We recently worked with a client who was eagerly anticipating the release of her first TED Talk. By all accounts, she was already a well-regarded thought leader — a psychologist and pioneer in the field of eco-anxiety who combined psychological insights with environmental issues to develop tools for facilitating action.
Her TED Talk — How to Turn Climate Anxiety Into Action — was the culmination of years of studies and applied work, and she wanted to ensure that it reached a broad audience and made an impact. She also wanted to use the opportunity to take her audience growth to the next level.
While many established thought leaders have their followers hooked on their every word, if you’re just getting started or looking to grow your followership, consider creating an impact campaign to amplify your thought leadership content.
Here are three key tactics we used to help our client achieve that goal.
Amplifying Cornerstone Content
Your cornerstone content could be anything from an illuminating blog post to an ebook, webinar or video series. However you capture your thoughts, the key is to ensure the content you’re looking to amplify is easily found across all channels.
In this case, we had a brilliant TED Talk to leverage, and our goal was to give it as much visibility as possible.
We started by redesigning our client’s website homepage, adding a TED-focused hero image with a CTA/link to the talk so that visitors to her site couldn’t miss it.
We also aligned messaging on her social channel descriptions, and added a link to the TED Talk along with a pinned post wherever possible.
Take Aways:
- Make your cornerstone content easily findable across channels
- Align your messaging to reinforce your key messages across channels
- Use strategic design to amplify the impact of your content
Social Posting and Engagement
Getting the cornerstone content out across all channels means creating a plan to post, repost and repost yet again.
We developed a posting schedule for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, our client’s channels of choice, to maximize visibility of her TED Talk. We suggested a posting frequency that was most appropriate for each channel, and implemented an engagement strategy which involved actively reaching out to key colleagues, influencers and media outlets, and responding to incoming comments.
If resources allow, social engagement could also extend to monitoring online conversations and jumping in on relevant topics to extend reach and awareness.
Take Aways:
- Develop a posting schedule for your social channels
- Post your content across all social channels repeatedly
- Engage your audience by responding to comments and actively inserting yourself into relevant conversations
Leveraging Additional Content
There’s only so much you can post and repost the same content, but as a thought leader, you likely have a rich bank of older content you can repurpose to further your campaign (and if you don’t, it’s a good idea to create some!)
In our TED impact campaign, we included older content in our social posting schedule — both to provide some variety and to bolster efforts to build context around the campaign’s key messaging. This included articles our client had previously published as well as a series of new videos we had her create (recorded herself, on her phone) to elaborate on the messages in her TED Talk.
Finally, if your content has a news hook, consider a PR strategy that enables you to get your voice into mainstream media outlets. Our client’s TED Talk captured media attention around the globe, and after a couple of hours of consultation with our PR specialist, she felt confident conducting interviews with everyone from The Guardian to Rolling Stone to InStyle Magazine.
Take Aways:
- Leverage existing content into your campaign messaging
- Develop a PR strategy, if applicable
Need help with an impact campaign for your thought leadership content? Get in touch, we’d love to chat!
