How consultants can (finally!) stop wasting time & know which thought leadership content to create

You know you should be creating thought leadership content, but you don’t know where to even start. Should you be blogging? Starting a YouTube channel? Posting on LinkedIn? Sending an email newsletter? Launching a podcast? Writing on Substack?

In this blog post, I’ll give you three strategies to help you stop feeling like you’re cluelessly faffing around, figure out what you should be doing, and come up with a useful content marketing plan:

1. Think about how each piece of content fits into your marketing funnel.

2. Aim for manageable, long-term consistency (instead of short-term, heroic effort that fizzles out).

3. Create the thought leadership content your clients need to move closer to hiring you.

The fundamental problem is: how do you know which content creation will actually help your business and be worth spending time on?

It’s intensely irritating. And overwhelming because there are so many things you could be doing.

You know marketing matters, but you also really don’t want to spend hours creating content that doesn’t nothing to help bring you any closer to new clients.

So instead, you might find yourself throwing up your hands and doing practically no content marketing at all. Or you start enthusiastically, then stop. An abandoned blog. Three YouTube episodes. Two weeks of daily posting on LinkedIn before client work got busy and your enthusiasm waned.

As one of my clients, Sandy Morris, put it:

“For someone like me who’s not literate in marketing stuff, the problem is not knowing what to write. And then I end up not writing anything.”

Maybe you’ve ended up paying for ads instead. Or relied almost entirely on referrals, without knowing how to help more of them turn into clients. (Good thought leadership content makes referrals work better. We’ll get into this in a bit.) 

Part of the problem is that there’s simply so much marketing advice out there.

One expert says you must post on LinkedIn every day. Someone else says you need a podcast. Another guru tells you long-form content is dead. Then somebody pops up insisting every consultant needs a YouTube channel.

You probably don’t have the time or inclination to investigate every claim and separate the useful advice from the noise.

There’s a better way.

When you have a clear content marketing plan, you know where to spend your time and why. Your marketing starts to feel much more deliberate, and considerably less overwhelming.

Before you start digging in the weeds and asking questions like “Which platforms should I use?” or “Should I start a podcast?” or “How often should I post?” I’d encourage you to first think a little differently, at a high level. This kind of thinking will help you come up with a sustainable content marketing plan, so you’ll feel less at sea and more confident about what you’re doing (and what you’re not doing).

Here are three strategies that will help you stop committing random acts of useless content, get clearer about what deserves your attention, and spend your marketing time more efficiently.

Let’s get going…

1. Think about your whole marketing funnel

One of the simplest ways to make content marketing less random and more effective is to understand the job each piece of content is doing.

I use a very simple ABC framework: Attract → Build trust → Convert

You need ways for the right people to discover you. That’s the Attract part.

You need ways for those people to get to know you, understand your expertise, and trust you. That’s Build trust.

And, for people who are ready, you need clear ways for them to say yes to working with you. That’s Convert.

In this simple framework, the Convert with a capital C is when prospects actually become clients. But on the journey from complete stranger to paying client, there are many smaller conversions — with a lower case c — along the way. A complete stranger sees a LinkedIn post and starts following you. That’s a conversion that brings them a tiny step closer to becoming a client. Someone who met you at an industry convention joined your email list. That’s a conversion. You need to keep in mind both lower-case conversions and the big enchilada Conversion.

Once you look at your marketing with this framework in mind, the question changes from:

“Should I start a podcast or post on LinkedIn?”

to:

“What do I need to help people find me, trust me, and eventually become clients?” 

In other words, what do you need for the Attract → Build trust → Convert framework?

That’s a much more useful question to start with. And the answer will differ depending on your industry, the details of your business, your skills, and what you’re already doing.

Attract the right people

SEO [search engine optimization] can help people discover your website through online search (both old-fashioned Google and new-fangled AI-search). A LinkedIn post can introduce someone to your ideas. So can giving a presentation or participating in a panel at an industry event.

