First Rule of Thought Leadership: Write What You Want to Be Noticed For
The biggest mistake you can make when deciding to start building your thought leadership portfolio is to use AI.
AI seems like the perfect shortcut, especially if you use AI in other parts of your business. But if you use AI for thought leadership, you are bringing neither thoughts nor leadership to your work.
The purpose of being a thought leader is to build a platform where people can start to know, like, and trust you. You want to stand out from the crowd. Generative AI does not innovate. It can only remix work that has already been published. AI is locked into past performance.
You want to show that your thinking evolves with circumstances. You need to show that you are on the bleeding edge of ideas, that you can change your mind when new data is discovered.
You don’t want to show that you can outsource your thinking to an LLM that isn’t capable of original thought.
Many executives get stuck on choosing the right topics for their thought leadership blog posts and articles. This is where so many make the fatal mistake of using AI to ideate. You might think you are safe if you only use AI to come up with blog post ideas that you write yourself or that you work with a ghostwriter to bring to life.
But the truth is, you will not generate any clever takes or perspectives using generative AI to come up with a list of possible topics. You will find that you end up with a list of things everyone is talking about.
How to Choose Your Thought Leadership Topics
You’re busy. I get it. If you cannot use AI to come up with topics, how do you know what to write about?
The first rule of thought leadership is to write what you want to be noticed for,
You are not chasing trends; you are creating them.
What are you passionate about? What do you want everyone to be doing more of? I’ve been writing online for more than fourteen years. When I’m not writing copy and content for clients or ghosting articles and books, I write about what I most want to be noticed for,
I write about being deeply human. Everything I write about under my name is some variation on this theme. Even my haiku comics point back to this central idea.
You have your own obsessions. I once had a client who was interested in how top performers respond to feedback. Together we wrote a weekly series that explored things like how pro-athletes use coaches, how market signals alter corporate behavior, and dozens of other things that all related back to the core idea of feedback.
Often, we would pick a current event and look at it through the lens of feedback.
Most people mistakenly think coming up with ideas is the hardest part of writing.
Ideas are not precious. Ideas are everywhere. The key to creating meaningful thought leadership content isn’t finding the perfect idea. It’s finding an idea that fits what you want to be noticed for and then executing on that idea.
A bad idea executed with excellence will always outperform a good idea executed poorly.
If you want your thought leadership portfolio to start getting more attention, start by writing about what you want to be noticed for. If you do this well, over a long enough time, you will create your own trends.
You will find your ideal audience, and they will find it easy to know, like, and trust you.
Jason McBride is a freelance ghostwriter and B2B copywriter. He works with executives, founders, and industry leaders to create meaningful thought leadership posts, articles, and books that make a difference in the world.
