8 Ways to Promote and Grow Your Thought Leadership Platform

After you’ve created your thought leadership platform (read here to learn how), one of the next steps is attract your target demographic. Through over a thousand of conversations with business and real estate thought leaders, as well as from building a large following of my own, I’ve discovered the most effective ways to attract people to a thought leadership platform.

Here are the top 8 ways to promote your thought leadership platform and grow your audience.

1. Build an opt-in page

First, build an opt-in page or button for your website. The main purpose of an opt-in is to capture email addresses and build an email list.

The key to a powerful opt-in page is the offering. You need to give people a reason to provide you with their email address. A poor opt-in page, for example, would read “Please enter your email address to be sent an update when new content is posted.” Instead, you want to create a piece of valuable content and exchange that for their contact information. For example, on the main page of my website, I have an opt-in banner presented front and center that reads “Free Download of 24 Proven Ways to Get Off-Market Deals” and a button that reads “Get Access!” I’ve also place the banner at the top of certain pages on my website, like the podcast and blog page. Once someone enters their email address, they are automatically sent a document with 24 ways to find off-market deals.

Additionally, I’ve created a pop-up opt-in that appears a few seconds after a visitor views a page other than my main page. Currently, the opt-in reads “How do I break into the multifamily syndication business? is the most common question I receive. These 6 amazing powerful ways are proven to get your foot in the door! Are you ready? Don’t miss this!” Again, once someone enters their email address, they are automatically sent a document with 6 ways to break into the syndication industry.

As you can see, both of my offerings are related to apartment syndication. That’s because my secondary target audience are individuals interested in becoming apartment syndicators. Therefore, you should create an offering that is specific to your target audience, rather than something general to real estate investing. That way, you’ll know that every email address captured is a qualified lead.

If you are an apartment syndicator, your primary target audience are accredited investors. So, you also want to create a lead capture page where accredited investors interested in passively investing in your deals have a way to provide you with their information. For an example, here is the opt-in page I have for my website: www.investwithjoe.com. It can be accessed either on my main page or by Googling Invest With Joe. Considering purchasing a domain name like www.investwith(your name).com. If you aren’t an apartment syndicator, create a separate lead capture form based on your target customer or primary outcome (e.g. a form for home owners who are interested in selling their primary residence).

2. Create a BiggerPockets Pro Account

A BiggerPockets Pro account is another great tool for promoting your thought leadership platform.

First, create a forum signature, which allows you to input your contact information, company name, logo and website/thought leadership platform link. Then, set up forum keyword alerts so that you will be notified whenever someone submits a post that is related to your niche. As an apartment syndicator, the important keywords I have are “market name,” apartment,” “multifamily,” “syndication,” and “accredited.”

Whenever you are notified of a new post that contains your keyword, you can submit a reply and anyone who reads that thread will see your response, as well as the link to your website or thought leadership platform. Also, you can start a forum thread of your own, making sure you include the relevant keywords so other apartment investors or syndicators who have keyword alerts setup will be notified and will read your post. Both of these strategies will drive traffic to your website or thought leadership platform.

Additionally, you can use the BiggerPockets member blog function to publish or republish your thought leadership content. You can even include crosslinks back to content on your website, but I recommend reading the rules of the blog before doing so.

3. Send out a newsletter

Generate and send out a newsletter to the email list you’re building from your opt-in forms. Since you are already creating valuable content on a consistent basis, the newsletter is an opportunity to repurpose that content. Depending on how much content you’re creating, you can start with a monthly newsletter, but the goal is to eventually work towards sending out a weekly newsletter.

A great tip for increasing the amount of content you create is repurposing previous published content. For example, if your thought leadership platform is a podcast, write a blog post that summarizes the main takeaways from the interview and include both the podcast and the blog post in your newsletter.

The service I use to create my newsletters is MailChimp. Click here for an example of my weekly newsletter, where I include all of the new content I created the previous week.

4. Promote content through others people’s platforms

If are doing an interview-based thought leadership platform, which I strongly recommend, ask your guests to promote your content on their website, social media and newsletter. Just be sure to include links back to your website or an opt-in button to capture email addresses.

I’ve found that having your content featured in other people’s newsletters is the best approach. So, when you are reaching out to individuals to be a guest on your thought leadership platform, ask them to commit to publishing the content in their next newsletter or simply sending the link to their email list after the interview has gone live.

5. Become a guest on other people’s platforms

In addition to having other people promote your content in their newsletter, you can also reach out to other thought leaders and become a guest on their platform – whether it is being interviewed on their podcast or writing a guest post for their blog.

I interviewed Jessica Rhodes, the founder of a premier guest booking agency for podcasters, on my episode 1013 of my podcast (click here for the full interview). From this interview, I created a blog post entitled “The Ultimate Guide to Getting Booked as a Guest on ANY Podcast” (click here to read the post) where I outline – as the title implies – how to approach getting on other podcasts.

6. Leverage social media

The simplest way to promote your thought leadership platform is to publish new content on social media. At first, you can manually publish content across multiple social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Or, if your thought leadership platform is a podcast, the hosting site you use should have a function that will automatically submit a post to the different social media sites each time you post a new episode. And you can do the same on YouTube.

As you build up a library of content, you can begin to republish old content. There are many online services that will allow you to create a schedule to automatically post old content at a specified time. Two providers that I’ve had success with are MeetEdgar and SmarterQueue. Currently, I have two older pieces of content scheduled to be posted on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn each day, on top of posting a new blog post and podcast.

7. Build a Facebook community

A great way to not only attract new listeners or viewers, but to also create loyalty with your current followers is to build a Facebook community. For example, I created a Facebook community called “Best Ever Show Community.” It is a place where the Best Ever listeners can interact with me, each other, and my guests.

My goal for the group is to create a community where everyone is helping each other reach the next level in their business and lives. Along with that, it is a place where I encourage everyone to ask and answer questions, add likeminded individuals, post any asks or needs they have, share insightful articles, books, videos, podcast, etc., tell us about themselves and their focus and post success stories. Additionally, a few times a week, I will create posts with the purpose of creating conversations within the group. For example, I will ask a question, like “where do most of your deals come from?”, and members of the group will provide their answers. The more interactions and conversations you have, the more valuable the community and the larger it will grow.

8. End with a call-to-action

Finally, for any content you create, end with a call to action. You should tell everyone listening to your podcast, watching your YouTube video or reading your blog post to perform a specific task.

Examples of call-to-actions are:

• 1.A strong question to promote a conversation in the comment section
• 2.A link to a related piece of content
• 3.Send them to your website page
• 4.Subscribe and leave a review
• 5.Opt-in page that offers a valuable piece of content in exchange for their email address

For more information on how to increase traffic to your website and customer conversion, read this Q&A with Online Marketing Expert Neil Patel: 6 Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic

What have you found to be the best way to promote content?