You might appear on somebody else’s podcast, write a guest article, run a webinar, publish an e-book, get mentioned in the media, use paid advertising, or meet people at networking events.

There are plenty of possibilities. But, importantly, you don’t have to use all of them, all the time. The point is simply to have some reliable ways for new people to enter your world.

And remember that attracting people doesn’t mean an audience of thousands of strangers online. An effective content marketing strategy for an independent consultant doesn't require you to reach enormous numbers of people.

Growing a smaller professional network of the right people is far more valuable than chasing huge audience numbers. You don’t need to become a social media influencer to reach potential clients.

To be honest, these days, I’m skeptical about relying on Google and SEO to bring new people into your orbit. It’s always been hard to get a website to rank near the top of Google, unless you had a team of people creating boatloads of content, or you somehow had the bandwidth to produce excellent, original, research-based content that was different and better than everything else that was already out there. Certainly not impossible, but most definitely hard.

Now, even having lots of excellent content isn’t enough to rank. There’s simply already so much excellent content out there and, on top of that, AI overview is eating a lot of the potential traffic. For example, someone could ask Google, “How should I do a client risk analysis?” and you might have the very best article on the internet that carefully explains that, step-by-step. But Google’s AI overview can read your article, summarize the answer, and that person never clicks through to your site.

For most solo consultants, it is important to have high quality thought leadership content on your website, but it’s typically not possible to have a large volume — nor is it necessary. My advice: Don’t use thought leadership content primarily to attract traffic via Google and SEO. Use other ways to attract people: networking (in-person and online), speaking gigs, appearing on podcasts, getting quoted in trade magazines, etc. Instead, use your thought leadership content to move the right people onto the next step…

Then, give those people reasons to trust you

Imagine you meet a prospective client at a conference. They like you. You have a good conversation and, a few days later, they Google you to find out more details about your work, your ideas, your process.

What do they find?

...... 😬

This is one reason I’m a big fan of useful, authoritative thought leadership articles on your website. The key point is that blogs aren’t valuable only because somebody might discover them through online searches. They also have value for the person who already knows you exist and wants to find out whether you know your stuff and if you’re the right person to help them.

Similarly, referrals are gold — and thought leadership content helps them become even more valuable. Suppose a past client tells someone new about you. This new person looks you up, and they find useful, in-depth content that helps them better understand what you do, why you’re good at it, and whether you’re a good fit for them. That brings them closer to working with you.

Then there’s someone you’ve had a phone conversation with who wants to work with you, but they need to convince a hidden buyer inside their organization. Is there an article on your website they can share with their colleague? According to the 2025 Edelman-LinkedIn Thought Leadership Impact Report, 55% of hidden decision-makers use thought leadership content as part of their vetting process.

The same thing can happen on LinkedIn. Someone discovers you through one of your posts, clicks through to your profile, and from there visits your website and reads a few articles you’ve written. They develop a clearer picture of who you are, what you believe, and how you help clients. If they were a potential client to begin with, your content has moved them closer to becoming an actual client.

We’ll come back to using thought leadership to build trust, after looking at the last part of the marketing funnel…

And, finally, help people Convert

A LinkedIn post, blog article, or email newsletter isn’t supposed to single-handedly carry somebody from stranger to client.

No matter where they are in your funnel, you need to make sure people have clear steps they can take to move them closer to buying from you. These are the small-c conversions. That might mean visiting a service page. Downloading a guide. Reading a case study. Subscribing to your emails. Replying to an email. Meeting for coffee.

Most importantly, leads need to know how to actually work with you. Do they need to book a Zoom call on your calendar? Phone you? Send you an email? Whatever it is, make it abundantly obvious. Just having a generic contact form on your website isn’t clear enough, for example. A button that says “Book a discovery call” and leads to a scheduling calendar is much better. A call-to-action at the end of your email newsletter asking subscribers to reply if they’d like to work with you is also very clear.

