Using LinkedIn for Thought-Leadership as an Industrial Product Distributor

Let’s add another term to our extensive list of B2B marketing-related vocabulary: thought leadership. Perhaps you’ve heard the term before in business circles or from someplace online and wondered whether your business may have the potential to become a thought leader. Spoiler: it certainly can. But doing so doesn’t happen overnight. To become a genuine thought leader, your business will need to be on the cutting edge. Read on to find out what being a thought leader entails, how to achieve it, and why using LinkedIn for thought-leadership is the best option.

What’s Thought Leadership?

Essentially, thought leadership is the idea of becoming a leader within a given field. A thought leader has become well-known, established, and trusted. Think of the academic world – there are leading researchers in the Communication, Biology, and Psychology fields just as there are leaders in marketing, technology, and manufacturing. These individuals – or, most likely, companies – are the leaders in their respective areas. They set the tone for the future of the industry, and their methods of operation become a model for those who follow.

How Can I Become a Thought Leader?

Unfortunately, there is no sure-fire way of becoming a thought leader. If there were a perfect blueprint to doing so, everybody would hop on board and eliminate the idea of thought leadership. There are, however, a handful of tips in mind that will set you well on your way to becoming a thought leader. The first technique is to stay focused. Rather than publishing a huge variety of contact or trying to produce a wide range of products, stick to a small number of what you do best. Do research to find out what exactly you do that’s most efficient and cost-effective. Once you have, you’ll likely see yourself as an industry leader in the department, and that’s a great start.

The next step is to pay close attention to your audience, and study that demographic. A major part of becoming a thought leader is to, in a way, predict the future. Listen to your consumers, think about what you can do to improve, and be one step ahead. Good manufacturing companies will keep up with the market and consistently remain competitive. The great ones, however, serve to set the standard for its own competition.

Why LinkedIn?

Every social media platform comes with its pitfalls and benefits. When striving for thought leadership, though, LinkedIn is tough to beat. LinkedIn offers an excellent platform for thought leadership because of its ability to foster a professional environment. Much of Facebook is cluttered with advertising and trivial content, whereas with LinkedIn, you have the ability to connect with others within the industry for relevant discussion. You can also quickly navigate to company pages with whom you are competing to discover how to best tweak your content and business ideas. It may even be helpful to research content from thought leaders in unrelated fields. The content may not be relevant to you as a manufacturer, but you can still pick out the ways in which they have successful achieved thought leadership.

On LinkedIn, be sure to consistently publish blogs and other methods of content. Write about your manufacturing goals and what you see changing in the future. Be transparent by communicating with other industry leaders and explain why your business is thriving. When other manufacturing businesses research to find out more about the industry, they’ll be able to see that yours stands out for the rest.

If you’d like to learn more about the idea of using LinkedIn to become a thought leader, contact us at RedMoxy. We’ve been successful in serving our manufacturing clients to becoming a force in their industry. Click here or call (262) 303-4238.