Social Media today had me at their headline: “Don’t Tell Me You’re a Thought-Leader: Just Be One.”

It’s one of the fundamentals of marketing — or if it isn’t, it should be — that it’s not up to you to make value judgments about yourself, it’s up to your audience.

For example, when you’re marketing to tweens you’re not going to tell them, “This is the coolest thing you’ve ever seen.” If you have to describe yourself as cool, then you’re not. It’s for the tweens, not for you, to make that determination.

That’s how it is with thought leadership. If you have to call yourself a thought leader, you’re probably not one.

Same goes for gurus, though that’s a word that ought to be stricken forever from the marketing lexicon.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 23rd, 2013 at 11:37 am and is filed under Marketing Stuff, Rants 'n' Such, Social Media.