How to Use Writing as a Thought Leader  ## Metadata - Author: [[Steal the Show with Michael Port]] - Full Title: How to Use Writing as a Thought Leader - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/1672ab3c-cac1-4cf7-bd70-a53f7874ef66 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Brands Are Stories with Core Values** - Brands are narratives reflecting core values and shared stories with audiences. - Successful branding aligns values internally and externally between team and audience. Transcript: Speaker 2 Definitely. Yeah. So I think you're right to say that people do tend to think of branding as how something looks. And they think of the assets. They think of the logo. They think of the color schemes, all this kind of thing. Obviously that's a hugely important part of branding. It's obviously central to an organization or any given thought leaders brand. But it's not the whole brand. You talked about values, brands are stories and they're narratives. They're stories that institutions or organizations or thought leaders or even just people, individual human beings, tell both to themselves and about themselves in order to accomplish What they want to accomplish in order to communicate with the audience they want to communicate with. So that's how I think about brands. I try to think about them as narratives or stories. And if that's your starting point, you realize that a brand is so much more than just the suite of colors that you pick for your organization. It's you have to start I think much deeper. You have to go much further under the hood so to speak and really, really think about what do I care about deeply? What do I want? What I want my audience to do? What I want to communicate with them? What do I have in commonality with them? What are our shared values? So much of this process is about clearing things away. It's about knowing what you are not interested in about knowing what you don't, you know, maybe you like but aren't passionate about. It's about really clearing away a lot of unneeded interests or ideas until you're down to the core values that you have and that are in alignment with your audience. And if you have a team, if you're an entrepreneur and you have an organization, ideally you would want those values to be in alignment with your team too. So you have this sort of straight line alignment around a core set of values between your internal organization, yourself, your message or the story that your brand is telling and then Your audience. ([Time 0:01:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/26092f31-d6ed-420a-8573-8661d59b4d51)) - **Integrity Builds Trust and Differentiation** - Authenticity and integrity in thought leadership build trust and differentiate your brand. - Simply doing what you say you will do establishes a strong reputation without overt claims. Transcript: Speaker 1 Behind the brand may or may not actually live that brand. And that's true across the world. The older you get, the more you see it. But when you are aligned, it becomes, at least in this industry, a major differentiator. This is something that was shocking to me early in my career in thought leadership. Because sometimes I'd get off stage or I'd meet somebody who read a book and they'd say, Oh my God, you're exactly like I thought you'd be. Thank you. Or I want to thank you for your integrity. And I was really uncomfortable with that at first, because it just seemed weird. Meaning, integrity should be table stakes. Yeah, like that's like that should just be a baseline. You shouldn't get a pat on the back for being who you say you are. But I realized over time, Oh, wow, I'm developing this reputation for integrity without actually talking about integrity. ([Time 0:04:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/06b88502-9f5b-47d0-ad70-5d83d46770f4)) - **Chisel Brand Identity from Authenticity** - Effective brand identity is about chiseling away inauthentic elements to reveal true values. - Authentic values resonate deeply and can’t be chosen superficially like shopping for products. Transcript: Speaker 2 I love that question. And ideally, it's the latter, right? As I mentioned before, so much of this deeper branding work is about clearing things away. It's about it's about deciding what doesn't work, what isn't part of you and the story that you make up. And this is honestly true, whether you're a thought leader or a large company, there's a lot of reflection and introspection here. There's a lot of really kind of looking inward and thinking very critically about those common core values. I'll say this too. You know, a lot of, I think, you know, organizations realize that this is important work to do at some point in the past. And unfortunately, especially a lot of bigger organizations, they know they have to do this, but they do kind of treat it a little bit like going shopping for values, right? Like there's a, there's a, like, oh, we know we need to have deeper values that will shape our brand and thus target us towards our audience and the kind of people that we want to be having Conversations with. So let's go figure out what the best ones are to make the, to make that happen, basically. And people can smell authenticity, especially these days when we're, we're all washing stories, we're all washing content. We're so overstimulated more than ever in terms of getting information from people who are selling to us or advertising to us on Instagram or on television, whatever it may be. And people are better than ever at sussing out what feels phony. And it's so funny, Michael, that you talk about, you know, authenticity and integrity getting you lots of hats on the back. While you're saying, I can't believe I'm getting hats on the back