If you start paying attention to all the blogs, the tweets, the updates, the articles, the e-books, the workshops, the seminars, the newsletters, the videos, the podcasts, the lifestreams, and every other form of new media madness, you’ll be told (and start to believe, mind you) that in order to become a Thought Leader you have to blog and tweet and update and write articles and ebooks and run workshops and seminars and send out newsletters and record videos and podcasts and lifestreams and generally go completely mad with new media.

Well… Maybe.

The thing is, you do have to do all that if you want to become a Thought Leader… in the field of New Media, Social Media, and Thought Leadership. If you want bloggers to see you as the world’s greatest blogger, there is a never ending arms race to have the coolest new technology, the greatest new Socially-integrated, semantic high-definition 3G cheese slicer.

But you just want to be a Thought Leader for Estate Planning or payroll processing. You just want more people to donate to your community theatre. You just want to sell more red flip-flops.

For you, most of those things are not essentials, just possibilities. Good ideas, maybe. Additional tools.

What does it really take to become a Thought Leader? What are the small set of things that are required?
Here’s my list.

Innovation

The bedrock of Thought Leadership is innovation. That doesn’t have to mean crazy-new technology. It might mean that, but it also might mean a new way of doing an old thing, or a new way of thinking about things, or even just a unique point of view.

If you’re not different- unique, interesting, innovative, creative- in some way, then it’s remarkably unlikely that anyone will ever care about your Social Media strategy. They won’t remember you after networking events. They won’t bother to come to your seminars or read your books. Why would they?

Without innovation, everything else stops being “Thought Leadership Activity” and becomes “New-Fangled Advertising and Time-Waste.”

Content-Rich Website

Until the world changes again (it will, but it hasn’t yet), a website that is full of interesting and useful content is the cornerstone of Thought Leadership. When someone hears your name, meets you at an event, or gets one of your newsletters, the first thing they’ll do (if they care) is Google you.

As great as a LinkedIn profile is, what they really want to find is your website. And when they get to it, they will make all sorts of judgements about you. Based on the way your site looks, the way it navigates, and depth of its resources, people will decide how good you are, how interesting, and how valuable. They will know (or think they know) if you are a start-up or an established business. They will know (or think they know) how much you know about your industry. How big your firm is. How profitable you are. Whether you’re a legitimate business or some goofy MLM scam. What kind of culture your company has. What kind of clients you service. Whether you are honest or not. Whether you are cool or not.

Blog

A blog (like the one you are reading) is something like an online journal and something like a personal Op-Ed collumn. They can be part of your overall firm website, or they can be separately hosted and separately branded. It’s a place where you can, on a regular basis, write about your thoughts and opinions relating to your field or industry. You can comment on current events and trends, you can announce company news or promotions, and you can advance your philosophies.

Blogs are essential for at least three reasons. The first is that they provide a regular way for people to connect with you and your ideas. The second is that the constant addition of content provided by blog writing is highly valued by Google. The third is simply that it is expected.

Robust Social Media Presence

No, you don’t have to live tweet while you stand in line at the grocery store. Nor do you need to post on everybody’s wall or follow everyone’s feeds. But you do need a presence. If someone wants to link to you, they should be able to find you. If they want to follow you on Twitter, they should have the option.

You can’t do everything, and it is very easy to lose yourself to the time-sink of Social Media (especially if you can convince yourself that it is “business”). But people expect to be able to find you on at least the most popular networks. If they can’t, they’ll just move on to the next hopeful.

E-Books and White Papers

These are just PDF files (usually), which address particular issues within your field in a more in depth way than a blog post or online article could. Typically, White Papers are shorter (5-15 pages) than E-Books (25-100) and more technical as well.

White Papers and E-Books give visitors to your site an opportunity to see the depth of your knowledge on particular topics, while getting some informatiion they can actually use. Even better, If your E-books or White Papers are useful and valuable, your readers will forward copies to their friends and colleagues, advertising on your behalf.

Print Books

Nothing says “expert” more than having published a book.

It is now possible to write, edit, design, publish, distribute, and profit from the sale of books, without a publishing company or an agent. Will you be a New York Times Bestseller? Probably not (although, probably not anyway), but that isn’t the goal, really. The goal is to position yourself as an expert, as a Thought Leader, and bring in additional sales to for your primary business. It may turn out that you make additional money from the sale of the print book. That’s just a (welcome) bonus.

Real World Networking

So much of Thought Leadership is tied to relationships. You’re trying to create a network (or a community, or a tribe) of people who think of you when they hear a reference to your industry. People who provide you with new business, but more than that- people who provide you with new ideas, information, resources, friendship, and joy. (It isn’t all abot money, you know).

While it’s possible to develop connections like that solely online and through media, it is so much easier if you just spend time with people. So go. Go to networking events, to conferences, to seminars, to workshops. If there are more than five people in a room, and one of them might be a potential client, you should be there.

Public Speaking

After print books, the most powerful Thought Leadership tool is Public Speaking. That could mean running your own seminars and workshops, or it could mean speaking and giving presentations at other events. When you stand in front of a group of people, and all the attention (or most of it, anyway) is focused on you, people assume you must know what you’re talking about. If it turns out that you do know what you’re talking about, and that you’re able to provide valuable, useful information, your audience will remember. They will tell their friends, they will seek you out for additional information- they will buy from you.

Visual Branding

A fresh, impactful logo.
A consistent color scheme and style.
Attractive fonts, perfect kerning, and a vivid margin.

In order to become a Thought Leader, you need people to engage with you and with your ideas. Your ideas will mostly be words, so you need people to take the time to read your words. Before anyone bothers to read, they will see the logo, or the cover design, or the splash page. They need to be compelled to read what you have to say. And once you have them reading, your branded design needs to make it easy for them to keep reading or to engage further with your material.

Sloppy branding turns people away. Inconsistent branding confuses people, which eventually turns them away. Branding that doesn’t quite match your culture, your personality, or your product inevitably attracts the wrong clients, who will be disappointed when they don’t get what they were expecting.

If you go crazy, trying to jump from one essential element to another, you’ll waste vast amounts of time and money. You’ll become frustrated and eventually give up.

But if you think strategically about how to combine the nine elements into a plan that makes sense for your business and your budget of time and money, you can build a following, become an expert, and create Thought Leadership.

And make a lot of money.

This post is adapted from a chapter in my soon-to-be-available book, DIY Thought Leadership.
The book will break down each one of those Essential Elements and show you how to do each one by yourself and on a budget.
If you’d like to know when the book is available,
Subscribe to This Blog OR Follow me on Twitter

What do you think? Too many essentials? Too few? What are you doing to create Thought Leadership?