You might be thinking, “But buyers don’t follow a neat funnel.”

If you’re thinking that the buyer journey isn’t really as tidy as Attract → Build trust → Convert, you’d be right. Real people jump around.

One person might avidly read your email newsletter for a year before they’re ready to reach out. Someone else could discover you through a referral, spend an hour reading your website, and book a call the same afternoon. And a third person might follow you on LinkedIn, forget about you for six months, see you speak at a conference, sign up for your email list, and decide to get in touch after the first email you send.

The ABC framework isn’t meant to suggest that everybody moves through the same three stages in a straightforward, linear way.

It’s a simplifying tool.

Your buyers can “percolate” at different stages and move backwards and forwards, up and down, inside the funnel. But you still need to help them discover you, build their trust in you, and make it obvious how they can work with you.

You need to be sure you’re covering all three stages. Skipping any one of them means your funnel isn’t functional. That’s why the ABC framework is useful. You can make sure you have effective content at every stage. The good news is that while thought leadership articles mostly operate at the Build trust stage, they’re also helpful for Attract and Convert. I’ll explain this a bit later.

2. Keep your content marketing plan manageable

Once you understand what your marketing needs to accomplish, there’s another trap waiting for you: Trying to do too much at once.

You may be in trouble if your plan looks like this:

• Blog twice a month

• Post on LinkedIn daily

• Create a Substack newsletter

• Send weekly emails

• Start a YouTube channel

• Launch a podcast

• Host monthly webinars

Six weeks later, you’re exhausted and most of it has stopped.

A more modest plan that you can actually maintain long term is far more useful than an impressive-looking plan you abandon.

Consistency and frequency aren’t the same thing

It’s true that posting more frequently can give you more opportunities to reach more people. Studies and LinkedIn experts have drawn different conclusions on what’s the ideal number of posts per week for increasing engagement and growing your audience. From reading these studies and listening to a bunch of experts, I think posting 3-5 times per week (on weekdays) is a good bet — if you can maintain quality. For a B2B audience, content quality is the most important factor. Don’t post irrelevant memes, or thin, generic content just for the sake of posting something. (AI slop isn’t the only kind of crappy content.)

Also, it’s better to post consistently at a lower rate than to post more and peter out. Choose the highest useful frequency you can consistently sustain while still publishing high quality content. Then, after at least six months, evaluate how well it’s working for you.

Two strong LinkedIn posts every week for a year are likely to tell you far more about the effectiveness of LinkedIn for your business than posting every day for a fortnight, disappearing for two months, and starting again.

And posting isn’t the only way to make a difference. Spend some of your time — maybe 15 minutes a day, a few times a week — having useful conversations in the comments on other people’s posts. Participating in relevant conversations not only puts you in front of people who matter to your business (potential clients, as well as peers who might refer you), the LinkedIn algorithm pays attention and rewards this kind of activity with more visibility.

Once you’ve created a solid Thought Leadership Signature Collection of articles, it’s easy to take short snippets and adapt them to use as LinkedIn posts — helping you with the Attract level of the funnel.

Put marketing time in your calendar

Like it or not, marketing is an essential part of running your business. It’s not an optional activity you do when every client project is finished, you’re at inbox zero, your laundry’s all done, you’ve been to the gym, and you somehow find yourself with three spare hours. As you’ve probably noticed, those magical spare hours never materialize.

In his book, The Irresistible Consultant’s Guide to Winning Clients, David A. Fields recommends that 20% of your work hours should be spent on acquiring new clients. That may not be realistic for you when you’re deep into a client project. Fine. The more important point is that marketing is a fundamental business activity you need to do consistently, not an optional extra you do on the side.

So give marketing a meaningful chunk of your work week. The exact percentage matters less than this: Take marketing seriously as an essential part of your business, decide what you can commit to for the long haul, and protect that time in your calendar. (Many people find it helpful to team up with an accountability partner — either in person or over Zoom — who also needs to work on some recurring task. The commitment to join each other at the same time each week helps keep you both accountable.)

