A Guide to Getting Started with LinkedIn Thought Leadership
In today’s digital world, establishing yourself as a thought leader on LinkedIn can increase your professional influence, boost brand awareness, and attract new customers and new opportunities.
Unfortunately, you can’t just start posting on LinkedIn and expect spectacular results.
To succeed with thought leadership, you need to publish compelling content, engage with your audience and build a community — inspiring, informing, and even challenging your audience.
If you’re thinking about trying your hand at thought leadership on LinkedIn, you’re in the right place.
Thought leadership: What it is and why it matters
Thought leadership is the practice of leveraging your expertise and knowledge to share insights, guidance, and innovative ideas within a particular industry or field.
For CEOs and business leaders, thought leadership is crucial because it positions you as an authoritative and influential figure, which enhances both your personal brand and your company’s reputation.
As a result, brand awareness increases, as well as trust and even bottom-line impact.
According to the 2024 Edelman–LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, 90% of decision-makers and members of the C-suite are more likely to be receptive to sales or marketing collateral sent from companies they believe have high-quality thought leadership.
What’s more, that same report found that 70% of executives say that thought leadership content has caused them to rethink relationships with existing suppliers.
Why become a thought leader on LinkedIn?
As the world’s largest professional social networking site, LinkedIn is home to more than 1.2 billion users who hail from more than 200 countries and territories.
Recent studies suggest that some 10 million C-level executives and 90 million senior-level executives are on LinkedIn, along with 63 million decision-makers.
Most commonly, folks flock to LinkedIn to network with other professionals, search for jobs, learn new skills, and grow their careers.
By becoming a thought leader on LinkedIn, you can increase your professional influence and visibility, build trust and credibility with a global audience of executives and upper management, increase your reach among targets and prospects, and — ultimately — boost your bottom line.
In short, on top of getting both your own name and your company’s in front of more eyeballs, thought leadership on LinkedIn can also help you close more deals.
How can thought leadership on LinkedIn benefit my personal brand?
At its core, thought leadership establishes you as an expert in your field, which enhances your personal brand.
By sharing valuable insights and industry knowledge regularly, you help establish credibility while differentiating yourself from peers and competitors — and particularly those that aren’t producing thought leadership content in the first place.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some other key benefits that becoming a thought leader on LinkedIn brings to your personal brand.
1. More credibility
Establishing yourself as a thought leader on LinkedIn boosts your credibility and authority. Such recognition can lead to increased trust and respect from peers, clients, and other industry professionals.
2. Increased visibility
Regularly sharing insightful content and engaging with your network increases your visibility. This heightened presence can help you attract new followers, expanding your personal reach and influence.
3. More opportunities
Thought leadership can lead to new opportunities — like speaking engagements, collaborations, and even board seat offers. By showcasing your expertise, you become a desirable candidate for high-profile roles and projects.
4. Expanded network
By putting your thoughts out there, you can build meaningful connections with industry leaders, peers, and potential clients. These relationships can lead to new customers, valuable partnerships, and a more robust professional network.
5. Continuous growth
Sharing content and participating in industry discussions keeps you updated on the latest trends and developments. This continuous learning helps you stay relevant and adaptable in today’s rapidly evolving market.
What types of content should I share to establish thought leadership on LinkedIn?
The most followed thought leaders on LinkedIn take advantage of the wide variety of content types on the platform:
1. LinkedIn posts
These short-form posts appear in followers’ LinkedIn feeds. They can take the form of text-based updates, images, or videos.
The most successful and widely read posts focus on a few key thematic areas: unpacking trends in your industry; sharing general leadership or career advice; or taking readers behind the scenes with more authentic, personal posts.
(Check out this post for inspirational LinkedIn content ideas.)
2. Articles
Longer-form content on LinkedIn can be published as a dedicated blog post on the platform. This format works best for articles, whitepapers or analyses that are too in-depth to fit in a single LinkedIn Post.
3. Newsletters
While Substack may be synonymous with newsletters, LinkedIn also offers users the opportunity to start a newsletter and grow a subscriber base. Subscribers are notified via email and in-platform when a new newsletter publishes.
4. Special formats, including LinkedIn polls, documents, and carousels
To increase engagement with followers, consider launching a poll, uploading a slide deck as a “document,” or posting a multi-image carousel.
Of course, posting alone is not enough. You also need to know the key ingredients that enable you to create effective thought leadership content — like knowing your audience, being original, engaging with your followers, and publishing a mix of content types.
What effective LinkedIn thought leadership looks like
To give you a better idea of some of the content types you should consider incorporating into your thought leadership strategy, let’s take a look at some real-world examples.
1. Sarah Blakely, founder of Spanx
As every founder knows too well, every overnight success takes 10 years. Sarah Blakely founded Spanx out of her apartment in 2000. Twenty-four years later, the brand is a household name.
In a recent LinkedIn post, Blakely shares some authentic insights into her journey as a founder, inspiring her audience that they too can achieve their dreams by never giving up.
