How to Become a Thought Leader on LinkedIn

“Thought leadership” is one of those buzzwords that we’ve all heard roughly a million times. And while it may feel like one of those terribly overused cliches, based on my experience as a business owner and coach to corporate leaders and entrepreneurs, I understand why we hear it so often.

Because, done well, it works.

I tell you this from personal experience. I’ve also seen the payoffs of thought leadership among the clients I’ve served over the past 10+ years.

Building or affirming your thought leadership—in the right places and with the right audiences—can help you foster trust and credibility with customers, become a go-to voice in your industry, and open up amazing opportunities.

Here’s my story:

In 2010, I got this wild idea to build JobJenny.com, a platform that would offer professionals answers to their most pressing career questions, assist them in navigating business or job transitions, and inspire them to live their best lives.

My initial intention was to create a side hustle business that complimented my then-day job as head of a recruiting agency. I’d low-key answer the most common questions I heard about job search and career development, help people with their resumes, and support them in growing their small businesses.

What I didn’t see coming was this: By sharing my firsthand perspective on how recruiters think and work and lessons learned as I built my own business through my blog, LinkedIn, and subscriber newsletter, I was becoming a thought leader.

But that’s exactly what happened and, as it did, I was able to expand my services, raise prices (a lot), sunset my recruiting business, and attract lucrative partnerships, including one with LinkedIn Learning.

My thought leadership successes were, admittedly, rather accidental, but yours don’t have to be. In fact, if you apply some strategy and planning to this, you (and your business) may benefit from your thought leadership much more quickly than I did.

Here are five quick tips that’ll help you build thought leadership via LinkedIn—one of the best platforms out there for many small business owners (though they’ll work just as well is Instagram or TikTok is your platform of choice):

1. Think About Your Most Important Audience and What They Want to Hear

Certainly, you’ll want the freedom to share perspective and information that’s meaningful to you and aligns with the goals of your business. But, when you get down to it, what matters most is that you’re talking about things that your ideal audience wants to hear.

And, if you’re not sure what that is, try my very non-scientific technique:

Review the questions that come in via your contact page, email, and LinkedIn InMails weekly. What, specifically, are people requesting help with the most?

In my experience, posts inspired by real-life questions and pain points get the most comments, engagement, and shares. I’m guessing you’ll find a similar trend. So, dive into your inbox and start there.

The answers to “What should we talk about?” are, literally, right there in your inbox. Start there.