for this, this should be table stakes. In a way, it's that simple and it's that complicated. It really is about you can't just kind of slap on some values like, oh, like, our values are going to be honesty or hard work. You can't just pick them off of a shelf. You actually, you actually really do have to reflect and know who you are and what you offer the world and feel confident in that. And when you clear away everything else, those things become very clear. ([Time 0:06:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1db4ff29-2080-4c02-beb5-c416febd7116)) - **Heroic’s Engaging Brand Voice Example** - Heroic Public Speaking’s brand voice balances 50% thought leader with 50% friend. - The use of direct second-person language 'you' engages and invites the audience into collaboration. Transcript: Speaker 2 I'll first say I'm super lucky as someone who works in communications and in brand image and identity because Heropubic speaking's brand voice and brand identity are very fun. It's a very, very fun story to be telling. And to that point, you know, as I mentioned earlier, brands are stories. Your brand is a story that you're telling to your audience about your audience, but also about you and about your thought leadership and your organization or your work and how how you're Working to change the world and how you're engaging your audience, their stories, which means like all stories, they change. They grow, they evolve, characters go on journeys, they encounter obstacles, they overcome those obstacles. We are attracted to certain values in those things. We buy into those stories and away we go on the journey with that brand. So when I first started at Heropubic speaking, I loved our brand voice. It was described to me as 50% thought leader, 50% friend. And I love how simple that is. I would encourage anybody who's thinking about their brand voice, whether they're an individual thought leader or they're someone leading a team, whatever it may be, if you can simplify It that well, where you can boil it down to something that pretty much anybody in this line of work can understand very quickly, 50% this, 50% that maybe it's a third this, a third that, A third something else, whatever it may be, a simple illustration of how you communicate is great for new team members for thinking, okay, how do I frame something? It helps guide your decisions when you do your brand communications. So when I started at Heropubic speaking, we had a very, very engaging, very, very friendly voice. One of the most interesting things to me when I started was how much our communications were written in second person. We're talking about you. The website copy says you. It's very direct. That's uncommon. That's very uncommon. And I think it makes Heropubic speaking more direct, more effective, more engaging in how we talk to our target audience. And it makes them feel brought into something with us. If I'm talking about you, the implications that there's also in me, there's us together. And there's an invitation in that language and in that brand voice for us to do more together, to accomplish things together. Which of course is one of our core values. Speaker 1 It's one of our core four. We can do more together than alone. Speaker 2 Absolutely. Yes. So there's right there, there is alignment between the organization's values and how it's communicating. ([Time 0:09:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5682bfe6-363c-4dd9-beda-86517ea156cc)) - **Four Essential Writing Questions** - Before writing, clarify what, who, intended effect, and context in rich detail. - Detailed answers inform tone, content, and strategy for effective communication. Transcript: Speaker 2 They're very simple questions. They're going to sound very simple. They're extremely fundamental. They are very, very important. The first thing is, what is this or what does this need to be? Meaning, am I writing an email campaign? Am I writing a LinkedIn post? Am I writing a book? You have to answer that. And there are whole methodologies about how you go about answering that, how you tell what your audience needs, how you communicate with them. I'm not going to get into that here because it's a separate conversation, but you have to answer that question first. What is this or what does it need to be? And you got to think very, very carefully about that before you start writing. The next is, who's it for? Again, it sounds like a simple question, but it can actually be very complicated depending on the line of work that you're in, depending on the ideas that you're trying to communicate, Depending on who your audience is. Speaker 1 Well, actually, it's, it might sound simple, but for example, you mentioned earlier that in our writing, we speak to one person. When I'm on stage, there are times where I will say, look, this is something we all experience. But generally, what I'm doing is I'm talking to individuals, talking to you, you, you, you. And, you know, if you look at just the introduction to book yourself solid, about 40% of the text in the introduction is the word you, because when somebody picks up a book or they go to A speech or they read a post you put on social or they read your email, they don't care about you, they care about themselves. That's what they care about. Absolutely. They will fall in love with you if you can solve their problems, if you can help them, then they care about you in that way. But first and foremost, it's them. So when you say, who's it for? You would say, well, it's for this person, not my monolithic email list, not like all you guys, right? It's you. And so that will influence how you write that piece. Speaker 2 Absolutely. Yeah, I was going to say this till the end, but I'll say