So You Want to Be a Thought Leader, Eh?

You believe you’ve got something to say. Sure you do. And logically, everyone wants to hear it. So you want to become an industry thought leader. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. Everyone’s doing it.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a thought leader. It’s not always driven by ego or self-promotion. Oftentimes you do have essential knowledge about your product or service that’s truly worth sharing with an interested community. So go ahead and take the step. But there’s one thing you’re going to need first — a Twitter account.

Faster is Better

In today’s modern digital age where instant gratification is a way of life, if you plan to make ground breaking waves in your industry, change the way the world thinks about your product segment, or you simply want to personally brand yourself, you need be on Twitter. If not merely to serve as a distribution hub for your blog posts, your Twitter account is what’s going to make you relevant with your audience.

Five Reasons a Twitter Account is Essential to Being an Industry Thought Leader

1. Twitter is Where All the Real News Breaks First

There’s no place on the web where news is released faster than on Twitter. For all the black eyes the sometimes misunderstood and often maligned microblogging site gets, Twitter has literally revolutionized the way we get information. As an aspiring thought leader for your product, your service, your industry, your company, or for yourself, a Twitter account will be your lifeline to the rest of the world.

As we all know, some of the most important stories of recent time were broken in 140 characters or less. There was the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. Navy Seals last Spring. Then of course there was this week’s Twitter-shaking report that Beyonce and Jay-Z were having a baby. Jimmy Fallon may have “broken” it best, on Twitter, naturally. Both stories sent the Twitterverse into a veritable tizzy. And if you plan to be a spokesman for your brand, your cause, or are seeking to position yourself as a resource, Twitter is your first best bet. You will, of course, need a blog, a Facebook page and other online resources as well. But you can start here.

2. You Have a Huge Audience That’s Ready to Listen

It’s been widely reported that Twitter has somewhere in the realm of 200 million registered users. This estimate varies depending on the source. But either way you shake it, it’s a whole bunch of people clamoring to listen to what you might have to tell them. According to Wikipedia, Twitter users send up to 155 million tweets a day (again, depending who you talk to). You might say that’s a hefty number of messages to compete with, but with approximately 40% of these tweets considered by a Pear Analytics survey to be ‘pointless babble’, your challenge becomes much less daunting. As an effective communicator offering valuable knowledge and insight, you should easily be able to break through the clutter while also having a built-in distribution hub.

3. Twitter is One of the Web’s Most Popular Sites

Alexa, the California-based web traffic reporting company and subsidiary of retail giant Amazon, ranks Twitter as one the Top Ten most visited sites in the world. If none of our other arguments convince you to get involved on the platform, that should.

A true thought leader needs to be where the action is, and Twitter is truly one of the “in” places. Estimates are that the site’s success is only going to increase over time. And considering they’ve not yet come up with a plan to make money but still remain a viable and hugely successful business, the likelihood of the site going away anytime soon is very small. Any thought leader considering it should get on board now, if not only to ensure you can still claim ownership of your own name, or some close semblance of it.

4. Journalists Are There Looking for You

The people who actually report the news are using Twitter to find the news. More and more, journalists are looking to Twitter to get ideas for stories, locate contacts to quote, identify current events to cover, products to review and conduct research on all the above. And Twitter knows this. The company recently released a user’s guide just for journalists entitled “Twitter for Newsrooms” that helps editors and reporters find their way around. The fact that you’re a thought leader for your industry and you need to reach out to reporters who are actually searching for you should tell you that you need to be on Twitter today.

5. Your Competition is Already Taking Over

While Twitter may be new to you, it’s not new to others in your industry. If you want to take control of the message and influence consumer perception of your industry or your brand, you’d better have a good handle on what your competition is up to. And you can find out on Twitter. Or, if you prefer, you can slog through endless pages of online industry publications to find out what the movers and shakers in your field are up to. However, it’s likely the news you find is going to be more “history” than “breaking,” as it takes 1000 times longer to write a 1400-word article than it does a 140-character tweet. And once your competition is out in front, you’ve got a long way to go to catch up.

Sweeten Your Daily Blog Juice

Roll out of bed. Fire up the laptop. Grab a glass of O.J. while you wait for it to power up. Give the dog a pat on the head. And a treat (or he’ll torment you until you do…). Then read the following refreshing blogs each morning.

