Here are four mistakes you and I can make when we’re trying to establish ourselves as the thought leader in the niche that we’ve decided we want to occupy in our particular marketplace.

1. Too Much Quantity, Not Enough Quality

The first one is this, and I see this a lot, and I’m sure you do too. Sometimes people put out a huge quantity of content. They’ve got content coming at us all of the time, but unfortunately, it’s not at the level of quality that I believe, and I’m sure you believe, it could be at.

So, the mistake is too much quantity, not enough quality.

I don’t know about you, but I like quite short videos. I find it difficult sometimes to allocate the time to watch a two-hour video. I want to watch it because I’m interested, but I have to break it up and watch it over a period of time or listen to the audio version while I’m walking and doing exercises and things like that.

So, for me, I like very short, sharp content, a bit like my videos are because obviously that matches who I am.

So that’s mistake number one.

2. Copying Someone Else’s Style Instead of Being Yourself

Mistake number two and again I’ve made this mistake, so I have to be careful with it is making sure that we’re not copying somebody else’s style, and that we’re being, to use the overused word, authentically ourselves.

The way I think of it these days is this: there will be plenty of people in the world, out of 7 billion-plus people, who resonate with me, and there will be a lot of people who don’t. But that’s life.

As my friend Ted Nicholas told me years and years ago, may he rest in peace, “Next” is a wonderful word to know.

If somebody doesn’t happen to like what we do, that’s life. Next.

So, we have to be ourselves. We need to put out our way of doing things. And if people like it, great. If some don’t, it’s just the way it is.

3. Failing to Engage with Your Audience

Next is failing to engage with our audience.

So, all of our conversation and communication become one way, rather than getting people to take surveys so they can talk to us, or providing as with a YouTube video, for example, a comment section where we can actually interact with people.

So, it’s failing to do that which becomes the problem.

4. Being Too Salesy

And the last one is being too salesy in our messages.

Every message contains a sales message. Then I think what happens, particularly with videos, is that people get towards the end, they get to know the style of the video, and then they switch off. They stop the video before it actually gets to the sales message anyway.

Do you find that happens as well?

It’s a bit like when a video ends with, “Now make sure to hit the subscribe button and notification button.” Of course you want people to do that, but these days, because I’ve changed the way I do things, you don’t hear me say that. I think people will do that if they want to do it.

So that’s the way I think about it.

Final Thoughts

I hope you can take those four away:

• Quality Matters as Much as Quantity
• Be You
• Engage with the People You’re Speaking To
• Don’t Be Too Salesy

If you want to send me a comment, you can to: [email protected], and I’ll reply.

In the meantime, I wish you every success in all your adventures in life.

Peter

Peter Thomson

‘The UK’s Most Prolific Business Development Author’  

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