagement – are people interacting meaningfully with your content?
• Conversion – how many of those interactions lead to actual customers?
• ROI – is the strategy driving real revenue growth?

Instead of chasing clout, focus on building quality connections that drive results. It’s not about how many people see your content, but what they do with it.

Advanced Tactics For Industry Leaders

Collaborating with other thought leaders

One of the fastest ways to establish your authority is by collaborating with other industry leaders. It’s all about credibility through association – how often do you ask your friends for a recommendation and follow through without question? Is this familiar?

• I need a new roofer
• My friend used Steve, he was good.
• I’ll call Steve.

That’s exactly how thought leadership works, collaboration allows you to tap into their authority while expanding your reach and influence.

Activate Creator Mode to enhance your visibility

LinkedIn has recently introduced ‘creator mode’, a tool dedicated to helping you grow and reach your audience, with plenty of features including:

• Replacing your ‘connect’ button with a ‘follow’ button
• Allowing you to add up to five hashtags to the top of your profile
• Letting you pin/feature certain content,
• Give you in-depth analytics
• Allows you to use tools like lives and newsletters

Whilst none of these things are entirely necessary to your strategy, they can be a great help.

To activate it, head to your profile, select ‘view profile’, find ‘resources’, and scroll down to ‘creator mode: off’ and toggle it to ‘on’. Follow the steps to optimise your profile and Bob’s your uncle, you’ve got a creator account.

In Summary

Becoming a LinkedIn thought leader doesn’t happen overnight, it requires valuable content, strategic collaboration, continuous refinement based on your feedback, and thick skin. If you take anything from this blog post, remember consistency is key.

With persistence and regularity, you’ll build not only credibility but also create meaningful connections and drive results you can be proud of.

FAQs

How often should thought leaders post on LinkedIn?

People who post 3x a week to LinkedIn see improved growth, but whatever works for you and your schedule, just keep it consistent.
How do you write a thought piece on LinkedIn?

Find what works best for you, but generally, we use an outline like this:

• Headline: Capture attention.
• Introduction: Introduce the topic and its relevance.
• Body: Provide detailed insights, tips, or analysis.
• Conclusion: Summarise key points.
• Call to Action: Invite engagement.

Let’s see how we’d use that in a real example:

• Headline: “3 Tips to Boost Your Productivity in the Workplace”
• Introduction: “Productivity is key to success in any role. Here are three tips that have helped me stay on top of my game.”

1. Body: Prioritise Tasks: “Start your day by identifying the most important tasks.”
2. Use Time-Blocking: “Allocate specific time slots for different activities.”
3. Take Breaks: “Short breaks can boost your focus and energy levels.”

• Conclusion: “Implement these tips and see your productivity soar.”
• Call to Action: “What productivity tips work for you? Share in the comments!”
• Visual: (Include an infographic or image related to productivity)

What are the advantages of thought leadership on LinkedIn?

Thought leadership is an important addition to your marketing strategy, positioning you as a go-to expert in your field. When you’re seen as an authority, people naturally come to you for advice and solutions.

If you’ve stuck around this far, give us a follow on LinkedIn to find out more tips like these!