Jeff Bullas – jeffbullas.com – @jeffbullas

It’s no secret how much we appreciate the insights of this prolific thought-leader from the land down under. If you haven’t heard of Jeff Bullas, you’ve been living under a rock. He pounds away at the keyboard faster than Usain Bolt doing the 100 meter. And Bullas does it all while upside down! (Get it?)

Bullas’ prolific writings are Numero Uno Essential reading for anyone into Blogging, Social Networking, Personal Branding, SEO, Advertising, Digital Media, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Product Innovation, Trends. And the list goes on. And on. He’s quickly become the “Blentor” (Blogging mentor) of our staff. Bullas is a can’t miss morning read who seems to have harnessed time travel, sending predictive communiques back to us from the future. Or maybe that’s just due to time zones, the rotation of the Earth and when our alarms wake us up.

Kristi Hines – Kikolani.com – @kikolani

Kristi Hines is obsessed with Blogging and Social Networking! Which is by no means a bad thing. Hines shares daily insight on How to Blog, Social Media, Self-promotion, Photography and a whole host of other topics. She’s also got a great line-up of guest writers who help her out every now and then. For those non-morning-folk, a nice, bright sunflower welcomes you to her site. What’s better to brighten a day than morning orange juice and flowers? You can find Hines bouncing around all over the net. But the best place to immerse yourself in her unique brand of insight is at her blog Kikolani.com. Incidentally, the name “Kikolani” pays homage to her grandmother Akiko.

Shonali Burke – WaxingUnlyrical.com – @shonali

The name of Burke’s site is a huge misnomer. Shonali Burke is far from UNlyrical. While we don’t know if she can sing, she definitely has a way with words. Having worked in professional marketing positions in both hemispheres, Burke approaches Blogging, Social Media, and Online Strategy with a finely cultivated world view. As one of Twitter’s most prolific Tweeters, she offers a refreshing daily complement of strategy, humor and compassion. Before you finish off the pulp in the bottom of your glass, check out this outstanding blog at Waxing Unlyrical. You’ll be more than happy you did. It’s guaranteed to sweeten your day.

It May be Hard to Believe, but Keywords Can Hurt You

There’s lots of talk about when, where, why and how to include search engine keywords and key phrases in your blog posts. You’ve read post after post on this exact topic; they’re all over the Interwebs. Including keywords into blog posts is done, as we know, primarily in an effort to get search engines to rank the non-branded content of your website higher than that of someone (if not everyone) else’s website.

But when does the obsession with keywords reach the point of diminishing returns? There is one.

Use Your Words Wisely

Those of us with backgrounds in journalism, public relations, advertising and digital marketing completely understand the value and power of the written (or…in this case…typed) word. However, it’s likely that each of these professions will have a completely different take on the subject of words and how they are and/or should be used whenever and wherever they are used. It’s kind of like the English language; there are always plenty of exceptions to all of the rules.

Be Aware of Keywords

Words have and always will be a critical factor that affects everything that we do as an agency. And to ensure proper SEO and increase inbound links to your site, yes, every blogger should be aware of the need to, every now and then, include just that right sequence of these powerful little things when stringing together blog posts. However, you should never become obsessed with keywords over quality. The incessant desire to embed every possible search engine targeting phrase into your posts is going to hurt you in the end. Once you let this giant “Keyword Monster” control the flavor of your writing, you’ve lost the battle, David. Yes, that was a biblical reference for effect.

Only You Have the Power to Retain Readers

When it comes down to it, people reading your blog want informative, insightful and useful content. It’s the power of your knowledge, expertise, and honesty, combined with your ability to collect all these things together into a cohesive story that attracts readers to your blog, keeps them interested and keeps them coming back. The overall success of your blog posts are going to be based more on the quality of your writing and what you have to say. Once you start down the road of endlessly massaging your words merely to insert search engine friendly keywords so the robots find your site, your information is bound to suffer.

Keyword Obsession

Making a long story short, or perhaps even slightly longer…

Are keywords important to your blog posts? Yes.

Should you ruin the value of the information you offer on your blog with the obsessive editing of your thoughts merely to include a string of keywords so Google will rank you higher? No.

Editorial Quality Over Keyword Fanaticism

Make sure that you retain the quality of your information over the fanatical desire to include that just-right set of keywords. It’s the genuine quality of your posts that’s going to ensure you retain readers and gain the new ones you’re looking for.

Just write. Let the (key)words come naturally, and you’ll be better off.