I’ll let you in on a little secret about blogging: You don’t need to do it regularly, frequently, or indefinitely.

You can create your thought leadership blog articles at your own pace and then stop. Honestly. The blog until you die mentality applies to companies that need to attract a lot of traffic and to creators whose business is to have a blog. So, once your Thought Leadership Signature Collection is created, none of your marketing times needs to be spent on writing blogs. What you can do instead is send out an email newsletter (perhaps based on a point you make in one of those articles), you can DM an article to a connection who you think would find it particularly helpful. Or do any number of other marketing and outreach activities.

Spread your effort through your marketing funnel

It’s easy to think you need to put most of your marketing effort into attracting new people.

But imagine you successfully attract website traffic.

People arrive.

And then… nothing.

There are no substantial articles showing how you think.

No email list they can join.

No useful case studies.

No obvious next step.

All your effort is wasted. It’s like a brick and mortar business attracting people to their storefront… but the door’s locked and customers can’t get inside to look around.

Instead, spread your efforts top to bottom through your funnel — A, B, and C — rather than condensing the same amount of effort across one level of the funnel.

This is more doable than it sounds. There’s no need for content marketing for a consultant to be outrageously complex or demanding. A perfectly sensible starting system might be:

Attract: Two useful LinkedIn posts a week, monthly in-person networking events, a few podcast appearances and conferences a year.

Build trust: One substantial thought leadership blog post each month until you’ve completed your Signature Collection, plus an email newsletter based on the same content.

Convert: CTAs on appropriate blog articles and in email newsletters, clear service pages, and an obvious invitation to book a call.

That might well be enough. You probably don’t also need a podcast, YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Substack newsletter.

Of course, where you’re starting from makes a big difference.

If your website already attracts plenty of traffic, you may not need to put a lot more effort into attracting more people right now; just keep doing what you’re already doing (or ease off the gas a little if you need to direct energy elsewhere).

You might be better off focusing more on improving conversions. Or if referrals already bring lots of potential clients your way, you may discover that your biggest weakness is trust-building content and you need to put more energy into developing your Signature Collection.

If you’re unsure where to begin, working backwards from Conversion can often be revealing. Start by focusing on what’s closest to the money. Make sure someone who’s already interested in hiring you can easily take the final step to buy from you. Then look at what would help build their trust. Then consider how you’ll attract more of the right people.

Make the most of all the content marketing you do

Re-purposing your content means it goes further and makes keeping up with marketing more doable.

If you give a presentation at a trade event, can the ideas be used in a thought leadership article? The slides turn into a LinkedIn carousel? Can the text become several LinkedIn posts? Can one of those posts become part of your email newsletter?

Rather than endlessly adding new marketing tasks, look for ways to make the work you’re already doing go further.

Are you wondering how to stand out on a noisy platform like LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has well over a billion members worldwide and a couple of billion visits to the site per month, so standing out on there might seem to be a lost cause. How can you attract people to your content? You’re not about to post videos of yourself skydiving in the nude to get attention, right? 😉

I first want to remind you that you don’t need the attention of that many people. You need the attention of the right people. You’re competing for their attention and the pool of people trying to attract the attention of your ideal client is much smaller than the whole worldwide userbase of LinkedIn. You need to stand out in that way smaller pool.

Second, the vast majority of LinkedIn members read other people’s content, but they don’t create content themselves. They don’t post regularly, they don’t write thought leadership articles, they don’t engage in conversations. If you start posting and engaging in conversations regularly, you’ll already be ahead and more likely to get the attention of your ideal client than those who are on the platform but don’t post. (I’ve repeatedly seen the statistic that only 1% of LinkedIn members regularly post, but haven’t been able to confirm this with a primary source. I’ll update this post if I find it.)