this. The key thing, like I said, there's four questions here that I say before I write anything. The key thing is that they're answered in as much rich detail as possible. The key thing is not that they're simply answered. This is not a checklist. Oh, it's not like, who's it for? A prospect. It's not like that. Speaker 1 Right. My email list. My email list. So is it if I was like, okay, if I was writing something, I say, who's it for? Oh, I'd say, okay, it's for a professional or let's say it's for a consultant who wants to leave consulting and go into thought leadership and they want to build a speech because they Have a speech coming up in six months. They've got a lot of experience on stage, but they never really worked on it. Like, is that, you know, that kind of detail? Yes. Speaker 2 Yeah, the key thing again, it's not a checklist. It's not enough to sit down and say, email for email list, etc, etc. That's not going to do you any good. When you go to write, you're not going to know what you should write. You're not going to know how you should approach it. What's the tone? So the key is that these four things are really answered in as much rich details possible. So the first, what is it or what does it need to be? Two, who is it for? Three, what is the intended effect? And again, this is another thing where you really can't get detailed enough. Make sale is often the end result of these things, but that's the bottom of the marketing funnel, right? So to speak, it needs to be answered in much richer detail than that. What is the intended effect? How do you want your audience to feel? What do you want them to accomplish? How are they going to take what they're hearing from you and react to it and have it change their life in a certain way, even in a small way, but maybe a profound way? It has to be put to their interest and again, much more richly detailed. And the last question is just what is the context? And that's a tough one because you can answer that in, you know, that can be an endless answer, right? So you have to have some limiting principles there. But oftentimes, you know, there's there's something happening in an industry or your business is evolving in a certain way, you're trying to find a new audience. So you always need to clarify the additional context. What is happening around this communication as I'll be delivering it? If you answer those four questions in rich detail, you will know what to write. You'll ([Time 0:20:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b5594c20-bf11-4565-956f-b5b17e250a22)) - **Deeply Understand Your Audience** - Know your audience’s values, aspirations, and context deeply to serve them well. - Tailor communication by anticipating their current beliefs and emotional state. Transcript: Speaker 2 Definitely. So look, I would say this, I outlined those four questions, right, which again, what is it? Who is it for? What's the intended effect and what's the context? Those are all questions about your audience. They have almost nothing to do with you, right? Because your audience's needs are going to shape what is it or maybe their location, right? So if you want to reach an audience on LinkedIn, you're going to post on LinkedIn, right? That's a simplified version of this to illustrate the point. But who is it for? That is you're going to answer that in rich detail. That's literally describing your audience. That is explicitly about your audience. What is the intended effect? There's something that you need to communicate to your audience. There's something that you want them to feel. There's something that you want them to do. You want to move them to feel and think in a different way than they do right now. So you're trying to discern, how do I do that given where they are now? And then what's the context? That's not for you. The context isn't, why didn't get any sleep last night? So, yeah, I'll do this when I get around to it. No, it's what's happening in the industry that I'm trying to communicate with. It's what's happening to who else is trying to communicate with my audience? What other messages are they hearing? What do they currently believe? What's conventional wisdom that I want to disrupt, right? All these questions, they go back to your audience. So Michael, to answer your question, I mean, you just need to know as much about your audience and their values, right, to go back to a common point here. You need to know as much about your audience and their values. I would say their aspirations are really key. You need to know as much about their values and their aspirations as possible. And again, when you do that, it should become very clear how you should communicate because you'll know what they're looking for. And I say aspirations because we all have images of ourselves and we all do things because the story that we're telling ourselves about ourselves. So when you understand your audience's aspirations, right, how they see themselves, how they want to see themselves in the future, you can understand how to better serve them, how To help them get there, what you can offer them, not just in terms of comms, right? It's not magic words. It's about value. It's about providing something real. It's about saying something that makes them actually think and act differently, or maybe gets them to take action, whether it's to come to an event or to buy something, whatever it may Be, your goal is to know as much as you can about them so that you can serve them in their aspirations and bolstering their values. Again, you do that kind of work to understand your audience very, very deeply. It becomes very, very clear how you should ([Time 0:27:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/759bc4ed-9af5-41f7-9d3f-8590c587f1de)) - **Write