Tag: Expert

How to become a thought leader on $137.88 per year…

A couple of days ago, Craig Badings of the Thought Leadership blog asked me to complete the following sentence: “Thought Leadership is _______”. My response? Fundamental. As in “thought leadership is fundamental”. Craig asked me if he could post my definition on his site with attribution and frankly I don’t know if it’s because he thought my response was stupid or brilliant or somewhere in between. Let me explain however, what I meant…

At a time in history when almost 90% of people search Google before making a buying decision you need to show up in search in a good way. To me a thought leader is someone who uses the incredible good, fast and cheap tools we have at our disposal to get found when people are looking for what they do, or, in what Google calls the Zero Moment of Truth. They use blogging and social media to attract and retain fans who either buy into their ideas or by their products.

It was Leonardo da Vinci who said “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”. I maintain that if you aspire to thought leadership there are only two activities you must master: finding and sharing good information. When I teach my college classes, I call this deepening your expertise and documenting your expertise. Any person who aspires to thought leadership has probably done Malcolm Gladwell‘s 10,000 hours of work to gain their expertise but if you want to be a thought leader you must continue to nourish that expertise and stay current on the things that are important in your field of study. That’s what I called deepening your expertise. The second part, documenting your expertise, simply means to use the publishing tools available on the Internet to provide social proof of your work. If you’re a great thinker who aspire to thought leadership that’s all you need to know — hence my statement that thought leadership is fundamental.

I have developed a simple workflow that I call a ‘Me’cosystem which anyone can use to establish a thought leadership position over time. All of the tools are best of breed, free or freemium, and completely cross platform down to the smart phone level. There are nine different activities in which the thought leader must engage and I outline them here:

I’ll be going into more detail in each of these stages later on in the series. Organized efficiently from the beginning to the end of the process, it looks more like this:

And again, I’ll be going into more detail in subsequent posts. All I think you really need to know at this point is that the process really does work and that it’s simple enough and cost-effective enough that even someone who does TED talks can use my system. :-)

Next week I’ll start with the analysis phase in the flowchart. Questions? Feedback?

 

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In his epic book “Here Comes Everybody”, Clay Shirky writes:

We are living in the middle of the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race. More people can communicate more things to more people than has ever been possible in the past, and the size and speed of this increase, from under one million participants to over one billion in a generation, makes the change unprecedented, even considered against the background of previous revolutions in communications tools. The truly dramatic changes in such tools can be counted on the fingers of one hand: the printing press and movable type (considered as one long period of innovation); the telegraph and telephone; recorded content (music, then movies); and finally the harnessing of radio signals (for broadcasting radio and TV). None of these examples was a simple improvement, which is to say a better way of doing what a society already did. Instead, each was a real break with the continuity of the past, because any radical change in our ability to communicate with one another changes society.

Shirky, Clay (2009-02-24). Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (p. 106). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

What good, though, is that expressive capability if people can’t find you when they need what you do? You need to be known!

The question is, though, for what should I be known? Everyone’s an expert! How do we know this? Seth Godin told us so long ago in his ebook ‘Everyone’s an Expert’ [About Something]…

So now you are an expert. I know it. You know it. It’s the rest of the world that may not know it. Yet. In my humble opinion however you did not get to this ripe old age of wherever you’re at without becoming an expert in something. The 10,000 hour rule is just that – Malcolm Gladwell hypothesized that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something. Now think of all the things you are an expert at!

Here’s the problem, however: your area of expertise may be so narrow or specialized that no one in your town or county or even your state needs it. There are however almost 2,000,000,000 people on the Internet. Even if your expertise appeals to only one in 1 million people that still means there are 2,000 people who need you to guide them. The 10,000 hours you spent gaining your expertise probably means you’re pretty good thinker too. The challenge is you can be the sharpest knife in the drawer but if no one can find the drawer you’ll never get a chance to get out…

Chris Brogan says:

“As you now know, if you have no Google results, in a sense you don’t exist.

Brogan, Chris; Smith, Julien (2010-07-16). Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust (p. 161). Wiley. Kindle Edition.”

