Michael Brenner

Michael Brenner has been recognized as a Forbes top CMO influencer, and a Top Business Keynote Speaker by the Huffington Post. He is CEO of Marketing Insider Group, author of The Content Formula, and he helps businesses just like yours to create content that converts and helps transform culture to achieve results.

Expert session

Tactic that has had the biggest impact on Michael’s success

Using thought leadership content strategy

Result if you follow the steps in Michael’s session

Thought leadership content created and delivered on a consistent basis

Full session with video, notes, audio and discussion inside EHQ Club. Learn more

Expert session snapshot

Transcript

The first thing is to figure out what it is that you have expertise in, and what do you actually love and, or sometimes the sort of the opposite is even true. Somebody asked me like, what do you write about? And I told him, my answer was, I usually write about the things that really kind of make me angry, that really piss me off. And it’s because I have a passion for, you know, for those things.

One example, I just sort of republished an article this week about content quality versus quantity. And it really makes me angry, because it’s a false choice. It’s kind of like saying, you know, I eat three meals a day, and every once in a while I choose to eat something that makes me throw up. I mean, it’s completely ridiculous for people to debate, you know, quality versus quantity. Everything we create needs to be decent, if not great. And so we need to create as much of it as we can. And so that topic really gets me going.

So yeah, so I think the first step is deciding, you know, what is the core area of expertise. What is the thing that you know, that maybe it’s a little bit different, or what’s the perspective you have, it’s a little bit different from everyone else?

And then, you know, just commit to sharing that on a regular basis, you know, sharing those things, that you love those things. That, you know, those things that make you angry, the pet peeves that you see, the top challenges that you know, your clients are facing, provide those answers.

You know, one of the biggest, I guess, you know, reasons that people give me not to do this is they say, well, you know, I’m a professional services person or you know, I’m in this, I’m a consultant, why would I give my thought leadership, my expertise away?

And the answer is that, you know, folks aren’t paying you for the, you know, for the kinds of insights that you can provide in a 500 or 1000 word article. They’re paying you to get to know their business, and to help them personally navigate through the challenges that they’re facing.

The only way that you can get to, you know, get exposure in reaching awareness with that potential audience is to share some of the things that you notice, to provide context for the knowledge that you have. So that’s really at first step, defining what you know.

Second step, sort of see where it overlaps with the passions that you have both, you know, both positive and negative.

And then the third step is to commit to sharing that on a regular basis. I often recommend my clients, you know, write one post a week, whether that’s on a personal blog, or even just using LinkedIn. LinkedIn is actually pretty good resource if you don’t have a personal blog, because you can get, you know, essentially followers, which are kind of a form of subscribers on LinkedIn. And you can nurture your connections there as well.

And so that would be my third, you know, that’s the third step, is really committing to sharing as frequently as you can. It’s about an hour a week for me, you know, to write one or two articles. It’s not a ton of time, but the results are absolutely there. It’s well worth it.