BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
Read Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki for excellent ideas in how to enroll and enchant people.
Before attending your next networking event, develop your “Brag points” – see Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn without Blowing It by Peggy Klaus.
Thought leaders must regularly develop their expertise in a variety of arenas. What skills would you like to develop in the coming year?
expand your network
- Join the board of a trade association or non-profit in your niche.
- Update your LinkedIn page so others can learn about you.
- Sign up for a weekly update of events in your niche (check www.Meetup.com) and attend a few every month.
- Host a teleseminar or webinar on a topic you are an expert in and invite others to attend. Try a tool like GoToWebinar or Zoom to host your webinar.
- Start a monthly breakfast group with others you want to meet.
- Use Google Alerts to stay informed about people in your network.
build followers for your ideas
- Get training in writing an Op-Ed – www.theopedproject.org.
- Write an article for a specialized publication in your field.
- Guest blog on a popular blog – Try Alltop to find the top blogs by topic area.
- Reach out to a podcast host in your subject matter to see if you can be a guest. Here is the iTunes list of popular podcasts.
- Start an e-newsletter and send it to people in your industry/niche. Use an email marketing tool like iContact, MailChimp or Constant Contact.
- Convene a group of people with the same title/job across your industry for quarterly calls or meetings.
improve your strategy-setting & visioning skills
- Read Herminia Ibarra’s excellent case study on Women and the Vision Thing.
- Read Jim Collins’ articles on strategy.
- Take a strategy class at a local college.
- Hire a strategy consultant to teach you everything they know and actively participate in strategy sessions at your company.
- Use the templates from The Grove to set your organization, team, or group’s strategy & vision.
- Join a LinkedIn Group of people in your niche or volunteer to moderate an existing group.
- Read this article on Integrating Intentional Influence into Your Strategy by Sara Brenner and Amy Celep.
BEGIN TO DEVELOP YOUR PLATFORM
- Search SlideShare to see what other experts in your niche have created to support their platform.
- Find thought leaders in your niche and follow their activities. Look for hashtags related to your topic on Twitter and see who’s Tweeting about them.
- Build your professional influencer profile at influence.co.
- Speak on a panel at a leadership conference.
- Comment on the blog(s) of others who are thought leaders in your niche, industry, organization.
use these tools to track your progress
- Monitor your brand online with Brand Yourself.
- Check out your social graph with the ‘super-actionable visualizations’ at Followerwonk.
- Scoop.it! helps you share your ideas with the right audiences so you increase your visibility online.
- Try Meet Edgar, Hootsuite, or ViralTag — great tools that let you customize your social media content, easily schedule it and track your impact.
more thought leadership resources
Check out our other page of more thought leadership resources here.
career resources
In a career transition? Here is a page of career resources for you.
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