Choose Your Own Adventure | Org TL

Join us today as Bill Sherman, COO of Thought Leadership Leverage and Verity Craft, General Manager and Storyteller of Intelligent Ink talk about choosing your own adventure in thought leadership!

Transcript:

Bill Sherman:  So, one of the fascinating things about thought leadership is there’s a choose-your-own-adventure component when you’re a practitioner. And that means that you don’t have to use the same modality that everyone else is using. So you can experiment, you can try, you can find the best modalities that match your skills and the audience. And you can also avoid the ones where you don’t feel comfortable. Not everybody feels comfortable writing long white papers or standing on stage delivering a talk. What have you seen, Verity?

Verity Craft: Yeah for sure. The speaking one is the one that I think often people feel like, “Oh I have to do that if I’m going to do thought leadership.” And actually that’s not necessarily something that they have to do. You know, we’ve had clients who have been really uncomfortable being on a stage but they’re really great at facilitating groups and doing smaller discussions. So they might have a podcast and interview people, but they don’t feel comfy with the speaking side of it. And lots of them obviously don’t feel comfortable writing — which is often where we come in — as helping them with that side of things. So, it’s so doesn’t have to be one way or the other. It’s what works for you as a person and as a business and in figuring out where that fits and kind of your whole thought leadership ecosystem. I guess.

Bill Sherman: Well, and what I would say is it’s better to start with small experiments, what I’d call minimum viable thought leadership. Try putting out your ideas in a modality. See if you’re comfortable with it. See if it resonates with your audience. And if it doesn’t keep switching the modalities until you feel you’re comfortable and the audience is leaning in. And if something doesn’t work, that’s okay. Just keep putting content and ideas out there and eventually you’ll find the right mix.

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