Grow Your Personal Brand & Accounting Firm with Thought Leadership
Thought leadership is the act of sharing your knowledge with others in order to establish yourself as an expert—and it’s becoming an important factor in growing your accounting firm. Why? It’s simple: Thought leadership positions you as an expert and establishes trust, and people are more likely to do business with those they trust.
The great thing about thought leadership is that you get to dictate everything. You choose what specifically you want to become a thought leader on, what you share, how you share it, how often, where, etc.
Create a Thought Leadership Strategy
To reap the benefits of being a thought leader within the accounting industry, you have to start from square one, your strategy. When creating a thought leadership strategy, your firm’s target audience is a good place to start. What problems and challenges do they face? What do they need help with? As an accountant, you likely know this information about your clients.
Once you’ve identified who your audience is and what they’ll find useful, see what other thought leaders in the industry are doing. What platforms are they posting to, where are they most successful, what do they share, what content is the most engaging, how often do they share? Gather as much information about what others are doing as possible, then determine how you can do it better.
After analyzing other thought leaders, it’s time to think about what you want to become a thought leader on. Think about the different niches or topics and all your experiences, stories, knowledge and examples. Then ask yourself:
- Is there an area other thought leaders aren’t talking about that I excel in?
- Which area do I have the most knowledge and experience in?
- What’s most useful and engaging to my audience?
Pick your focus based on those three questions. Then, it’s time to figure out:
- What channel(s) you’ll share your thought leadership to
- Your tone of voice (inspiring, educational, professional, positive, etc.)
- How often you’ll share
- What you’ll share
- What format(s) you’ll use to share (social media text posts, videos, blogs, podcast, etc.)
- If you need anything created
The point of becoming a thought leader is to position yourself as an expert in your area of focus and to grow your firm, so it’s a wise idea to pick a channel where your firm is active too, such as LinkedIn. This way your firm will be able to engage with your content and share it to their company page.
Build Your Brand and Share Your Knowledge, Consistently
To build your personal brand and grow your firm through thought leadership, you need to share your knowledge in a way that is useful to your audience, authentic to you and consistent with your firm.
You don’t need to do anything extravagant to begin your thought leadership journey. As with anything, the key is consistency. Due to complicated algorithms and all the other nuances of social media, you should post thought leadership content at least weekly if you want to be successful. If one of your posts doesn’t get the engagement you were hoping for, don’t let discouragement prevent you from trying again. Persistence is key. By consistently sharing your knowledge, you’ll position yourself as a thought leader and build trust and connections in no time.
Impacting Your Firm
Thought leadership is genuine and useful content, which builds trust and positions you as an industry leader. People are more likely to do business with someone they view as an expert, and that’s exactly what thought leadership does for accountants and their firms. Consistently sharing your knowledge makes people more likely to come to you when a need arises in your field of expertise.
Thought leadership enables you to differentiate yourself from other accountants and firms, build your brand, share your knowledge and help others. If you want to be seen as an expert in your field, then it’s important to become a thought leader.