Category: Thought Leadership

At a networking event last month someone told me his follower count before he told me what he does for a living. Twelve thousand, he said, like it settled something. I asked him how many client conversations he had started this year and he changed the subject.

I get why the number is tempting. Online, you can measure everything: clicks, views, reactions, and followers. Numbers feel like proof, and a big one feels like success. Nothing wrong with measuring. But the market has gone completely bananas on this one specific number.

Let me just be real to you: no one gives a Fuck about your reach except you and your marketing department

Anyone can fake the number

Ten followers is worse than a thousand, sure. But a thousand followers tells you nothing, because a thousand followers is something you can buy for the price of lunch. Bots, engagement pods, a “like and win an iPad” campaign, take your pick. Ten minutes and a few euros and your number goes up.

And those followers will never read a thing you write, never reply, never buy. Which was the entire point of showing up on these platforms in the first place. You wanted people who’d eventually work with you. You bought a number that guarantees the opposite.

The “but a big following makes me look credible” argument doesn’t hold either. When did you last check the follower count of someone whose work you actually rate? Yes, that is correct, never! You trusted them for what they said, not for how many people were listening.

The algorithm agrees with me

A big, dead audience doesn’t just sit there doing nothing. It now even works against you.

Every feed, LinkedIn included, decides who sees your post based on their interests, and on how the first slice of your audience responds. Post something and a fraction of your followers see it, and if they engage, the platform reads that as “this is worth showing to more people” and widens the reach. If they don’t engage, it stops showing you to anyone.

So if you’ve padded your account with bought or bribed followers who feel nothing when you post, you’ve trained the algorithm to think your content is worthless. The number under your name went up, and the number of people who actually see your work went down. You paid to become less visible.

Congratulations.

What the number should be

A follower count is only worth anything when you earned it, one real person at a time, because you said something useful and they wanted more. Those are the people who actually open what you write and reply, and some of them, when the timing’s right, book the call.

And it’s usually smaller than you’d think. You operate in a narrow slice of the market, which means a “small” audience of the right few hundred people can put you in front of most of the buyers who matter. One person who runs the kind of firm you want to work with, reading your post and thinking “finally, someone who gets it,” beats ten thousand people you’ll never hear from again.

This was true in 2022 and it’s truer now than it’s ever been. AI means anyone can flood the feed with infinite content and buy all the reach they want, so the numbers mean even less than they did. The one thing that can’t be faked, bought, or generated is a real person deciding they trust you. That’s the only metric that ends in a contract.

So the next time you catch yourself checking the follower count, yours or anyone else’s, ask the better question: how many of them would take your call?

Chase that number instead.

You read something, nod along, think “I should use that”, and then close the tab. By Friday it’s gone, buried under the next forty things you read.

Most of us are knowledge workers and get paid for what we know. But what you know is trapped in your head and scattered across a hundred half-read articles, presentations and emails.

The fix isn’t reading faster, or saving more. It’s what you do with the good stuff once you find it.

For years I tried to find a system that would surface the right thing at the right moment. Bookmarks, saved articles, even writing it down in a journal, none of it did shit. Turns out reading something does nothing. You have to put it in your own words before your brain actually keeps it. The moment you rewrite an insight instead of just saving it, it clicks.

This is what worked for me. Five moves, and they all happen to start with C.

The 5 C’s

Collect. Reading it doesn’t count. Collecting means getting it out of the browser and into a place with a name, so you’ll find it again. Bookmark, note app, whatever works. Read a sharp piece on client retention? Save it, tag it “client relationships,” done. If it lives in an open tab, it’s already lost.

Create. This is where most people stop, and it’s the one that pays. Don’t just clip the article, react to it. Write down the key point AND how you’d use it on the thing you’re working on right now. A note is a conversation with your future self, so ask it a question, argue with it, connect it to your actual work. A quote you saved just sits there. A quote with your own take stapled to it is something you can use next week.

Categorize. Information you can’t find again does nothing for you. Give every project and theme its own folder or tag so future-you pulls the right thing in ten seconds instead of ten minutes. It’s boring admin, and it’s the difference between finding the thing and never seeing it again.

Connect. This is where it gets good. Take two things that were never near each other, a point from an article on consumer behavior and a number from your own last report, and put them side by side. New idea, one only you could have, because only you were holding those two particular pieces. This is the move AI can’t do for you, by the way. It can connect the average of everything ever written. It can’t connect the two things only you happen to be holding.

Communicate. Knowledge grows when you give it away. Turn what you learned into a post, a talk, a memo to your team. Not only does it help other people, it forces you to actually understand the thing, and it does something else: it makes you the person known for this. The person who gets known isn’t the one who knows the most. It’s the one people actually hear from.

