Get Slightly Famous

Make Thought Leadership a Strategic Imperative

Thought leadership is the result of a very deliberate effort to position an organization as a voice within their target market that people pay attention to and respect. It results in a broad acknowledgment that your company, a real sense, leads the thinking in your industry.

“Thought leadership doesn’t happen by accident,” says Antony Bell, Managing Partner of The Bell Group and author of Great Leadership: What It Is and What It Takes In a Complex World. “It requires work and a commitment to look at your company from the perspective of the outside world. Generating a company-wide, ongoing effort to thought leadership is the best way to ensure that it happens.”

Thought leadership marketing is most effective when becomes part of the essential fabric of a company. For larger organizations, thought leadership marketing succeeds when a CEO or executive creates the conditions within the organization that foster thought leadership at all levels of a company.

“Thought leadership starts by taking a good look at your target market and identifying the point on the horizon where your want to take your organization,” says Bell. “Thought leaders determine opportunities to position themselves within their target market based on their key competitive advantages.”

Most importantly, thought leadership achieves full potential when it is seen as a top-down initiative that welcomes participation from eveyone inside a company. “When thought leadership achieves widespread ownership inside a company, there is greater likelihood that the company will generate the internal momentum critical to keep thought leadership moving into the marketplace,” says Bell.

Tips for a Successful Niche Community (Pt. 4 of a 4-part series)

Define your niche and do your market research. As a Slightly Famous entrepreneur, you already know your marketplace. Go further and identify what your prospects want and need and provide that in the form of a niche community.

A clear and realistic set of community goals.
Absolutely paramount is knowing what your community "is," how you intend it to function, and what the overall goals are. Write yourself a candid "Mission Statement" and make careful note of the expectations you have of both the community as a whole and of individual participants.

Actively recruit new members.
Use a registration process, even for free events, which allows you to capture contact information to add to database. Use short feedback forms to solicit input about events, with “Please contact me about” with your calls to action at the bottom.

Provide more value than expected.
Your niche community will thrive if you deliver a dynamic, benefit-oriented experience for participants.
Be continuously creative and keep the community fun and interesting.

Take responsibility for the leadership and outcome.
Most communities fail due to lack of leadership. Create an organized system and plan events well ahead of time. Determine a realistic game plan for managing your community and stick to it.

Involve participants.
Niche communities prosper when participants “buy in” and feel a sense of connection and ownership over the community. Be responsive to participant issues and requests
Ask members to get involved, form committees, or volunteer to greet, host, set-up, break-down events activities as needed.

Don’t do it alone.
If your group is successful, you may find that your time in short supply. When practical, outsource administrative functions to free you to work on your business and serve your clients.

Form strategic alliances.
Your niche community is an ideal platform to pursue joint ventures and cross-promotions with related businesses. Look for ways to collaborate with other like-minded professionals and network with complementary organizations.

Actively promote your niche community.
Use a website, newsletter, schedule of future programs/events, e-mail distribution list, and conference calls to communicate with participants and prospects and keep them engaged. Alert relevant media about community events.

Online Thought Leadership = Great PR

Few things can have greater impact on your personal brand and your organization's brand recognition than developing and sharing your expertise with the world. Whether you call it becoming a thought leader or a public expert, or, as marketing guru Steven Yoder's book espouses, Getting Slightly Famous, you should do it. Trust me. I'm living proof that it works.

This is the introduction from an article by Inc Magazine columnist Keith Ferrazzi. I discovered it only after a collegue brought it to my attention. It's obviously exciting when a major publication mentions my business in such a praisworthy, prominent way. It delivers tremendous credibility that adds to my overall reputation in my marketplace.

How did I get such a prominent mention/endorsement by an Inc columnist? Is this a fluke? A stroke of luck? No way!

This happens to me all the time. And it's no accident.

Today, for instance, I was asked to submit a short article for Home Business Magazine about the role of online thought leadership in becoming a more successful salesperson. Last weekend, I was asked to speak at the Institute of Management Consultants about Thought Leadership Marketing, which enabled me to address over 100 potential prospects.

How did this happen? Why do these opportunities come to me without my asking?

Because I make a committment to put my expertise out there consistently, in many forms, and it attracts high-credibility opportunities that put me in front of my buying public. These opportunities come to me -- I don't have to chase them down -- and they can come to you, too.

It starts by regularly and widely promoting your expertise, in the form of media interviews, articles, blog entries, teleseminars and other thought leadership marketing strategies. You, too, can practice online thought leadership, and watch the PR opportunites come in. Ferrazzi sums it up nicely:

This simple formula -- 1) Build expertise, 2) Get people to recognize it -- is one I have used throughout my career.

Read the entire article at Inc.com

Building a Niche Community: Getting Started (Pt. 3 of a 4-part series)

The first consideration in building a niche community is how you will structure your community and bring people together. You have two choices: create a “live” community that meets in a physical location; or establish an online community that meets virtually through telephone and the Internet.

Live communities are straightforward. Taking David Steele’s cue, develop a statement of purpose for the group. Then, market the group to niche market prospects within reasonable physical proximity to one another, choose meeting times and a location, and bring them together around a structured agenda.

Whereas live communities are more limited by location, virtual communities offer the possibility of attracting members from all over the world.

Online or virtual communities gather people in an online "space" where they come, communicate, connect, and get to know each other better over time. The idea is to bring members of your niche together virtually where you combine on-line interaction (e-mail, web forums) with telephone conference calls and classes, as well as information and support services.

Online group interactions do not always "happen" spontaneously. They require care, nurturing and facilitation.

The core of facilitation and hosting is to serve the group and assist it in reaching its goals or purpose. Some describe this role as a gardener, a conductor, the distributed leadership of jazz improvisers, a teacher, or an innkeeper. It can be this and more.

If you take the plunge, be patient. Online communities don't happen overnight. Often they take time to coalesce and form themselves into something valuable and sustainable. It's crucial that patience is exercised, since it WILL take time for momentum and a critical mass to develop whereby the community becomes solid and established.

Next installment, Tips for a Successful Niche Community