YOUR THOUGHT LEADER ARCHETYPE
Entrepreneurial Content Creator
Your thought leader archetype helps you identify your unique skillset and your greatest leverage to achieve your goals.
You love sharing your ideas with the world through your writing. Your ability to create engaging content gives you a natural edge on your thought leadership journey. Your writing is the all-important vessel for amplifying your voice and your message, and taking up meaningful space in your industry or field.
The good news is that there are ample channels for sharing your writing and content. The not-so-good news is that this lowers the barrier to entry for anyone with a keyboard and internet access. There are millions and millions of people publishing content that is readily available and vying for attention. What can set you apart and help you grow your reputation as a recognized thought leader is who you are, how you show up online, and how to grow your brand as a thought leader.
You may have other roles or activities professionally, but you are committing your resources to building your role as a thought leader. You are ready to meaningfully grow your audience and grow your business. Your time, energy and financial resources are finite, and you need (1) a clear vision of where you want to go, and (2) a clear strategy of how to get there with the most efficient use of your resources. Without a clear vision and strategy, your effort will have no clear direction.
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5 Biggest Mistakes You’re Making as an Entrepreneurial Content Creator
Wherever you are in your thought leadership journey, these are the most common pitfalls of operating in the world as an Entrepreneurial Content Creator.
1.
You have folders of valuable articles or other thought leadership content stored away indefinitely.
Sure, you may have published some articles or blog posts, but you have so many ideas and resources that you’ve written out in one form another that haven’t seen the light of day. You have them stored away somewhere for some unidentified future state.
You have amazing ideas in the shower, on your walk, in the car, and you may have a repository of short-form content that you never get around to sharing. You may also keep things under wraps for a future book “one day”. These lightbulb-moment ideas that strike a cord in you feels so precious and valuable that you hoard them and hide them out of sight.
You think, “I should monetize this somehow,” or “This needs to be saved for when I have more time to work on it.” But these musings aren’t usually tied to a concrete goal or strategy, and the central problem may be that you don’t have the appropriate channels and platforms to share your content as it exists.
Not everything needs to be flushed out into an article approved for publication by an editor. And no one can evaluate your expertise and thought leadership if you don’t share your ideas generously. It is a mistake to treat your ideas and your content too preciously. Your value as a thought leader is in who you are as a critical thinker and communicator, not in the individual words you’ve typed on a screen.
It is vital to have the right strategy tailored to your strengths and your goals. And with the right platform to support that strategy, you will have a digital home for all of your content, to keep your thought leadership vibrant, welcoming, and authoritative.
2.
You decide to wait on your thought leadership brand and digital platform until you know what to do with it.
They say that the worst mistake you can make in investing is not starting sooner. And the same is true of investing in your professional brand. The earlier you start building your thought leadership, the greater returns you will reap over time.
Professionals put it off for these common reasons:
“I don’t have time.” Here, let’s go back to the investing principles. Saving even a little bit every month starting in your 20s will reap enormous rewards that are very difficult to replicate if you start in your 40s. Same principle applies here. You may have a long list of other responsibilities and priorities taking up your time and energy, but if you’re professionally active or you have valuable ideas and insights to share right now, it is a mistake to put it off.
“I don’t know what the ROI would be right now.” When you are stretched thin with all your other responsibilities, it’s understandable to put off anything that isn’t urgent and knocking at your door. But building your brand and platform as a thought leader is not a means to a very specific short-term goal. It’s the foundation for your professional career writ large.
Consider this: They say that we will change careers or jobs an average of six times in our lives. But there’s one common denominator that will never change — our professional brand. And there’s one sure asset that we have agency over that we can take with us where we go — our professional platform.
Investing in the one asset that you’ll be tied to for the long run will yield enormous returns across many facets of your life and career.
“I don’t know what I want to be known for.” This objection seems legitimate on its face. Thought leadership that is neither valuable “thoughts” nor true “leadership” is just… noise. But in reality, those who bring up this objection are usually those who are in the position of having too many areas of expertise. They are paralyzed from the fear of commitment and being pigeon-holed.
But consider this: The most insightful minds with truly original, creative ideas are people who naturally have immense intellectual curiosity and drive that they can (and do) apply to many different domains. If you invest in your own name and platform, you have agency to deploy the strategy to gain recognition in the ways you choose. And even if you put the spotlight on one area of expertise to start, you can remain in the driver’s seat and take that platform in new directions.
Fear of being pigeonholed is simply a fear of not having agency. And ironically, the most impactful way of having agency over your work is to commit to investing in your thought leadership and platform.
3.
You’re on all the social media channels.
In our current media landscape, there are a million ways to show up online. And if you’re in the position of trying to grow your audience and impact, you may think you need to be everywhere, all the time.
Perhaps you’ve set up all your accounts and tried to streamline your content sharing so that it shows up across all channels. Or you are simply overwhelmed by it all that you’re stuck in paralysis. Either way, you’re spinning your wheels without much to show for it. There are three important reasons why this is a big mistake.
First, unlike commercial brands, your brand as a thought leader is valued for being human. And especially when you’re starting out or in early growth stages, it’s hard to be everywhere all the time online and still be a compelling human.
Second, most audiences are not meaningfully engaging on more than one or two social media channels. The first rule of growing a brand is to be laser focused on who your audience is. And if you’re doing it right, you’ll likely find most of them on one main social media platform.
And most importantly, social media is not the end game. It is, at best, a tool that can be tailored to help you meet your goals as a thought leader, but only if it is deployed in an intentionally designed digital ecosystem that is built specifically for your brand and your goals.
Successful thought leadership does not involve becoming a social media influencer; it requires deploying a digital strategy and platform that is tailored to your specific goals.
4.
You have an outdated (or non-existent) digital presence.
There’s certainly a brand of thought leader (perhaps in academia) who intentionally avoids engaging in the online world. And for many years, this may have even been a sign of credibility. You may be in a certain industry or from a certain generation where putting up a shingle in the form of an “online presence” was considered tacky or sales-y.
But today, digital natives (generally speaking, Millennials and Gen-Z) make up 38% of the workforce, and by 2025, they’re expected to make up the majority. If you have any intention of being engaged in public discourse, it is a critical mistake to allow your digital presence to be outdated (or nearly non-existent).
Here are some signs that your digital presence is outdated and may be hurting your impact and legacy:
When people google your name, the photos that show up on the first page are mostly from more than 5 years ago.
You have published articles and books, but they are hard to find online and recent ones are not on your website.
There are different iterations of your name online, causing confusion.
Your current profile picture used on different platforms and sites vary significantly (different hair, different time period, different style).
Your headshot was taken more than 3 years ago. (There may be some exceptions to this, but 3 years is a pretty good cadence for getting your headshots redone.)
Having an outdated online presence is the professional equivalent of having a boarded up storefront. You’ll turn people away.
5.
You are learning to DIY everything from scratch.
Once you decide to devote your time and resources to thought leadership as a venture, it becomes clear that there are a number of facets to starting, running, and growing this business. It would be a mistake to hire out a full team from the beginning. But it would also be a mistake to try to wear all the hats yourself.
First, to succeed in thought leadership, the most important thing is to protect your time. Without ample time to create, share, research, and collaborate, you run out of the very thing that makes you a thought leader. It is not a good use of your precious time to take a beginner’s course on graphic design or web development, or even bookkeeping and accounting.
And second, selectively building an efficient team is the best investment in your business. It will buy you time and opportunities, which, in turn, leads to more opportunities. To get that flywheel turning, it’s important to outsource the roles that (1) will most likely increase the number and quality of opportunities you want, and (2) are skillsets that you do not have.