I once heard the most valuable treasure isn’t in a museum. It isn’t in a bank or a vault or a safe somewhere.

The most valuable treasures in the world are buried in the graveyard. It’s where some of the best ideas, most innovative solutions, and most insightful perspectives are buried because they were never shared.

This week is about breaking free from whatever may be holding you back. I want you to be inspired, even ignited in your mission to share a powerful message with people who need to hear what you have to say.

It can be intimidating, even scary to share a new idea. What if people don’t like it? What if someone even hates it and tells you they hate it?

So what? If you feel a message burning in your body that you know can help someone have a better life, then you have a tremendous responsibility to share that message.

Your message may end up being what saves a couple’s marriage or an entrepreneur’s business or a loved one’s life.

One of the most selfish acts is not sharing ideas we know have potential. Let your audience decide who needs to hear your message. It’s your job to make sure your message doesn’t become just another piece of buried treasure.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

Does Your Audience Feel Lucky They Met You?

Well, top of the mornin’ to ya, it’s St. Patrick’s Day and we’re celebrating with green beer, Irish music, and a handful of other festivities.

Now, let’s remove the stereotyping and I’m sure a number of historical inaccuracies, and let’s focus on luck.

One of the characteristics often associated with St. Patrick’s Day is luck, the luck of the Irish as some people say.

How about your audience? Would they ever say they feel lucky they came across your message?

Whether you believe in luck or not, there’s no question each of us bring good fortune when we truly want to serve people.

Today is about turning a somewhat caricatured holiday into a stronger desire to give as much value and life-changing impact to our audiences.

It’s not just luck that you want them to experience. It’s hope. It’s a breath of fresh air. It’s the answers they’ve been looking for and you were the one who helped them find those answers.

That’s not luck; that’s a commitment to serving your audience better than anyone else.

Keep that in mind, and if you get the chance, celebrate a fun, festive St. Patrick’s Day today!

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

How Do You Grow Your Reputation as a Thought Leader on Twitter? By Giving the Best Answers to Your Audience’s Questions.

While Twitter did lose over nine million monthly active users from this time last year, it’s still the home for 321 million monthly active users.

It’s also one of the most natural places for rising thought leaders to engage in a conversation with followers.

One of the most techniques for growing your reputation on Twitter is to actively engage with other thought leaders and attaching strategic hashtags into your conversation.

One practice is a Q&A thread where you can tell your crowd of followers that you’re starting to do a Q&A for the next ten minutes or so. Tell them they’re free to ask any question about a specific topic or two, and then actively respond to as many questions as you can during that time span.

Another tactic is to identify the top five to ten niche-specific hashtags that you want associated with your message and focus on engaging with the best content you find that uses those same hashtags.

Twitter is still a great place to connect with the right crowd. All you need is to be more intentional than your competition and strategically invest in the right hashtags to share your message.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

How Do You Grow Your Reputation as a Thought Leader on Instagram? By Giving the Best Answers to Your Audience’s Questions.

Instagram is one of the more interesting platforms to ask questions because it’s highly visual.

One of the best ways to curate questions is by searching for specific hashtags and seeing if you can identify trends. For example, if you’re a speaker, you may want to search for #eventplanner, you will probably see content from a lot of event planners, meeting planners, and other decision-makers who are responsible for booking speakers for events.

Read through as many posts as you can to see what questions come up, like “Why is it so hard to find a great speaker who’s easy to work with?” Make a note of that person’s Instagram handle, create a post that talks about what you do as a speaker to make it easier for event planners who hire you, and then tag that person in your post.

You can say something to them along the lines of “Hey, I was inspired by your post a little while ago where you asked why it’s hard to find a great speaker who is easy to work with. Here’s some of my process that hopefully can make your life a little easier.”

It shows you saw their question, you gave a thoughtful response, and you now positioned yourself as the solution to their problem.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

How Do You Grow Your Reputation as a Thought Leader on Quora? By Giving the Best Answers to Your Audience’s Questions.

If you’ve never been to Quora, do yourself a favor and go to quora.com and get lost in the questions.

It’s where over 300 million active users around the world ask and answer questions on different topics and industries.

And, let me tell you, there are fewer people who are giving great answers. There are a ton of questions, but not many great answers.

That’s where you come in: create a Quora profile, in case you haven’t already, it’s free. Build out your profile with a great bio, links to your website, speaking page, podcast, all of the great links, and then find and follow the 20 most relevant topics to your industry or area of interest.