My good friend Dana VanDen Heuvel, a thought leader in his own right, says “there are thinkers and there are thought leaders. They both have a point of view. The thinker has a point of view that is limited by word-of-mouth but the thought leader is only limited by world of mouth.” Using the good, fast and cheap tools available on the Internet a thinker can make his or her thought leadership position searchable, findable, knowable, usable, and shareable. Because of all those ‘ibles’, they may actually become credible. Publishing your thought leadership position will give you a share of voice which may lead to share of mind and ultimately to share of market…
The first step in ‘being known’ is actually accepting the face that you ARE an expert and discovering your ‘onlyness’ as author Nilofer Merchant puts it in her book “11 Rules for Creating Value in the #SocialEra“:

The foundational element starts with celebrating each human and, more specifically, something I’ve termed onlyness. Onlyness is that thing that only one particular person can bring to a situation. It includes the skills, passions, and purpose of each human. Onlyness is fundamentally about honoring each person, first as we view ourselves and second as we are valued. Each of us is standing in a spot that no one else occupies. That unique point of view is born of our accumulated experience, perspective, and vision. Some of those experiences are not as “perfect” as we might want, but even those experiences are a source of ideas and creativity. Without this tenet of celebrating onlyness, we allow ourselves to be simply cogs in a machine—dispensable and undervalued.

Merchant, Nilofer (2012-09-12). 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era (Kindle Locations 107-113). Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.

So now we have established the foundation of being known; you have to define your area of expertise and embrace your ‘onlyness’; only then can you take the next step. More next Tuesday…

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If you want to be a thought leader on the internet, there are only two things you need to do really well…

Assuming that you’re already an expert of some sort — and according to Seth Godin we are ALL experts at something — the two main things you need to do are:

  • Deepen your expertise. In other words, get smarter by effectively managing the content you need to become even more of an expert at what you do…
  • Document your expertise. Simply put, let people know you know what you know…

Deepening and documenting your expertise may actually facilitate thought leadership by using a few “good, fast, and cheap” tools to get you a share of voice which may get you a share of mind which ultimately could get you a share of market…

I expound here:

http://youtu.be/zaNhjHsSYCA

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Can you ever lose expert status?

Think you’re an expert? Ponder this…

Design and social media expert

Most people agree that it takes a long time to really reach expert status, but how long does it take to lose it? Is expert status something that comes and goes, or do you have it forever? After all, being an expert means knowing everything you can about a particular craft, no matter how specific. You could be an expert Apple pie maker, and expert business owner, or a social media expert, but what if you quit?

Can something that takes so long to earn be taken away so quickly?

Two ways to lose expert status

This led me to consider the two types of milestones that can be lost in the blink of an eye:

Someone who has a type of physical achievement. You may work your whole life to get in shape and finish that triathlon, but the minute you give up your superman cardiovascular endurance will quite right along with you.

Someone who has a type of mental achievement. You may work your entire life as an accountant, but if you give it up to live the life of a golfer, how will your math skills hold up? Anything that involves your mind needs to stay sharp and be practiced if it’s going to last.

Not only can you lose knowledge because you have given up, but you can lose knowledge because of age. As people grow older, it’s hard to stay on top of the times and do things that were once easier to a young body and a young mind.

via Can You Ever Lose Expert Status? | Expert Enough.

Go to the source if you’re interested in the topic. What do you think about the author’s position?

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SR 99 construction bypass and ramp looking south

A friend who works with in construction industry is skeptical. He’s not convinced that ‘inbound marketing’ [blogging and other social media tools] can be applied to the construction industry. I respectfully disagree! I’ve seen content management and marketing for thought leadership applied to everything from Agriculture to Yoga and I believe it will work in the construction industry as well. Why?

Here are some of my beliefs:

  • Most companies have great stories and content — they just don’t use it as well as they could…
  • At the core, all great marketing is great storytelling
  • At the end of the day, every business is a people business

First, though what is this ‘thought leadership’? A simple definition might be a public display of expertise that can be easily found by people who are searching for it. How does a brand accomplish this? Though effective content management and content marketing. Because of my core beliefs, I think any company — even a construction company — can use the content they have or can create to tell great stories that attract people to their brand.

In his thought leadership classic ‘Brand Stand‘, Craig Badings tells the story of Dick Dusseldorp, a thought leader in the Australian construction industry before the phrase ‘thought leader’ was cool…

During the 1970s and 1980s, when union action on most construction sites in Sydney were crippling the construction industry, the sites on which Lend Lease was building suffered no such misfortune. This was because Dusseldorp’s philosophy was to create a community of interest between Lend Lease’s key stakeholders. When other companies around him were banging heads with the unions, with resultant long delays and cost overruns on projects, Dusseldorp was sitting down with the workers and unions and discussing their issues. The results were agreements, jointly committed to by workers and management, and a share in the resulting rewards for buildings completed on time. He was a master at getting people to transcend their traditional conflicts and work towards mutually beneficial goals.

