“There is a saying that every nice piece of work needs the right person in the right place at the right time.”
— Benoit Mandelbrot
A lot of would-be Thought Leaders have concerns because they feel like their audience has stopped growing or that the growth of that audience has slowed down.
This is often because the would-be Thought Leader has not been as specific as they need to be in both selecting the audience they are catering their content for and using messaging to spotlight the kind of person they are trying to attract.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to open the doors as wide as possible, so that no one is excluded. This is a false premise. People don’t want something that is “okay for everyone.” They want something that is “just perfect for me.”
Your right people, at the right place, at the right time don’t want to feel like your thing is right for many kinds of people. They want to feel that it’s right for them, exclusively.
The solution to this problem comes in two parts:
First: In your outreach, social media, and marketing, you should specifically describe your “right people.” Don’t try to make your messaging applicable to everyone. You’re looking for narrow and deep, not wide and shallow.
Secondly, you have to remind people, continually, that they are in the right place. So you do things to make them feel like they’re “home.” This means that you praise the “right” behaviors and traits, and shame the “wrong” behaviors and traits.
Your work is important, but not to most of the world. You’re looking for a tight-knit crowd of the kind of people you can best help. Diversity and inclusivity are great, but not in terms of a thought leader attracting the psychographically right people.