Then, start writing the best answers you can to the most interesting questions you find. Don’t worry if someone already gave an answer; the answers are usually too long-winded or they’re just not great answers at all.

Do this for 15-20 questions a day, maybe only five or 10 questions if you’re pressed for time, and you will see a strong response from people who recognize you’re there to give them valuable answers.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

How Do You Grow Your Reputation as a Thought Leader on LinkedIn? By Giving the Best Answers to Your Audience’s Questions.

There are over 575 million users on LinkedIn, only 40% of which access LinkedIn on a daily basis.

Your target audience, your target Market as I call it, is coming to LinkedIn for answers. How do I know how to do _________? Who are the best speakers on this topic? Whose books helped shape your rise to C-suite status? What are the best podcasts in my industry or area of interest?

LinkedIn is also a ripe opportunity for you to share your expertise on the latest news and articles relevant to your area of interest.

When you log into LinkedIn, go over to the right-hand side where you’ll see the “What’s Trending Now” section. Look for any article that has a direct connection to your industry or area of influence.

Next, and this is the important part, actually read the entire article, and THEN, then write a thoughtful, detailed response to that article in the main comments section of the article they listed.

Lather, rinse, and repeat every day for every article you can find. There’s usually only one or two articles a day that appeal to a certain industry, so don’t worry, you don’t have to do this for 50 articles. Just one or two a day and engage with the responses to your comments.

That shows you’re on LinkedIn to add value and then see where the conversation goes from there.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

Want to Grow Your Influence? Answer More Questions!

Fact: question-based content will only continue to grow in popularity over the next few years. How do we know? Three names: Alexa, Siri, and Google Home.

As more voice-activated devices are introduced to homes and offices around the world, searches in the form of a question will become the search style of choice for many users.

Your audience has so many questions, questions that you as a subject matter expert in your industry have a great opportunity to answer.

So, where do you find those questions? You need to go where your target market is already spending their time.

Over the next few days, I’m going to share ideas on how to find and answer your target market’s questions on specific platforms, like LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Quora, Twitter, and more.

You will learn platform-specific tips and techniques for how to answer questions better than anyone else for your target market.

For now though, make it a great day!

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

PSA: Horizontal Video Is Still Better for Everyone

This is a good PSA: for anyone who still records their video with their phone straight up and down instead of holding it sideways, your videos aren’t as good as they could be.

When was the last time you saw a TV where the height was greater than the width? They don’t exist.

Think about how our eyes are laid out: they’re side by side, horizontal, not vertical.

Horizontal videos are easier for all of us to experience.

There’s a good chance you already know this about videos and you only record videos holding your screen so it’s horizontal. Thank you for not recording vertical videos.

For others, this may be a well-timed PSA. If you want to grow your influence using videos, always make sure your videos are horizontal, not vertical.

And, make sure you tell your friends to do the same. Thank you, and make it a great day.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

Short-Form Video Is the Best Performing Content Format

A recent survey by the Altimeter Group shows that short-form video is the best performing content in 2019.

What qualifies as short-form video? It’s specifically videos that are two minutes or less in duration.

There usually is little to no prep work for many short-form videos, and the productive capabilities are greater now than ever before with smartphone video resolution.

In fact, I film most of my short-form videos using my iPhone recording in 4K quality.

Chances are you have that same capability with your phone. So, grab out your phone today, take 30 seconds to think about what you want to say, and record yourself sharing one big idea in two minutes or less.

It doesn’t have to be perfect; just make it’s authentically you. And then, share that video with your crowd.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

Why We’re Changing to Keynote Clarity

Today’s Flash Briefing is a bit different because we’re making a shift here with the Copy & Content for Thought Leaders flash briefing.

In fact, you may have heard the intro and wondered, “What is going on here? Keynote Clarity? I don’t recognize this name!”

That’s because we officially changed the name of the Copy & Content for Thought Leaders flash briefing to Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders.

There are a couple of reasons for the change. I currently host our podcast called the Copy & Content Podcast, and since this flash briefing was named Copy & Content, I didn’t there to be any confusion about which Copy & Content I’m referring to.

Also, the intent of this flash briefing is to give you better clarity as a rising thought leader. With our company being called Keynote Content and our goal of giving you greater clarity, the name Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders was a natural choice for a new name.

So, you can expect the same type of content, hopefully continuing to improve each day. Thank you for your trust, and if you love the new name, give me a shoutout on social media or through our website.

For now though, go rock your world and make someone’s day today.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”