And, third, remember that LinkedIn is only one way to bring new people into your world. If it brings in only a trickle of new people, but you’re also doing in-person networking and speaking at conferences, guesting on podcasts, etc., that’s all it needs to do. It’s enough. Focus on conversations on other people’s LinkedIn posts and on having genuine conversations in the DMs.

3. Create the thought leadership your prospective clients need to become actual clients

Once you’ve worked out what your marketing needs to do and made sure your plan is manageable, there’s still one important question:

What should you actually write about?

It’s easy to get stuck here. Instead of wondering which topics you have something to say about, or which topics would be interesting for you to write about, ask yourself this more useful question:

What does a prospect need to understand before they’ll feel confident hiring me?

That changes the way you choose topics.

Your thought leadership shouldn’t just prove that you know things or make you look clever. It should help prospective clients answer the questions and resolve the doubts that come up while they’re deciding whether you’re the right person to help them.

Think about what could stop a good prospect from hiring you

Imagine someone who genuinely has the kind of problem you solve.

They’ve met you at a networking event, been referred to you by a colleague, found you through LinkedIn, or heard you speak somewhere.

They’re interested.

But interested doesn’t mean ready to buy.

They may still be wondering:

• Will this person really understand my particular problem?

• Have they dealt with situations like mine before?

• What would working with them actually involve?

• Why do they approach the problem this way?

• Would this work in my industry or situation?

• How is this different from the other options I’m considering?

• Is my problem serious enough to justify spending this much money on?

• Could I solve this myself instead?

• What happens if I do nothing?

Those are potential thought leadership topics.

For example, if prospects regularly misunderstand an important part of your process, write an article explaining it.

If people hesitate because they’re worried your approach will be disruptive, expensive, risky, or difficult to implement, address that concern directly.

If your expertise is difficult to see from the outside, write something that shows how you analyze a problem, make decisions, or approach situations differently from less experienced practitioners.

If clients often arrive after trying a common solution that doesn’t work, explain why that approach tends to fail and what you do differently.

This is all really an application of Marcus Sheridan’s philosophy in his book They Ask, You Answer — but instead of focusing on getting top-of-funnel traffic through SEO and online search, the focus of the topics in your Thought Leadership Collection is on answering questions that move leads you already have from the top of the funnel deeper into the middle of the funnel, closer to becoming clients.

Now, you’re asking:

“What does a good prospective client need from me before they’ll feel confident moving forward?”

Then you create the content that gives them what they need.

You don’t need dozens of articles. You likely need somewhere between 12 and 20, depending on how many common questions, hesitations, and concerns you typically face.

This small collection of substantial, useful thought leadership can do a lot of work: helping referrals understand you better, giving prospects something useful to read after meeting you, supporting sales conversations, giving people material they can share with other decision-makers, as well as providing you with material that you can send to prospects to keep in touch and keep the conversation going. (You can also repurpose the content on LinkedIn, use it to land podcast guesting spots, and send it to conference organizers to get speaking engagements.)

The goal isn’t to become a full-time content creator. The goal isn’t to attract traffic on the internet (although any visitors who do come are welcome bonus).

The goal to make sure that when the right person starts considering you, their important questions are answered and their biggest concerns are addressed — so they can move further down the funnel and get closer to becoming clients. Instead of bouncing away and you losing them, perhaps forever.

Re-cap

1. Think about your funnel.
Make sure you have sensible ways to Attract → Build trust → Convert, so every piece of content has a job.

2. Keep it manageable.
Choose a level of activity you can sustain long term, give it enough time to learn from the results (a minimum of 6 months), and make your marketing efforts go further through re-purposing.

3. Create what your prospective clients need to become actual clients
Answer the questions you hear repeatedly, address the concerns that come up time and time again. Show prospective clients — as well as the hidden buyers on their committees — how you think, what your process is, why you’re the best fit for the specific type of problem you solve.

If you’d like help coming up with the topics for your Thought Leadership Signature Collection, book a free 15-minute discovery call to learn more.