Find Your Authentic Voice in 4 Steps
Posting thought leadership content on LinkedIn is a cost-effective way to promote your talents and establish yourself as an expert in your field. Our previous blog post details ways to optimize your LinkedIn profile for thought leadership. This one walks you through the next phase — finding your voice.
You’ll want to aim for an authentic voice of thought leadership around the topics and ideas that spark your professional creativity. Generating original thought leadership content can be time-consuming, and you may not have all the answers on a particular subject just yet. Fortunately, you don’t have to generate all that content on your own, having a unique point of view around content that you follow and that interests you is an equally effective thought leadership tactic.
1. Identify 3-5 Topics That Speak to You
What kind of content typically catches your eye? What are the topics you often discuss with colleagues and clients? What topics grab your interest from a personal, as well as professional, perspective. You can ask yourself these questions as you identify topics to follow and cover on LinkedIn. Keep your area of coverage focused on 3 to 5 core subjects. Keeping your area of expertise relatively small gives you an opportunity to develop well-thought-out opinions and commentary and tap into a niche audience.
2. Identify 5-10 Content Aggregators Creating Content Around Your Topics
Of course, you’ll want to know the people behind the content you’re sharing. Identify 5 to 10 content aggregators creating content around your chosen topics. Identifying aggregators can help you verify their credibility, determine their position, and help you find inspiration as you share and add your own take on industry topics. Note which topics and tactics resonate with their audience, as these can serve as guidelines for your own audience engagement goals and strategy. Content aggregators can even become valuable connections and collaborators down the road.
3. Begin Sharing Content You Find Most Valuable
Now that you’ve identified the topics and creators you want to associate with, it’s time to begin sharing content. Prioritize posts by their timeliness as well as relevance to the thought leadership brand you are forging. In other words, the posts you are curating should tell your LinkedIn network about your interests, experience, and attitude. These posts are your introduction to the thought leadership world. Make a good first impression!
4. Develop Authentic Personal Insights/Takeaways From the Content You Share
You’ll want to present ideas and information you’re passionate about through a lens that establishes you as someone your audience will want to engage with and trust. The key is authenticity. Share your honest reactions, predictions, and opinions in a relatable manner. A study of 3,600 management-level sales and marketing professionals found 64% prefer thought leadership content written in a less formal tone.
Raise Your Voice
The content that can propel you to a thought leader exists. Your job is to identify it and share it in your authentic voice on LinkedIn.
Now that you understand how to start identifying the content you want to use to unlock your authentic voice on LinkedIn, The Next Practice can help you take your LinkedIn efforts to the next level. Click here to learn more about our Top Voice Accelerator and schedule a time to meet with us today!
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