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Facing the Fear of Thought Leadership

I remember reading some writing advice once (though I cannot remember who said it — ping me if you know) that said: when writing you should aim to make yourself laugh, make yourself cry, make yourself feel something, and you’ll make your reader feel that, too.

It’s good advice. But what do you do when the feeling you feel is… fear?

(And, just to be clear, we’re not talking about writing horror or a thriller!)

When you step into the role of “thought leader” with your content, at first it feels fine …

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Why You Should Invest in Thought Leadership Content

I was a guest on a podcast this past week, and while we were in the “green room” before hitting record, the host mentioned how nice it was to have someone on to talk about “old school” blogging.

He mentioned that he’d recently written something about blogging that had sparked a lot of conversation on Twitter, the culmination of which was that they agreed they should all do a podcast episode on the power of blogging.

via GIPHY

[Image: a gif of Jeff Bridges as The Big Lebowski tilting his head, blinking …

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[Lacy stands confidently looking at the camera against a black background. She is a white woman with curled hair and deep red lips. Her eyebrow is raised. Beside her in large bold font says, "40 things I know about content marketing - part 1". In the bottom right is The Content Direction Agency's logo.]

40 Things I Know About Content Marketing

In honor of my 40th birthday:

Blogging isn’t dead.Not all blogging is content marketing.Creating content without a big picture strategy is frustrating, inefficient, and frequently ineffective.Creating a content strategy isn’t as difficult (or expensive) as you might think.The secret weapon for building a content strategy is an editorial calendar.When you’re creating a content strategy, you work BACKWARDS from what your goal is for your business.Starting from what you want the content to do for your business will help you create better content.Then you look at who the content is intended …

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[A black and white photograph of well-used antique skates hanging alone on a telephone pole by their laces. Across the top is a red banner with the title of this week's blow topic, "have you outgrown your topic?" In the bottom right corner is The Content Direction Agency's logo.]

Have You Outgrown Your Topic?

As a content strategist and content writer, I see and hear a lot of different reasons why people struggle to create their own copy.

Sometimes they don’t have any ideas…Sometimes they have too many ideas…Sometimes they just don’t have time to turn their ideas into reality…

And one thing I often hear is that they’ve just grown tired of talking about their topic. They feel like they’ve said everything there is to say (sometimes many, many times!).

They’re burned out talking about the topics they think they need to talk about to get …

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