By Danielle Mellema, Chief Ghostwriter, Digital Content Manager

You have a desire to position yourself as a thought leader in the healthcare industry. You’re even starting to put your insights, observations, and opinions down in writing, and occasionally find a way past the discomfort and post to social media.

But you’ve got goals to share your expertise and wisdom beyond your immediate circle of influence. You want to make meaningful contributions at an industry level. How can you grow an audience beyond your own friends and followers without high cost and cringy self-promotion?

Organic audience growth is accomplished without pricey paid promotion, but that certainly doesn’t mean that you can just kick back, write what you want to write, and let the growth come to you.

Growing your audience requires effort and focus—and more than a little courage. But organic growth is often the strongest in the long-run, and it’s worth it. 

Here’s how you can pursue steady organic growth to build your audience over time as you grow into a thought leader in healthcare:

Share your own stuff.

Creating quality content based on your expertise and experiences is where every thought leader needs to start. But you’ll never have an audience beyond your significant other and your mom if you don’t drum up the courage to share it on your own social media profiles. Putting your writing out there to those who already know you and have opted-in to seeing updates from you is a safe place to start.

Starting with the people you already know on social media will help you to determine what kind of content seems to get the most engagement, which topics stir up discussion, and what you actually want to start a continuing conversation about as a thought leader.

Define (and re-define, and re-re-define) your audience.

Shouldn’t this be first on the list? Yes, but also no. Let me explain.

You should absolutely take the time to define your desired audience and your goals before you begin writing. But this is not a one-and-done activity.

Often, when thought leaders begin sharing their writing, they are surprised by some of the people who seem most engaged with what they’re offering. You can have a strategic audience in mind, but the audience you actually get may not meet the audience profile you envisioned when you first started putting pen to paper.  

Perhaps this will signal that you need to consider tweaking the content you are creating to catch the eye of that strategic audience and accomplish some specific goals. But this could also be an opportunity to explore some unexpected opportunities for your thought leadership in light of the audience that is giving the strongest response in reality. 

Either way, continually being aware of who your audience actually is—not just who you imagine it to be—is essential if you are going to see growth in your audience.

Launch your own website.

Again, shouldn’t this be higher up on the list? Perhaps.

In the long term, a personal website will be crucial for building credibility with new audience members, allowing readers to share your writing easily, and displaying all your writing in a way that is creative and flexible to support your evolving goals.

But at times thought leaders can get caught in the weeds of website development at the cost of the quality of their writing, or can be distracted from sharing and cultivating their audience because they feel they have to get the website juuuuust right first. In short, building a website takes time and effort that might be best spent on other priorities, especially early in your writing journey.

For those who believe it makes the most strategic sense for them to start writing as a thought leader and develop a personal website in tandem, professional help is going to be necessary. And *ahem* we just so happen to be able to help you with both.

Just ask.

Once you’ve found your groove in terms of writing quality, strategic topics, and how you can best serve your audience, it’s time to start paying attention to other platforms that might be interested in sharing your writing. And no, I am not talking about Modern Healthcare or the Harvard Business Review. At least, not to start.

Start by looking for the places where you’re already known, or a significant overlap already exists. For example, does the organization you work for have a blog or a regular newsletter that goes out to members, patients, stakeholders, etc.? What about a company you serve on the board of, or a nonprofit you volunteer for? Offer to write a piece on a topic that would appeal to their audience. At the end of the article, you can include a link to your personal website where they can find more of your thought leadership pieces. As someone who has curated many a monthly newsletter and company blog, I can tell you that publishing quality content that you didn’t have to write yourself is a win-win.

Additionally, if there is another thought leader in your network that you know and respect and shares good content, perhaps you could see if they’d be interested in an arrangement where you share each other’s work periodically with your respective audiences.

Eventually, you may even explore pitching an unpublished article to a targeted media publication. Most publications share their submission requirements on their website. There is, of course, the risk of writing a thoughtful, well-researched, brilliant article…and getting no bites from media. But growing your audience in a way that achieves your goals requires risk. 

If you want help thinking through who your audience is or how writing could be part of your thought leadership goals, reach out to us.