Marketing and thought leadership go hand-in-hand, yet far too many who aspire toward innovation in their industry don’t understand the best thought leadership marketing practices for growth. And we’re talking about growth in their reach as well as the evolution of their work itself.
The reality is, becoming a thought leader happens in stages. It’s not simply producing and pushing out content on social media. Content creation is an aspect of thought leadership marketing, but it’s not what makes us a thought leader, nor is it the best channel to focus on for growth.
The best way to establish authority, influence, and leadership in our field is by actively and continuously developing our ideas to deeper levels with more unique angles. And while it might feel backward, specific thought leadership marketing strategies support this more than others.
Unclear what that means?
Don’t worry, we’re about to lay it all out!
Here are four thought leadership marketing practices we recommend if you’re focused on growth:
1. Build and nurture aligned relationships.
Relationships are everything, yet they’re often overlooked as a thought leadership marketing growth strategy because one-to-one efforts can feel slow in these fast-moving times. That’s because it’s not just about hitting the friend, follow, or connect button; you actually have to follow, connect, and engage with their content, taking the time to build each relationship. That’s why “aligned” is key.
Yes, quality relationships take time to build, but I can speak from personal experience when I say that it’s always time well spent, and not just for your growth. The friendships you form in the early stages of your thought leadership development are incredibly fulfilling on a personal level because you’re no longer “going it alone.” You have people in your corner who support you and your work, and who will champion it, no matter the stage. Even better, I’ve seen many clusters of connections reach higher levels of success by sticking together because a rising tide truly lifts all boats.
Here are a few different kinds of relationships to consider:
Industry experts. These may be the best of the best or the up-and-coming stars in your industry. Either way, it’s crucial that you build relationships with other thought leaders and experts in your topic of choice. Thought leadership is elevated by exchanging ideas, experiences, and insights with those who see the world differently. By seeking opportunities for deeper collaboration with other experts, or even those you see as emerging voices in your field, you open yourself up to a broader range of perspectives that can push your thinking to new heights. Pick one to three people who come to mind, and start following and engaging with their content regularly, with zero ask. Be in their world, add to their conversations without centering your own (or yourself), and allow the relationship to evolve as it will. Even if you never get a response from these supportive efforts, they’ll recognize your name the next time you’re in the same room. That matters, and it evolves over time.
Potential partnerships. Partnerships can be an incredibly fruitful thought leadership marketing strategy, and not just financially. Being in conversation and collaboration with partners around our thought leadership topics can help us evolve them more quickly, bringing them to new audiences and expanding our perspective. These may be referral partners if you have an offering related to your thought leadership, or they may be someone with whom you co-create, such as a joint webinar, offering, or summit. The key is to pick partners who have the same values and work ethics, who are having the same conversation or one that complements yours, and who are someone you enjoy collaborating with. While choosing aligned partners can be incredibly beneficial, selecting the wrong ones can be detrimental, bringing down the quality of your work and your authority in the process.
Brand champions. Who are the people who are most engaged with your work? The ones who like, comment, and share practically everything you put out? These are your champions, and they can be some of the most beneficial relationships to build and nurture. That’s because when someone is a champion of your work, they become a thought leadership marketing channel in and of themselves. They’ll reshare your content with their people, and even if that audience is small, it still has a positive effect. They’ll sign up for everything you offer and become affiliates or brand ambassadors if given the opportunity. Even better, they’ll also provide you with truly constructive feedback when needed, because they believe in you and your work. They want to help and are eager to be involved. So involve them!
Relationships have always been a significant part of building my thought leadership and evolving my body of work, a trend that has been true for many incredible teachers across various industries. While everyone has their own relationship to people and relationships, we can’t recommend focusing on building relationships enough. Make it the cornerstone of your thought leadership marketing strategy, and we promise, your work will be better for it.
2. Create and analyze test channels.
One of the most important aspects of thought leadership marketing (and thought leadership in general) is evolving your conversations, frameworks, processes, models, ideas, and theories. Thought leadership isn’t static, at least not while we’re still alive and working! And even once we’re no longer part of the conversation, most quality thought leadership (that’s high-caliber and impactful for the industry it serves) continues to evolve thanks to the efforts of those who take our work and build upon it from where we left off.
