Are you a successful business owner, leader, or decision-maker keen to become an authority in your industry? If your answer is “yes”, this article is for you. In this article, I’ll discuss the various ways you can use SEO to become the go-to person in your industry. I’ll also share practical tips on how to become a thought leader. Some of these steps include challenging what everyone holds as conventional wisdom, publishing thought-provoking content, and looking for speaking engagements.
The Basics of SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a method of making web pages appear at the top of the first pages of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). SEO in practice is a collection of techniques, methods, and processes. The ultimate goal of Search Engine Optimization is to make it easy for people to find web pages when they search for information online.
If you are a publisher, you can develop a sound SEO strategy by using certain elements and styles in your content writing. For example, SEO-optimized content is based on keywords or key phrases. You need to research the phrases or words people use when searching for information online. You can then incorporate these keywords in your online content, for example, landing pages and blog posts. This process makes it easy for the pages to appear at the top of the results when people carry out organic searches.
Apart from good use of keywords, an effective Search Engine Optimization campaign includes backlinks. These are inbound links from other websites bringing traffic back to your site. Having backlinks shows that other publishers consider you an authority in your area. A good Search Engine Optimization strategy entails searching for a few high-quality backlinks to one’s website.
What is Thought Leadership?
If you are a thought leader in your field, people will come to you for insights about professional issues. Your colleagues and peers will regard you as an authority in the field.
From my practical experience, I have found out that it is easy to confuse thought leadership with content creation. Some business leaders and professionals think that creating and publishing content consistently makes them thought leaders. However, there is nothing further from the truth.
As a thought leader, you need to create copious amounts of content. Of course, content creation is one of the ways you share your thoughts and opinions about issues with the audience. However, to become good thought leaders in your field, you need a good plan for creating and sharing the content. So, a content leader deliberately and carefully uses content to engage with their audience. They don’t simply create and share content in the hope that doing so helps them become authorities in their fields.
You can identify a thought leader in any field or area of practice by using these criteria: knowledge, influence, and forward-thinking. Let us look at each of them briefly.
Every thought leader is a person who many in the industry regard as highly knowledgeable. Take the example of a prominent business person in a specific industry; people would like to hear his experience because they consider the person highly knowledgeable. A professional who is a thought leader in an area of practice typically has tons of new knowledge about their specialization. This knowledge comes from research, experience, and continuous learning.
You must have observed that thought leaders wield great influence in their areas of practice. These are people who others in the field always turn to for direction. Many people seek their opinions about new issues about their subjects of specialization.
Influential people shape opinion. If you are a thought leader, local media houses may seek your opinion about new issues in your practice area. In other words, thought leaders are also opinion leaders in their communities. They shape how people perceive issues.
Importance of Thought Leadership
I have encountered many folks who believe that thought leadership benefits the thought leader only. They believe that a thought leader uses influence to grow their professional reputation. If a thought leader happens to be a successful business person, they use their position to get new clients and make their ventures more successful.
It is easy to see thought leadership from the point of view of the thought leader. However, I think that thought leadership has many other perspectives apart from how it can help the thought leader grow professionally and in business. Think about the audience for a moment.
A thought leader carries out research and shares the findings through content. The audience may comprise young professionals in the field, clients, or other business people wishing to learn from the thought leader. These members of the audience gain important insights about professional issues from the content the thought leader shares. Therefore, thought leadership is good for the thought leader and their audience.
How to Become a Thought Leader
Thought leadership is about trust, authority, and respectability. Anyone can be a subject matter expert; however, it takes time and effort to win the trust and respect of others in the industry. Here are some of the things you can do to become a thought leader.
- Get featured in industry publications. Try to get featured in reputable publications in your professional field. Also, get involved in the activities of the professional association to win the trust and reputation of your peers in the industry.
- Look for speaking engagements. Public speaking opportunities give you a chance to build your professional profile and become famous in the industry. Focus on events that your target audience attends so that you address them.
- Publish content. Content writing is one of the most powerful strategies for achieving your thought leadership goals. Write articles that address the main questions your audience has. Remember to use keywords and backlinks to achieve this objective. Readers will start regarding you as a thought leader when they get convinced that you share cutting-edge research findings in your articles.
- Challenge conventional wisdom. Thought leadership is about challenging what many people in the industry consider factual. A good thought leader leads in creating new knowledge by challenging the way things are done. Always use original research to question conventional wisdom and build your status as a thought leader.
How to Use SEO to Become a Thought Leader
How can you use SEO to become a thought leader in your area of practice? Here are a few tips for you.
Write high-quality content
High-quality content answers the questions your readers have. Such content is also well-written so that readers can get the information they are looking for very fast.
Use Search Engine Optimization techniques to write and share high-quality content with your audience. Furthermore, utilize additional SEO techniques to make the content easily searchable online.
Go ahead to make it easy for visitors to access and browse content on your website. If readers find that your website has excellent user experience features and great content, they are likely to read a lot of articles and even share them.
Increased exposure and engagement for your content boost your thought leadership efforts. You will begin to earn the trust and respect of fellow professionals and potential clients who engage with your high-quality content online.
Publish original research findings
Expert content or strong opinions help increase the number of readers. Such opinions usually challenge what many people in an industry hold as the truth. Expert content or strong opinions result from the research. You need to invest time and effort in research to come up with such opinions.
Publishing expert opinions helps to increase readership and engagement statistics for your content. Readers may interact with your articles and share them on their social media handles, for example. More so, other publishers in the industry may refer back to your websites, creating valuable backlinks.
Content with high engagement rates becomes popular online. More people will read your articles or listen to podcasts and help you become popular.
Optimize your content
Now, you understand the importance of publishing strong opinions in helping you achieve your thought leadership goals. Consistent content writing and publishing are essential for helping you become a thought leader. However, these two practices are barely enough. You need to make the content available to the target audience. This is where SEO comes in.
Use SEO techniques like building backlinks and optimizing keywords to make your strong opinions easily available to the target audience. Optimizing your content helps to increase the number of people who read and consume the audience. The higher the number of readers, the more popular you become in the industry.
How Penmo Can Help
Penmo can help you take your idea and create SEO-verified content pieces to help you become the next thought leader in your space. We are a top article writing agency that offers SEO writing services at an affordable price. Contact us today to learn more about our premium content writing services and how we can help you become a thought leader.