Badings, Craig (2009-07-08). BRAND STAND (Kindle Locations 237-243). BookPal. Kindle Edition.

How did he do it? In part he used content management and content marketing along with other communication skills to position his firm at the thought leadership center of his industry in his country. Speaking of Dusseldorp’s organization Lend Lease, Badings says…

It launched a website… along with a four-part DVD series, using a former TV journalist to interview a number of independent third parties about their views on the future workspace and its impacts across business, design, people and location. As a result, Lend Lease reached those who made decisions about office space and helped stimulate and frame the debate around the impacts and implications of future work environments in Australia. Through the series, the company engaged communities linked to its industry and positioned itself at the centre of this debate. It is the logical place to be as a leader in the construction industry, but Lend Lease has done it in a way that doesn’t push the company’s point of view. It took the approach that it would rather invite leading experts in this field across various disciplines to participate in and frame the discus-sion.

Badings, Craig (2009-07-08). BRAND STAND (Kindle Locations 224-231). BookPal. Kindle Edition.

Joy Davis, CSI, CCPR, of CSI in Albuquerque, says…

“In many ways, construction is a relationship-driven business, and at the root of every great relationship is trust. No single person can know everything about construction, so we need trustworthy experts we can turn to who can help us achieve our goals. Thought Leadership is a strategy based on the idea that you can be your clients’ preferred expert – a person they trust, and whom they think of first when they have a question, or a new project.” Source: Thought Leadership and Social Media in the Workplace

Every business — not just construction — is a people business, but because of the critical nature of construction projects trust may be even more important. How can that trust be most effectively engendered? Content management and marketing for thought leadership may be an answer that the construction industry has overlooked! Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to you and your organization…

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Donna
Image by nooccar via Flickr
Growing a blog?

Do you want to attract more readers?

Do you want to grab the attention of the big players in your industry and leverage their star power?

Silly questions, right?

In this article I’ll share how you can grow a loyal and sustained fan base by working with the top experts in your niche.

They’re out there, and it’s not nearly as hard as you think to get them on your team.

Why do I need an expert?

Everyone wants entertaining, useful content. That’s what content marketing is all about.

But they also want access to great people. When you present a new idea or a new voice to your audience, your blog becomes a valuable source people will want to visit again and again. Bringing in expert voices rounds out your site and adds dimension.

Getting outside experts involved also validates your own expertise. When you can attract the best, people will see you as an expert in your own right.

Finally, there’s an often-overlooked benefit of working with experts. If you work well together, some may turn out to be strategic partners who can take your business places you never dreamed.

Experts can include:

  • Authors, particularly those who have new books out
  • People who frequently speak on relevant topics
  • Bloggers who are creating exceptional content
  • Practitioners working inside companies
via donnadenil.com

Great advice from Wisconsin business blogger Donna Denil. I’m available if you were asking…

:-)

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Everyone’s an expert

This is the start of a new series on how to use “good, fast, and cheap” social media technology to become a thought leader on the internet. The first step to becoming at thought leader is to realize you are an expert — no one gets to this point in their life without being great at something! Your area of expertise my only interest .0000001% of the population but if you multiply that percentage by the current world population of 6,817,500,000 I guarantee you it is interesting to someone else somewhere in world.

If you live in a small town like Algoma, WI with a population of 3,500 it’s quite possible that your area of expertise does not interest anyone else in your town or even your county. However, if you use the “good, fast, and cheap” publishing tools we have at our fingertips today, you could become a globally recognized thought leader. Let’s face it — if it weren’t for the internet you probably wouldn’t know I exist! imho, effective blogging combined with social media usage is the key to finding your audience…

So let me guide you as you take your first steps toward thought leadership on the internet. Your first assignment is to read Seth Godin’s free ebook called ‘Everyone’s an Expert’ [just click this link if you can’t see the book below]. It won’t take long — it’s only 32 pages — but the most important part of becoming a thought leader is actually believing you have thoughts that are worth sharing. May I suggest you click the ‘fullscreen’ button? Read it now. Think about it. Stay tuned for part 2 in the series…

http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=30698025&access_key=key-aogjwa7hc2h4ffszmsh&page=1&viewMode=slideshow

Now, did this help you or just confuse the issue?

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