The whole point is the last one

You can nail Collect, Create, Categorize and Connect and still be invisible. A beautifully organized brain that never says anything out loud is a tidy way to stay unknown.

The reputation, the referrals, the “we should get him in for this,” all of it comes from Communicate. That’s the step that turns private knowledge into a public position. And it’s the one people skip, because it’s the one that feels risky, and because the first four feel like progress while committing to nothing.

So build the system, yes. Collect, create, categorize, connect. But if it all dies in your notes app, you’ve just built a sophisticated place to hide. Say the thing out loud. That’s where the knowledge finally starts paying you back.

For years I collected information like it was going to save me. I saved articles I never reopened. Built an extensive and way too complicated Notion database in a weekend and abandoned by Tuesday. I had 40 browser tabs I kept alive for weeks because closing them felt like admitting I’d never read them. I told myself I was “staying sharp.” The truth is I was like a fucking hoarder, piling up newspapers in his living room. And the worst thing is that under all that saved brilliance, my decisions got worse, not better.

I thought that more information was more edge. Turns out that’s exactly backwards, and the last two years made it painfully obvious.

Those brilliant insights you were saving are now infinite

Information used to be scarce. That’s why we treated it like currency. If you knew the thing the other one didn’t, you had an advantage.

That world is gone. AI will hand you a decent answer to almost any question in four seconds, then write you a thousand words on it, then make you a slide deck about it before you’ve finished your coffee. Content isn’t scarce anymore. It’s the cheapest thing on earth.

And when something is everywhere and free, it stops being worth anything. Even the most valuable information you have is worthless within 24 hours, killed by a new study, a better take, or a world that moved while you were reading. Knowing things is no longer the job.

Your brain didn’t get the memo

Your brain is built to grab every scrap of information in sight, because for most of our human history missing a signal could get you eaten. That instinct doesn’t switch off because you work in an office now. So you feel the pull constantly, to check one more thing, read one more take, open one more tab. Those executive fuckers at social media platforms know this, so don’t blame yourself too hard for scrolling two hours

You can feel it right now, probably. Some part of you is already halfway to a different screen.

The result is that we treat information like an all-you-can-eat buffet and then wonder why we feel sick. There’s junk information and there’s healthy information, exactly like food, and most people are on a diet of crumbled up Doritos over a donut . Notifications, doomscroll, the rate of burnout and stress in knowledge work isn’t a mystery. We’re drowning a brain that was never built to swim in this.

Piling up more won’t fix a problem caused by too much going in. You can’t out-read the firehose.

The scarce thing now is a point of view

So the edge isn’t information anymore. It’s your personal point of view.

A lived through, structured way of looking at the world, so you can put information in context instead of just swallowing it. A clear signal on what matters and what doesn’t. Paul Saffo put it better, years ago: “In a world of hyper-abundant content, point of view will become the scarcest of resources.” He wrote that before AI could generate infinite content on demand.

Think about what AI actually does. It takes everything ever written and averages it into a competent, completely generic answer. It’s the best information-processor ever built, and it has no point of view at all. Yes you can go crazy with skills, tone of voice docs, etc. etc., but since I have done all of this stuff, I can tell you for sure it still asks me for lived experience as an example when I write articles like this.

The one thing AI structurally cannot do is the one thing that’s worth everything now. Have an experience-based point of view. The way you, specifically, see this problem after doing the work. The thing nobody can copy isn’t what you know, everyone can get that now. It’s how you see it.

Perspective first, apps later

Most people go wrong at exactly this point, and I went wrong here for years too. They decide they need a “system.” They open Notion, OneNote, or whatever tool got hyped that week, and they spend a month building an empty cathedral of folders they’ll never fill. The tool becomes the hobby. The thinking never happens. (Believe me I’ve been there and done that)

Personal knowledge management (PKM) is real and it’s worth building. It’s the set of habits and tools that turn information into actual outcomes instead of a bigger pile. But it starts with your perspective, not with software.

Before you touch an app, answer two questions on paper:

• What projects are you actually working on right now? Everything. The new website, the spare room you’re renovating, the bike trip you need to plan. Write them all down.
• What else in your life needs attention? Your health, your relationships, the interests you keep saying you’ll get to.

Only once that’s on the page do you build structure around it. PARA (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives) is a clean way to do that and worked for a while for me. But no matter what fancy system you use the order matters Reality first, the filing system second.

Once you have the lens, the firehose changes. Instead of weighing every piece of information for importance, which is impossible, you filter everything through one question:

Does this serve what I’m actually working on?

