What is the happy discovery in thought leadership?

You’re mooching around the internet or Instagram or LinkedIn.

You probably should be reconciling your Xero, but no. Here you are. 

Procrastiscrolling. 

A headline catches your eye. Or someone you admire has tagged someone. 

A little light bulb goes off in your head. 

Who’s this? Hmm, lemme check this out. 

You click. 

You arrive. Perhaps you land on their Instagram, their website or whatevs. 

You poke around. 

You read a few posts, watch a few videos. 

You LIKE. A lot. 

You think to yourself: 

Who IS this person?

Why haven’t I heard of them before? 

I’m really into their content. 

I can tell they’re good. 

They speak to me. 

The first thing you feel? Admiration. 

Alongside that, you might feel a flash of envy. Goddammit. 

You want what they have. 

Their audience, messaging or cheekbones. 

If you can get past the twinge of envy, you’re back in the admiration zone. 

You scroll weeks back into Instagram. 

You devour all their videos, blogs, TikToks or podcasts. 

That, my internet friend, is the happy discovery. 

It’s the feeling you get when you find someone with a cool vibe.

Because their content is shit-hot. 

And it’s the feeling you want to create for people when they discover YOU. 

So how do you do it?

And after that, how do you keep them in that discovery zone, and turn them into paying customers? 

First of all, you need to have the mindset. You need to believe on some level that it’s possible for you to achieve it. 

I’m not woo woo. So I’m not gonna tell you to manifest or journal or say affirmations every day. 

But on some level, you do have to believe that there’s no reason why you can’t achieve this. 

Let me repeat. You, as an ambitious business owner, can build a library of cool thought leadership content. Binge-worthy content. 

Ideally, this content will be on your website, rather than your Instagram or other social media platform. 

Because it’s an asset you own. And it’s more discoverable. Yes, I’m talking about blog articles. 

After all, it’s just writing articles

I’d rather write articles than, say, attend a Tony Robbins seminar and walk over hot coals. 

Plus, it’s cheap. You can write the articles yourself. 

But Kate, I hate writing.

Well, copywriters are really affordable. A few hundred bucks will get you a good article. And the more you work with a copywriter, the better they get at writing on your behalf. (As an ex-copywriter, my goal was always to produce content that your best friend would think you’d written.)

So, building your library of content, it needs to be: 

• focused on your core topic 
• written to engage your customers 
• solving a problem, teaching them something 
• readable 
• optimised for SEO searches 
• a reflection of your personal brand 

It can also, but not always, be optimised for search with focus keywords. This means you choose a keyword that is commonly searched on Google and write an article about it. In the hopes that Google will pick your content and rank it in searches. So when people search ‘salsa dancing coach’ or ‘thought leadership consulting’ they find you. 

You can read more about this in my guide to finding thought leadership topics. 

Psst. See what I did there? I threw in my own keyword as an example and linked it to my services blog. I’m sneaky like that. That’s what you do in your library. 

You build links

When you have a few articles published, you start linking to them. This makes your content more bingeworthy. You want to make it super easy for people to discover your next amazing piece of content. 

So you link. 

Check out your favourite news platform. You’ll see links everywhere. They want you to hang around on their site, so you can see more ads and they make more money. 

So while you are reading about the latest global economic developments or mind-boggling optical illusion that has taken over the internet, you’re getting fed a bunch o’ links. 

Check out this example from news.com.au.

You can see the links in the ‘more coverage’ and ‘more from wellbeing’.  

It’s all designed to capture your attention and keep you on the site longer. You get lured into the content and forget about calling back your VIP client or reheating leftovers for the kids’ dinner. 

Anyway, you can do the same with your content. Mostly because you want people to see all your great thought leadership articles. But also because of dwell time. 

You want a good dwell time score on your website 

Even more than you want to eliminate the new stirrup pants trend. (Yes, they are back.) 

Essentially, dwell time is the proper way to describe the time people spend hanging around on your website. 

And smart SEO people think it’s a Google ranking factor. I know because I Googled ‘is dwell time a ranking factor?’ and found this. You can nerd out about it dwell time, or just aim to have people hanging your site with cool content. I choose the latter. 

So, by linking to your other content,you encourage people to discover it. You can also link to your services pages, aka moneymaking pages. You want to drive people there, obvs. So you can sell more stuff. Ultimately that’s the goal. 

So back to the happy discovery

To create a happy discovery moment with your audience, you:

1. get found on Google and social platforms, where you share thought leadership content that will:
2. drive people to your website, and when they get there, they discover:
3. a library of cool content about your topic, which is linked really well to:
4. even more cool content, allowing them to have a nice long dwell on your website which: 
   1. makes them trust you as the clever smart helpful person you are 
   2. shows Google that your awesome content is worth ranking high in search terms about these topics 
5. Then, hopefully they convert by:
   1. downloading your lead magnet, where you can nurture them into loyalty 
   2. or buying from you straight away (why not?) 
   3. following you on socials, so they can stalk you for a bit while you slowly persuade them how great you are to work with

Either way, you’ve got them captured, and it’s only a matter of time until they do one of three things: 

• they are persuaded, and they buy from you = win
• they are persuaded, but don’t buy, but they follow your free advice, recommend you and support you by commenting, sharing and engaging on your free content = also a win
• they decide you aren’t for them and depart your world = also win, because they self-eliminate from being a potential customer of yours 

It doesn’t happen overnight 

Building up your thought leadership library takes time. Because you are a busy biz person wearing all the biz hats. Plus, you might have a life outside work? You’ve probably got yoga and watching Hard Quiz and eating lasagne to do. 

Some people say to write 11 articles a month, or some crazy shit. But who has the time? I myself aim for once a week, and lately, I have been failing drastically. 

So do your best. I say two articles per month is an absolute win. One per month is also pretty great too. Anything more than that? You absolute champion. 

But the great thing about building a library of thought leadership content? 

It’s evergreen

Unlike social posts that die within a day or so of publication, your articles live forever. Once they start ranking they tend to keep ranking. 

And as you build your library you rank for more and more search terms amd you keep getting discovered more and more often. 

Before you know it, you are rolling in cash and your husband is politely asking you to buy him new golf clubs. And you’re considering it.

Want to work with me? 

Free: get a weekly tip from me on how to grow your organic following 

For an hour: book a thought leadership strategy power hour

For a day: book a VIP strategy day

For 100 days: get my dedicated attention as we sort your entire strategy with my 1:1 thought leadership consulting  

More reading for your eyeballs 

Read my epic guide to thought leadership in 2022. It’s epic. 

Learn how to find thought leadership topics 

Check out my thought leadership daily checklist 

The seven types of people you meet in group coaching