Test channels are an essential starting point for any body of work because they provide an opportunity to see what resonates and what doesn’t, what people respond to, engage with, and share, and where people have questions, counter ideas, or present challenges we haven’t considered. Thought leadership doesn’t evolve in a vacuum; it evolves in real-world applications.
If we present our work as thought leadership yet are unwilling to hear differing opinions, examine the actual data, or continually challenge ourselves and our perspectives on our chosen topics, then we’re not truly thought leaders. We’re likely just content creators, coaches, strategists, or other talking heads who are deeply attached to our ideas. The reasons behind this can be things like trauma, core wounding, subconscious programming, personal biases, fear, or ego—none of which serve our audience, industry, or thought leadership.
Here are some test channels to consider:
Social media. While we don’t recommend social media as a primary thought leadership marketing strategy because it loses traction within seconds to minutes to maybe hours, it can be a great test channel, especially if it’s where your audience spends their time. Depending on the platform you choose, public engagement metrics may not make the most sense to track (since they’re not always indicative of actual content consumption). For example, if you choose Instagram as your test channel, things like shares and saves are far more telling than likes. Likes can indicate that someone has read and liked the content, but they may also be showing support or simply enjoying the imagery. On LinkedIn, it’s likely reposts and comments that stand out, whereas on YouTube, you want to look at video watch times.
Newsletter. This might be on a platform like Substack, or it might be your own email list that you’ve grown over time. Regardless, email newsletters are an excellent way to test out your ideas with an audience that has already shown interest in your work. They opted in at some point, agreeing to receive emails from you! Treat your emails like blog posts, essays, or articles, and take note of which ones receive the most opens, clicks, and even replies. A newsletter is also a great place to check the temperature of your audience. What’s landing for them and what’s not? What do they want to hear more of? What questions do they have? Don’t be afraid to ask them direct questions, send polls and surveys, or invite them to reply directly. Don’t have a newsletter? Please consider it. Owning your list rather than hoping the social media overlords don’t shadowban or delete your account is much better.
Podcasting. Starting a podcast of your own is a great test channel, especially if you have both audio and video, because you can review the feed and YouTube statistics. If you prefer talking over writing, it’s also a more seamless way to get your ideas into the world, and you can certainly start with audio-only if that’s a lower barrier to entry for you. The metrics you want to note here are the number of downloads and the length of those listens, as these will indicate which episodes are the most engaging to your audience. Additionally, podcasting may be a step up on your content evolution journey, not the starting point. Meaning you take what does well during your social media or newsletters tests, then create a more in-depth podcast episode about that topic to see how it does on that channel. Podcast guesting is also a thought leadership marketing strategy that we use ourselves and highly recommend!
Coffee chats. In-person or live conversations with your ideal audience are a powerful way to gather immediate, real-time feedback on your thought leadership concepts. Not only do you get to share your ideas, frameworks, and theories, but you also get to do so from the context of their actual experiences. You’ll see and hear what lands and what doesn’t, and you’ll receive questions, disagreements, and different opinions right then and there. The more you have, the more clarity you’ll receive, and then you can evolve from there.
Keep in mind, this isn’t about ego; it’s about metrics and strategy on a foundational level.
Some of our content won’t land at all, and that’s crucial data! It might tell us that we didn’t position the idea correctly, that our topic is something that platforms will shadowban, or that it’s not what our audience wants to hear (and possibly that our audience isn’t on that channel at all). It might tell us that we’re ahead of our time, and we need to figure out a bridge conversation, or that we need to simplify our concepts so that people can digest them.
It doesn’t tell us that our ideas are bad, no one cares what we have to say, or that our mean friend from middle school was right and we are ugly and nobody wants to look at us. Keep the stories out of the mix, and get support if any old traumas and core wounds are triggered.
3. Focus on visibility efforts.
As we mentioned above, thought leadership can’t be developed in a vacuum, which is why one of the thought leadership marketing strategies we recommend is focusing on visibility. This is about getting your conversations in front of more of the right people.
Not only does expanded visibility support testing and evolving our ideas, but it also enables us to grow our impact, influence, and authority in our chosen topics.
