Linkedin Thought Leaders

Over the past couple of months I've found myself intrigued by a new feature on LinkedIn  Content from Thought Leaders. What’s is actually more fascinating than reading the content has been watching how various Thought Leaders are using their new content channel on LinkedIn.

Thought Leaders are good promoters by nature, that’s how they got to be leaders of thought in their respective spheres. They promote their ideas and they brand themselves well. In creating the Thought Leader space, LinkedIn provided this group with a new marketing platform to expand their reach. The more aggressive participants took to this new channel and started figuring out how to use it to their advantage instantly.

Tony Robbins, for example, started off with some original content but then shifted management of the channel over to a marketing flunky and the channel spent a few weeks as just an ongoing sales pitch for Robbins products without providing any value to the reader. In the past month the content has changed to be more tailored to LinkedIn and it appears more thought is going into who comprises this new market and how to interest them.

Richard Branson is just having his marketing team port content over from his company blog (none of which appears to be written by him.) It’s good stuff but I think the self-promotion level is higher than it should be.

Guy Kawasaki wrote some original content for LinkedIn but quickly just turned his channel into another spigot for content he is posting across his entire social network. I think this is a mistake but I also know how tough it is to generate original content for specific channels (you see how often I manage to get a blog post out here!) Writing a lot of original content is hard, especially if you’re running a business, promoting a book, setting up your next project, etc.  One thing I keep reminding myself that as a leader, my job is to innovate and market.

 Blogging is marketing and needs to be treated as such.

So, I’m hoping to do a better job at creating original content in 2013. With a book and a web app to promote, it’s time for me to start getting on the ball with my own marketing and original content. Either that, or I need to invest in a bunch of cleverly branded lolcats.

Happy New Year!