The Latest Buzz on Thought Leadership
Consultants and entrepreneurs are typically thought leaders, but may not realize or appreciate it, so they miss personal marketing opportunities. That’s often true of marketing consultants, 
who excel at marketing their clients but not themselves. And it’s even worse for many women consultants, according to Kate Purmal, a consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area, told the Women in Consulting North Bay/Marin group. “You know your material, you deliver it, it all seems painfully obvious, but you feel you don’t have that much to contribute.”
Purmal, who has her own firm — Kate Purmal Consulting – works with start-ups, emerging ventures and small businesses to launch and implement strategic initiatives and coaches clients on thought leadership and sales skills.
The term “thought leader” was coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman, editor in chief of Strategy and Business – one who is a “futurist” or is recognized among peers and mentors for innovative ideas and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled insights.
Why position yourself as a thought leader? The advantages are clear, Purmal noted:
- Establish yourself as a credible source
- Showcase the breadth of your skills
- Deepen your role as a trusted advisor
- Create more exposure and generate more leads
- Build and elevate your brand
- Raise rates and increase revenue when you develop supporting collateral, such as a book
Thought leaders establish their positioning in various ways. Some thought leaders are trend-spotters (Faith Popcorn), others are provocateurs (Timothy Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Workweek). Some have a unique voices while still others are curators of ideas and aggregators of thoughts, but applying them in fresh ways.
Working with clients to develop and promote their own thought leadership, I’ve found that it often takes a particular lens and outside perspectives to identify and put shape to what’s potentially “thought leadership.” That can apply to personal and small business marketing, as well. It’s smart to bounce your ideas off others and work carefully to refine a succinct message. But that shouldn’t mean paralysis-by-analysis either. Here are other ways Purmal advises to get started or continue the thought leadership journey:
- Don’t be afraid. Take a stand.
- Pick the most valuable thing you do and use that as your calling card, at least to get in the door.
- Craft a compelling and credible bio.
- Convert your area of expertise into a thought leadership platform that you can use in a variety of ways.
- Find the hook — and apply it in blogs, whitepapers, email newsletters, presentations and social media posts (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn).
- Believe in the value of improvisation, innovation and the “art of possibility.”
