How to Go from Author to Thought Leader

Can you recommend a book on negotiations? This is just one of the many questions that I get asked all the time. People are looking for books to fill gaps and if you write a great book, people read that book, love it, then they can recommend your book. And that is one of the steps on the journey to becoming a thought leader. But it's not overnight. And while it's simple, it's not easy. So if you're thinking about writing a nonfiction book to become a thought leader, well, this video is for you. Hey there, I'm Julie the book broad. I'm a four time author and my latest book, Self Promote and Succeed is this beauty right here and it's coming out in October of 2023. So as you watch this, it might be on presale or it's out. Either way, go ahead, grab your copy and when you post a review of it, let me know so we can thank you and celebrate it. Now let's talk about thought leadership. What is it? A thought leader is an individual, I guess, or an organization. But really an individual that is seen as an expert, an innovator in a specific field. They influence others with their insights. People think of Elon Musk, Brene Brown, Jesse Itzler when they think of thought leaders. But every industry has their own respected people. We have some wonderful examples of thought leaders within our own community of authors like Carol Sanford's thought leadership has gotten her recognized by major corporations and people like Tom Peters. She's written many books on change management and her materials are used in colleges and universities. While not widely known in the world, she is a thought leader in her space. S.A. bradley, author of Screaming for Pleasure, wrote his book and has been working towards thought leadership step by step since the book came out. And the book details all the things he knows about film, tv, books and beyond in the horror genre. He started off attending horror conferences and now he's a panelist amongst his peers at these conferences. And he couldn't be more excited. You might not know him, but if you're in the horror world, he's becoming a really well known and respected name. Now what you need to know about these two and everyone else that becomes a thought leader is that it's not a path that looks like this. Publish book, promote it for a few months, voila, you're a popular name in your space. Oh man, would that be nice if it were true, Offering book launcher services to help you write and publish a great book would be much smoother because I could promise you'd be a thought leader almost instantly after you publish a good book. But it's not like that. The reason Essay Bradley is gaining notoriety is because he's been working it. He's been promoting his book since it launched. Okay, let's talk about what Essay Bradley has been doing and what others do to become thought leaders in five simple but they take hard work steps with your book. Number one, hopefully you've already done this, but your book is written to position you as an expert in something general. Inspirational stories are much tougher to make you the expert than a book written that is all about a single subject. Check out this book by Siva Shvashi called Small Big Results. Besides the fact that he has an extraordinary story. He escaped his home country of Iran, where bodybuilding was illegal, to pursue his dream of becoming a bodybuilder in California. But saying it like that skips all the incredible things that happened to him along the way. Whenever I think about my immigration experience to the US and I think it's been hard, I just have to think about Ciavash and know that at one point he was considered a terrorist here and he had literally no money at various points to live out his dream. My struggles been pretty easy compared to his. Anyway, his book is awesome and it's geared to help other gym owners start a small gym from very little resources. And that's what he did and he's built a massively successful gym in Los Angeles. Now Siavash is well on his way to thought leadership in the space of gym ownership and bodybuilding and his book was one of the steps he's taken. And now check out his social media and watch him because he has just begun and I promise he'll be a thought leader in a few years and everyone in his space will be talking about him. But step one was hire book launchers. Okay, you don't have to hire us, but step one is getting really clear on how you want to be positioned and how you want to be known in your industry and space. And we do a lot to help with that. One of your first calls is with our book Marketing manager to review your author branding and positioning. Number two, now that we know you have a book that is positioned for thought leadership, let's explain the principle behind everything else I'm about to share. The idea is fairly simple. Most people don't know you. They don't know you, so they don't trust you. And there's something called the mere exposure effect that has also been called the familiarity principle and it's a concept first talked about and researched by Robert Zaganik, I think, is how you say his name in the 1960s. And well, this study is crazy. He took out ads in the school newspaper at the University of Michigan, and they were on the front page each day. And he just published some Turkish words. Some of the words appeared in more ads than others. After a few weeks, he surveyed the students and asked them to look at 12 Turkish words and to give their impression of those words. Remember, this is a university in the US These students don't speak Turkish. In the survey, he was outlining words that had appeared in the newspaper and some that hadn't. He had them rate the words from 1 to 7 to see if they thought the words meant something good or bad. Guess what? He found a direct correlation. The words the students saw the most, they voted to be the most positive