Why this works
- It’s personal and authentic — a peek behind the scenes
- It’s inspiring to those working to build their own businesses; maybe they can do the same as Blakely if they keep their eyes on the prize
2. Rand Fishkin, cofounder of SparkToro and Snackbar Studio
Rand Fishkin is the founder of SparkToro, an audience research platform, and he knows a thing or two about effectively advertising on the internet.
In a recent video post on LinkedIn, Fishkin shares some insights and tips on running effective Google Ads campaigns in a way that’s helpful and easy to digest.
Why this works:
- It shares valuable information with followers, free of charge
- It’s a short 5-minute video, which is easy to digest
3. Mickey Mikitani, CEO of Rakuten Group
As CEO of a financial services company, Mickey Mikitani needs to stay on the cutting edge of what’s possible in banking.
In a recent thought leadership article on LinkedIn, Mikitani examples the coming marriage between mobile technology and artificial intelligence — and how his company plans to capitalize on it.
Why this works:
- It examines the future of technology and how Mikitani believes it will impact financial services
- It discusses how his company is preparing to monetize cutting-edge technology
How to create a LinkedIn thought leadership strategy
Ready to replicate the successes of these three CEOs? Follow these four steps to get started on your LinkedIn thought leadership journey.
1. Determine your area of focus
What core topics are you an authority on? Figure out the problems your audience cares about and what you want to be known for after someone reads your posts.
Once you’ve ironed that out, stick to a consistent narrative and play the long game. Sooner or later, when your audience thinks about your area of expertise, you’ll be top of mind.
2. Build your presence
Before launching your thought leadership strategy, make sure your LinkedIn profile is buttoned up. Optimize your profile picture, your bio, and your summary.
Once your profile is good to go, start engaging with peers and industry experts through comments, likes, and shares. That way, you’ll start showing up in discussions where the people you’re trying to reach already hang out.
3. Create a mix of content
Next, it’s time to create a mix of LinkedIn content — articles, posts, videos, and carousels — and start publishing them regularly.
According to LinkedIn workshops the CSuite Content team has attended, the best time to post is between 8 and 10 a.m. in your audience’s time zone.
Since LinkedIn posts have a long shelf life, aim to post one to four times a week (and never more than once a day).
Wondering where you’ll find time to create enough content for LinkedIn? A ghostwriting agency can save the day.
4. Measure your impact and iterate
Unless your inaugural LinkedIn post is liked by all 1.2 billion users on the platform, you can always improve.
Spend time measuring your impact by tracking likes, comments, shares, and follower growth.
Figure out which posts have the highest engagement and why, and double down on the types of content that have the biggest impact.
Tips for success with thought leadership on LinkedIn
As you begin your LinkedIn thought leadership journey, keep these three tips in mind to increase your chances of success.
Write like a human
While you might be tempted to turn to tools like ChatGPT to create content for LinkedIn, you might want to reconsider. According to a recent study, 75% of respondents don’t want AI to play a role in the content they consume.
If your audience suspects you’re using AI to create content, there’s a good chance they’ll disengage.
Luckily, there’s an easy fix here: Write like human beings have been writing for millennia — i.e., with your own hands and fingers. If you’re too busy to invest enough time in creating authentic content, an agency can save the day.
Be patient
Thought leadership strategies take time to execute, so be patient. You are unlikely to get massive returns overnight, so remember that slow and steady wins the race.
Find a cadence that works for you and stick to it. Consistency over months and years is what pays off.
Engage your audience
Thought leadership is a two-way street. While you absolutely want to publish a steady stream of content, you also need to interact with your audience when they reach out to you.
Responding to their comments, liking their posts, and engaging them over direct messages is an easy way to build a deeper, more authentic connection — which makes it easier to accomplish your thought leadership goals.
How can I measure the impact of my thought leadership efforts on LinkedIn?
Today, 96% of B2B marketing teams use thought leadership in their content marketing strategies, though 53% of these programs are still either in the exploratory or developing phase.
If you haven’t already begun your thought leadership journey and don’t want to be left behind, you’d be wise to follow suit.
That said, it’s not enough to simply publish thought leadership content on LinkedIn and call it a day. You need to measure the impact of your efforts — and use the data you collect to continuously improve and optimize your strategy.
To do that, there multiple metrics you can track:
- Engagement rates, including likes, comments, and shares. The higher your engagement, the more your content is resonating.
- Follower growth that illustrates how your audience has increased over time; steady growth likely suggests you’re on the right track.
- Content reach, which tracks the number of views and impressions your content has received. The larger your reach, the more folks are seeing your content.
- Profile views, or the number of times your profile has been viewed. An increase in views often correlates with more interest in your thought leadership content.
- Connection requests, which indicate how many people are trying to join your network. More requests means that more people see value in connecting with you.
While there’s no shortage of ways to measure and fine-tune your thought leadership strategy, there are only so many hours in the workweek.
As an executive, you’re busy enough as it is, which means you probably don’t have the bandwidth required to implement a truly effective thought leadership strategy, track results, and optimize your approach accordingly.
Not to worry.
By joining forces with an agency that can manage your thought leadership strategy, you can rest comfortably knowing that your efforts are in expert hands while spending more of your energy on the most important matters impacting your business.
To learn more about the easiest way to make that a reality, read this.
