I was included in Yitzi Weiner’s article called 99 Thought Leaders Share the 5 Most Important Things Needed to Become a Thought Leader. This is a great article with some amazing entrepreneurs and investors, you should check out the whole things. I wanted to share my portion of the article originally published on Thrive Global.
5 Things Needed to Become a Thought Leader:
Decide why you want to be a thought leader — To make yourself feel good? To be “famous”? To get invited to conferences to speak? To drive leads for your business? To start a consultancy? Something else? Pick your goal and work backward from there.
Have useful thoughts — It should go without saying, but thought leaders should provide useful content that helps people understand the world better. If you’re trying to be a thought leader simply regurgitating mealy mouthed, hedged thoughts of others, you’re likely a social media personality, not a thought leader.
Have a point of view — The best way to find an audience is to share your point of view with others and find the people who believe what you do or could be converted to your viewpoint. Stake out a position and create content around it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t change your opinion when the facts change, but it does mean you should have a point of view.
Pick your medium & remix — Find out what kind of content you’re best at creating. Instagram and snapchat stories? Long for writing? Tweets? Cartoons? Video? Live video? Create your content on the platform where you feel most comfortable and then remix it across other platforms.
Consistency — There’s no such thing as an overnight sensation. Build a base, whether its a base of knowledge that took years to gain before you started creating content, or you use your content creation to become an expert. Be prepared to be in it for the long haul.