Here are some types of visibility to consider:
Giving interviews. Whether it’s on your local news station (which is a great PR play), a newspaper or magazine article, or guesting on other people’s podcasts, interviews are an easy and often enjoyable way to grow your thought leadership. You get to show up, talk about what you love with an engaged host, and share your ideas with a warm audience, meaning they already know the show and will welcome your presence and ideas because it’s a trusted resource for them. Plus, podcasts are extremely popular right now! Research shows that 109.1 million people in the United States listened to podcasts this year, representing a 5.31% increase from 2023. Additionally, podcast consumption is also growing globally, with projections reaching 619 million listeners by 2026.1
Becoming a guest expert or contributor. There are several ways to become a guest expert and contributor, including writing for authoritative publications and teaching guest workshops or training sessions in collaboration with aligned organizations or thought leaders. This might look like being a guest expert in someone else’s program, hosting a collaborative webinar or summit with other, related thought leaders, or becoming a regular contributor to industry-specific publications and websites. Similar to giving interviews, as a guest expert, you’re engaging with a warm audience who wants to hear what you have to say. Additionally, you’re building relationships with other people in your field (or related fields), which, as we noted in the first thought leadership marketing strategy, is essential to growing your reach and positive impact.
Securing media features or mentions. While writing an article for major publications like Forbes or The New Yorker remains a significant achievement, even in this highly digital age, securing smaller features, such as being quoted as a source or example in larger articles related to your thought leadership topic, is also a major win. Using tools like Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a great way to secure these smaller features (with smaller being relative compared to a full article, not meaning “less than” in any way). HARO is a daily email newsletter that sends pitch, feature, and interview requests from actual journalists, hosts, and publications seeking experts to contribute to a specific topic. Securing media features builds your authority, especially with your audience, way for additional opportunities, as many reporters and other publications will reach out for more if they like what you have to say.
In addition to greater visibility and a wider reach, all of these options support your SEO efforts, as many will provide a link back to your website from theirs. The more domain authority they have, the better it will position your site for ranking, especially if they use your keywords in the headline, public-facing and search engine crawlable text, or even the anchor link (the word that they hyperlink back to your website).
While we don’t recommend hyper-focusing your visibility efforts solely on your target keywords, if you can weave them in or have a relationship where you can request it, definitely do so.
Which leads us to…
4. Implement search engine optimization (SEO).
SEO is a set of strategies and practices designed to improve a website’s (or piece of content’s) visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It’s the foundation for having your thought leadership content show up in the top results for the things your audience and industry peers are actively searching for, including AI search and recommendations.
When designed well and executed strategically, SEO-based content allows you to create and produce compelling pieces that grow in visibility, reach, and conversions over time.
It’s important to note that a crucial piece of SEO work is having your own website.
Yes, you can utilize SEO on your Substack newsletter, your podcast feed, or your YouTube channel. And as of July 14th, 2025, even your Instagram! But something you’ll see us stress over and over is the importance of owning your content, platform, and audience (obviously not the people themselves, but their contact information after they consent to staying connected with you).
That’s not because we want to sell you a website (though we can definitely help!); it’s because the stability of third-party platforms is a giant question mark these days.
Social platforms run on algorithms and are controlled by the most privileged and politically and financially motivated people on the planet. They want you to post content so that they can make money from ads, which is also why they’ll reduce your reach. They either don’t want you saying things that take people out of fun, shopping mode, or they want you to pay-to-play, practically requiring that you pay to “boost” your content to the people who chose to follow you. Worse yet, you can lose that platform and audience at any time, for any reason, and not recover it.
Rather than provide you with a lengthy list of steps to get started (though you can read some here), we recommend downloading our free, step-by-step guide to creating a brand and body of work that stands out and thrives in the AI age.
This in-depth workbook will walk you through creating unique brand positioning, starting your keyword research, developing a signature process (which is crucial for thought leadership!), setting up your website, and building a funnel that doesn’t feel like a funnel through building your Channel for Change and utilizing some revolution-based marketing practices.
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While there’s plenty more that goes into becoming a thought leader, these four thought leadership marketing strategies will position you for long-term growth.
Regardless of the topic of your thought leadership or where you are in the building and growth process, it’s essential to engage others as you evolve. It’s essential to look at the metrics, make informed decisions, and stay open to what you don’t know that you don’t know. We hope you’ll give these thought leadership marketing strategies a try!