words. That's it. Just because they saw them, they thought they were better words. You need to be seen to be a thought leader. No hiding behind that laptop. You need to. You need to do what Virgie Bright Ellington is doing. She's doing lives and posting on LinkedIn and social media and saying yes to all the things she's building that thought leadership one video at a time. Go, Virgie. Oh, and if you're in the US you need this book that she wrote. The things that hospitals and medical practices do that they should not do. You probably don't realize all the things that you're paying that you shouldn't pay. And this book, well, all you need is one bill that it saves you and it's paid itself 10 times over. So grab her book. But back to your thought leadership. Step two is to make a plan to be seen. So here's where your niche audience makes it easier to be seen over and over by the same people. If you're going niche, these people are going to see you way more than if you go really broad. Put another way, it's much easier for me to run into the same people when I'm going to the same gym every day. I'm hanging out in the same neighborhood and I'll see the same people over and over again. But if I try to do that across the country, it's much more difficult to see the same people over and over again. So think about this in your platform. What magazines or LinkedIn pages are your readers hanging out in? And make a list. Start with five places that you're going to spend time and be seen. It might be a community you're building like we have right here at Book Launchers tv, but include other people's audiences as well and become active in someone else's community, adding value and gaining exposure. Number three are paid ads in particular for this purpose. Retargeting ads. Go ahead, visit book launchers.com or hit up this page. Booklaunchers.com 7 steps, then watch as I follow you around. Once you click my stuff, I'm gonna be in front of you. We also put videos in front of you too, so after you watch this video, quite likely you'll see me again. Of course, it's better if you subscribe to the channel, but you'll probably still see me again. And that is because I know the more you see me, the more you'll like me and the more likely you are to buy my books and even potentially say, I need to hire Book Launchers to help me write, publish and promote my book so I can become a thought leader. This isn't a free way, but once you get this set up, there really isn't an easier way to increase your visibility and hit that mirror exposure effect. I look forward to seeing you again. Or rather to you seeing me again. All right, number four, Content marketing. Are you creating and posting content online? This is social media. Blog posts, videos, you name it. Podcast, interviews. Your content needs to be out there, and social media is a powerful place to be seen, get shared, and grow your audience. It's not overnight and it's not super lucrative for years sometimes, but it's powerful for those multiple exposure events. You can also be giving talks. I love getting in real life in front of people. And when you're in front of a room, you instantly get credibility that goes miles towards being seen as a thought leader. And of course you'd like to get paid for those gigs. But if you're just starting out, just being at the front of the room has massive value. By the way, we'll dive more into the world of being a speaker in a future video, so make sure you are in fact subscribed to the channel and notifications turned on, because my ads will only follow you around for so long before I eventually get the hint. All right. Podcast guesting is also content marketing, and it is a fantastic way to take advantage of the mere exposure effect. I can't tell you how many times in the last year someone told me they heard me on a podcast and it's never the same podcast. Which is kind of frustrating because it would be nice if it was one podcast and I would just be on that podcast all the time. But the reality is that until you have a position where you are a thought leader, you're probably not going to be invited on the major, major podcasts unless you have a really, really powerful story. So you might do a bunch of mid sized podcast interviews to gain that near exposure effect and thought leadership status. All right, number five, keep doing it. Stay consistent. To utilize the mere exposure effect for your benefit, you have to be seen over and over and over by the same people until they're like, man, she's awesome. She is everywhere. She's really amazing. And they buy your books, they hire you to speak, they pay you big bucks for your brain or they buy your products. It could take years, not months. But one of my favorite quotes is the best time to start was years ago. The second best time is today, not tomorrow, it's today. And I often think when the authors I meet and they say I'm going to write, or they're not even authors yet, they would be authors and they think I'm going to write my book next year. And I think that's another whole year that your book is not getting you into the world. So the sooner you start, the sooner you will be able to take advantage of all of these things. Did you know Akio Morita, I think I'm saying the name right, who co founded Sony Corporation. In the beginning no one liked Sony's products. But sticking with it for years and years, refining, iterating and trying again, eventually it became Sony. It wasn't create product, launch product and enjoy success and it rarely is for anyone. Alright, we will see each other again soon. But you may want to keep going right now with this fabulous video on battling imposter syndrome because you might be thinking who am I to be a thought leader, But I'm quite sure you have something great to give others. And this one is the one YouTube is recommending you watch. Click on over. I'll see you there.