Where is the best place to publish your thought leadership content in 2023? Is it Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or none of those
This is such a critical question. If you make a smart choice about where you are going to publish it can make the difference between wasting your time, effort, and energy creating content or achieving your goals.
Let’s start by taking a quick look at the pros and cons of each of these options before I unveil my best place to publish your thought leadership content in 2023.
Facebook is the best choice if you want an easy-to-build community platform. Group. It’s a free and easy way to create a group and most people have an account. Plus, it’s a popular choice. When your audience is thinking about joining your group, it helps them to know that they have already joined similar groups on Facebook. This help break down any barriers to entry.
The big downside of Facebook is all the noise on the timeline. It’s like throwing your message over a waterfall. Once it goes over the edge it’s gone for good never to be seen by you or anyone else again. As a result, I wouldn’t recommend generally publishing on Facebook as your number one strategy for 2023.
LinkedIn is the best choice for a business audience because this is a platform where business people hang out.
Even better, it has one of the lowest saturation rates of any social platform. On Instagram almost 80% of people on the platform publish content. That’s high saturation because almost everyone on Instagram is wanting attention.
In contrast, on LinkedIn, that figure is only 1%. In other words, 99% of people are not creating content. This means, on LinkedIn, you have a greater chance of being seen and heard as a content creator because there is less competition.
Source: Neil Patel (video below) and his source: Kinsta.
Plus, the relatively new LinkedIn newsletter feature allows you to promote content that is not published on LinkedIn – for instance I can share my YouTube videos. But I have heard mixed results from the newsletter. It might be one to experiment with this year.
YouTube
YouTube is the best public platform for evergreen content. This means that the videos you create today can keep on attracting viewers several years into the future.
If you compare this to either Facebook or LinkedIn, once you’ve published there your older content gets washed away by all the new content coming down the feed. Often when I publish on LinkedIn, only an hour later I can’t find my own post in the feed.
But the downside for YouTube is that this is a long-term game. It takes time to create videos and it takes time to build your audience here.
But it is a good long-term vehicle, and it does have built-in proven ways to monetize your content – which Facebook and LinkedIn don’t. While you could earn all of your money from YouTube, as some content creators do, it’s more likely that you would use it to add to or supplement other income streams.
Is there a better place to publish your content?
For me, the best place to publish your thought leadership content is ‘none of the above’.
While each of these platforms has its merits, when you play on someone else’s playground, you’re bound by the house rules.
Even worse, they can change their rules at any time, and this can disrupt your efforts.
The social platforms play a delicate balancing act here. They want to design the game, so they win – naturally. This means they want people to stay on their platform for as long as possible. But they also need to make it easy for people to be successful and share their content. If they get too greedy then content creators will leave in droves.
Publishing on your website
One way around this is to publish on your own platform – your own website. Having a clear concise and current website is crucial for any business. At least, so we can check you out.
Having your own website gives you total control but has the downside of you having to generate all the traffic. On Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube it’s like having a store in a shopping mall. There are already lots of people wandering past and some of them might just poke their heads inside for a look.
In contrast, your own website is like having a store down a back alley with no street lighting. This means you must do all the work to promote your website to generate traffic. There’s no point in having a shiny new Ferrari if it’s locked in the garage, and nobody sees it. In business, being the best-kept secret is the booby prize.
The Best Place
But there is one place better than your own website where you can control your content and you a more likely to have a ready and willing audience.
Best of all, it’s 5-25 times better for your business.
I first mentioned this in this post, The Five to 25 Times Better Content Marketing Strategy.
Back in 2014, Harvard Business Review published an article by Amy Gallo. It was called, The Value of Keeping the Right Customers.
Gallo reported that it is five to 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. In other words, it is five to 25 times cheaper to serve your existing clients.
She also quotes research by the founder of the net promoter score, Frederick Reichheld that shows increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profit by 25% to 95%.
This reflects the big flaw most marketers make in their Content Marketing Strategy – they focus on the wrong part of the customer journey. They spend all of their time on the front end or the start of the customer journey and not on the entire journey.
Instead of chasing and attracting new clients and customers, you should be putting your attention on serving and retaining your existing ones.
Why creating IP is better than Content Marketing
This suggests that the best content to create is intellectual property or IP to keep and serve your existing clients rather than for content marketing trying to attract new clients.
It follows that the best place to publish your thought leadership content in 2023 – is with your clients. Not on Facebook, not on LinkedIn and not on YouTube.
Consider this… Count all the time, energy and attention you put into attracting new clients. Then consider what would be possible if you spent all of this on serving your current clients better. What could that look like? How would your existing clients feel about that?
Now, I’m not suggesting that you turn on a fire hose and start blasting your clients with your content. (Hopefully, you’re not doing that with your current content publishing.)
What I am suggesting is that you look for ways to create more value with your clients. This is the ultimate content to create: Drive real value with real people in real situations.
The two obvious questions to ask here are:
- How could I create more value for my clients?
- How could I deliver this value quicker and easier? And possibly, cheaper?
Examples of Improving Your IP
Here are some examples of how you might apply this ‘IP first, content second’ approach.
- Keynote speaker – The obvious example is creating a new keynote presentation. When did you last do this? Update your thinking and how you deliver it. A less-obvious opportunity is to consider the value you create before you turn up and after you deliver. For instance, could you ask questions to survey your audience before the conference event? This would allow you to present a more tailored delivery.
- Business Coach – I find that many coaches don’t tend to document their processes. I’m one of these coaches – I tend to do everything as a one-off conversation. But if I were to document my key frameworks, it would help refine my thinking at a deeper level and give me fresh ways to deliver value to my clients.
- Trainer – The obvious example for a trainer is to rewrite your course manuals. Again, this will force you to rethink and refine your thinking, making you a better presenter. This might be as simple as collecting fresh and current examples or it might include adding fresh content and revised frameworks.
Summary: The best place to publish in 2023
The best place to share your thought leadership content in 2023 is by sharing it with your existing clients.
If you do this, you’ll keep your existing clients for longer and you are more likely to generate referrals making it cheaper and easier to attract new clients.
Make this your primary strategy and use can use Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or some other online platform as your secondary strategy.
Make adding more value clients your number one strategy for success in 2023.
More on publishing your Thought Leadership Content in 2023
To go further on creating and publishing your thought leadership content in 2023, consider these three related articles:
- The Five to 25 Times Better Content Marketing Strategy
- Content Creation Canvas: Build Thought Leadership Attract New Clients
- Content Strategy 2022 – Best framework for Thought Leaders
What do you think? Where will you publish your thought leadership content in 2023? Will it be on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, your website or somewhere else? Or perhaps, you’ll focus on creating new IP to deliver greater value to your clients.
