Becoming an Informed Opinion Leader

NB: There are Video Tutorials supporting this eBook. Link to video training is inclusive.

Do your peers inside of your company consider you to be a thought leader? What about outside of the company? Do others consider you to be a leading expert in your field? How well you are considered to be a thought leader can greatly affect your career. In my book, Invaluable, I explored how to help individuals increase the value of their time and quality of work life. In other words, how individuals can become invaluable. This course, Becoming a thought leader is part of a five course series on helping you become invaluable and get the most from you career.

Join author and business coach David Crawford as he shows you the keys to becoming a respected thought leader and authority in your field. Whether you are already a visible professional or hoping to improve your presence, decision-making ability, and influence, this course can prepare you to take a meaningful step forward. Being recognized as a thought leader and authority inside and outside your company builds career capital and paves the way for new opportunities.

This course demonstrates a step-by-step process to help you identify your thought leadership focus, find a mentor, develop expertise within your company, build a meaningful network externally, and develop personal publicity. This course is one of a series of five David Crawford courses based on his Invaluable teaching methodology for professional development.

Topics include:

Discovering areas where you can contribute thought leadership

Developing company knowledge that makes you an expert

Building an authority ladder externally

Gaining publicity

Thought Leadership is one of the most widely used terms in B2B marketing. But there's a range of opinion regarding what Thought Leadership is, and fuzzy expectations with respect to its tangible benefits. Researching the term "Thought Leadership" yields everything from a sterile Wikipedia definition, to blog posts featuring marketing insights similar to this online gem:

"It doesn't matter if you're an entrepreneur, an employee, or a student - your ability to become a thought leader will catapult your success. A great way to accomplish this, is on LinkedIn." And we wonder why the marketing discipline is held in such low regard.

Broadly, if Thought Leadership is a marketing strategy that leverages intellectual capital to engage target audiences, then there are two critical components and issues:

Content --- What qualifies as legitimate and effective Thought Leadership?

Application --- How should the content be applied to drive tangible business outcomes?

A coherent and concise description of bonafide Thought Leadership content is contained within a checklist developed by Jeff Ernst, VP of Marketing at Forrester Research, who broadly describes the strategy as "expressing a viewpoint that influences others... " as a means to "generate conversations that build trusting relationships over time."

Importantly good thought leadership delivers sustainability to your customer relationship that the normal sales process and marketing collateral does not. It gives you a great platform to go back to them with new, useful information and in the process it builds long-term customer advocates. Get more insights from this eBook!

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