Daily and Consume Widely** - Write daily, even briefly, to build skill and evolve your voice. - Combine consistent writing with rich consumption of others’ work for creative growth. Transcript: Speaker 2 So we've definitely talked about consume, if you want to be a better writer, read or and have other experiences to, I'm going to talk about that in a second. The other one I would say is write, just write, write every day, write for 10 minutes, write one page a day. It doesn't really matter what it's about. Just keep doing it. You know, if you have an idea that you're excited about, if you have a company that you're thinking about starting, obviously write about that. If you have a value that you're reflecting with or you have an experience on a certain day that makes you think a little bit differently, write about that. The point isn't necessarily what you're writing about. The point is that you write. And Michael, you talked about consistency earlier, doing that every day over time you will evolve, especially if you're feeding your imagination with what you're consuming. If you're reading things that are, you're seeing what other people are doing, how they're writing, how they're communicating, how they're reaching their audiences. To this point, I'll say those two ideas, there's a book called The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. Speaker 1 And she talks about both of those things in that book. Also, it's addressed and still like an artist, which is a very famous book. Speaker 2 I'll throw this out there too, just because I think it's something that can be helpful if you're a busy person, which we both are. And I know that everyone needs some of this podcastness. So, in that book, Cameron talks about something that she calls the artist date, which is once a week, you take your inner artist on a date. If you're not comfortable with the word artist, because a lot of people don't want to see them. I think everyone's an artist, but people are not always comfortable with that word. It doesn't have to be an artist date. It can just be a date with yourself. But it's the whole point is once a week, you take some time out, just once a week, to have an experience with a piece of art on your own to reflect on it. And that is a great way to put on your schedule, in my opinion. Okay, Thursday night, even if it's just going for a walk, listen to a podcast, right? Or maybe it's going to movie, or maybe it's just doing audio, but it could be anything. But it's you and a piece of work that somebody else has made. And that time is set aside for you to spend time with that work of art and to reflect on it. Even if that reflection is, I didn't like this that much. Okay, why didn't you like it? Why didn't connect with you? Where were the shortcomings? Where did it fail to communicate its ideas? What are you going to do to learn from that? And again, you do that over time. You'd make sure that you're taking that time in your life to just be alone with something that someone else produced that might be of interest to you and to consume it, to think about it, To reflect on it, put that on your schedule and do that over time. That compounds very quickly. There's an exponential factor there where you're creating an ecosystem almost of new things coming in and you reflecting on them. Speaker 1 And that's shaping how you express yourself and how you reach your audience. Yeah, I would challenge anyone to try that for say two months and try not to come up with new ideas for your audience. ([Time 0:38:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2efa99e6-e104-4066-b816-70471d155d39)) - **Take Weekly ‘Artist Dates’** - Schedule weekly solo time with art to reflect and ignite creativity. - Use this time to critically engage with works and generate unique ideas. Transcript: Speaker 2 Famous book. I'll throw this out there too, just because I think it's something that can be helpful if you're a busy person, which we both are. And I know that everyone needs some of this podcastness. So, in that book, Cameron talks about something that she calls the artist date, which is once a week, you take your inner artist on a date. If you're not comfortable with the word artist, because a lot of people don't want to see them. I think everyone's an artist, but people are not always comfortable with that word. It doesn't have to be an artist date. It can just be a date with yourself. But it's the whole point is once a week, you take some time out, just once a week, to have an experience with a piece of art on your own to reflect on it. And that is a great way to put on your schedule, in my opinion. Okay, Thursday night, even if it's just going for a walk, listen to a podcast, right? Or maybe it's going to movie, or maybe it's just doing audio, but it could be anything. But it's you and a piece of work that somebody else has made. And that time is set aside for you to spend time with that work of art and to reflect on it. Even if that reflection is, I didn't like this that much. Okay, why didn't you like it? Why didn't connect with you? Where were the shortcomings? Where did it fail to communicate its ideas? What are you going to do to learn from that? And again, you do that over time. You'd make sure that you're taking that time in your life to just be alone with something that someone else produced that might be of interest to you and to consume it, to think about it, To reflect on it, put that on your schedule and do that over time. That compounds very quickly. There's an exponential factor there where you're creating an ecosystem almost of new things coming in and ([Time 0:39:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/26b1024d-d7ef-4bc1-98af-fbb9f156aa43))