If you are Thought Leader looking to share your expertise, you need people’s attention. You need to develop a list of people who know and value what you do, and then communicate regularly to that list in a way that makes their life better. But even more importantly, you need to build your personal brand. In a Thought Leader’s practice, you are the product. So you need to be super protective of your brand, and not do anything that causes it damage. You have to be careful on how you go about building your list.

Last week I received a newsletter I hadn’t subscribed to. When I asked them why I was told “You received this newsletter because of our previous correspondence ...”. Not only is it bad for your brand to be sending people stuff they haven’t subscribed to, it’s actually spam and illegal. It’s also just plain dumb. You’re much more likely to annoy people than have them eventually become clients.

My wonderful business manager Cristina sent out an email a couple of weeks back, which I think gets the tone exactly right for this sort of thing:

Hi Lynne,

Cristina here from Peter Cook's office. We noticed you don't receive his weekly email - Word from Pete - so we thought to invite you to join our mailing list. I've copied an example for you below. If you would like to hear from him regularly please let me know and I'll be happy to add you to the list.

Kind regards,

Cristina

PS. He's also got several white papers and eBooks he's written that you might be interested in - you can view them on his website by clicking here.

And I think it was appreciated. The recipient emailed back:

I love that you asked!

And I'd love to receive :)

Thanks,

Lynne

Love to hear your thoughts and experiences – you can leave your comments below.