Most of it doesn’t, and now you can let it go without guilt. The rest you keep, not because it’s interesting, but because it’s useful to you, now.

Development isn’t a straight line

One more thing, because it’s the part people skip. Having a point of view doesn’t mean deciding once and defending it forever. That’s not perspective, that’s ego.

A point of view gets tested against reality. You put it into the world, watch what comes back, and adjust. You don’t find your angle in a seminar or a nice course, you find it by executing and seeing what survives. Growth doesn’t move in a straight line, it runs in loops, and the only way to run the loop is to actually do something with what you think.

Which, ironically enough, is the opposite of hoarding. Hoarding is safe cause it feels like progress and commits to nothing. Putting your point of view out there, where it can be wrong, is scary. But it’s the whole game.

Anyway. Go close some tabs.

A few weeks ago, someone sent me a LinkedIn post they’d written with AI and asked for feedback.
It was clean, well-structured and had zero grammatical errors.
And I had no damn clue what this person believed.

The post could have come from anyone in their industry.
Right keywords, popular hook format, call-to-action at the end.
Checked every box.

This is what happens when you give AI a topic but not a perspective.
You get content that looks professional, but it’s contributing to AI slop.

The problem isn’t the tool

I use AI a lot.
Even this article that you’re reading right now, Claude has helped me put it together.
I know many experts say you shouldn’t use AI for content creation.
But that’s sort of the same as saying you can’t use a car to go from A to B, because a horse would be more authentic.

If you get poor results, you aren’t using the wrong tools.
You are probably skipping the thinking that makes AI useful in the first place.

For example:
Level one: you ask AI to write a post about thought leadership.
Level two: you type “thought leadership is not about being smart or knowing everything. It’s about having the courage to share your professional point of view. Please give me five angles on how I can approach this message.”

Same tool, same topic, completely different output.
The difference is the instruction.
And the best instructions aren’t a prompt template from someone’s viral newsletter, they’re a clear picture of who you are, what you stand for, and who you’re talking to.

p.s. please make sure you are at least at level two this week

Where AI helps

There is a ton of information and instructions out there on how you can use AI in your day-to-day workflow and operations.
Below you’ll find some simple examples if you’re getting started.

1. Research and inspiration
I use AI to scan what’s happening in my industry. What questions are people asking? What topics are getting traction? What’s been said to death?

I used to use Google Alerts for this, but now it’s a combination of Perplexity, Google Gemini, and Claude Code. It saves me hours of reading and surfaces things I would have missed on my own.

2. First draft acceleration
Once I know what I want to talk about, I use AI to build a first draft.
I feed it my positioning statements, tone of voice guidelines and the summary of one of the topics from my research.
The draft is never published, but it gives me something to react to instead of a blank page.
I rewrite, rearrange, add my own examples and cut anything that feels like it could have come from anyone.

3. Editing and formatting
AI is good at tightening sentences, catching repetition and cleaning up flow.
I use it as a second pair of eyes after I’ve written my version.
One catch.
Instruct your AI to only highlight the things that are wrong.
Don’t let it rewrite your text, to make sure your writing stays your own.

This is where AI adds the most value with the least risk.
The thinking is done, the POV is mine, and AI helps clean it up.

Where AI sucks

1. Your backstory
AI doesn’t have your experience.
It doesn’t know the client who changed your mind, the failure that taught you more than success ever did, or the contrarian view you built over the years.

Ask AI to generate your positioning, and you’ll get something that sounds reasonable.
And means nothing.
Your POV has to come from you.
No shortcut.

2. Your angle on a topic
AI can give you both sides of an argument.
What it can’t do is pick a side based on what you’ve lived through.

Your take, the specific perspective that comes from years of doing this work, is the part that makes content worth reading.

Hand that to AI and you’ve handed over the only thing that makes you different.

3. Your engagement
Comments, replies, DMs, real conversations.
It is where trust gets built and there is no way to automate that.
It’s the part where people are most tempted to use AI because it saves time.

Don’t.

The human part is the whole point.
Someone leaves a thoughtful comment on your post and gets a robot reply?
You’ve lost more trust than the post created.

So where do you start?

I wrote about this before, the Backstory framework.
Six questions that help you find your Angle, Authority, and Voice.
Those three statements are the foundation AI needs from you.

Without them, you’re asking AI to guess who you are.
And it will. It’ll guess wrong.

The order that works

1. Build your backstory (your positioning statements)
2. Pick your angle on a specific topic
3. Use AI to help you draft, research, and edit
4. Keep your engagement human

Most people start at step 3.
Then we wonder why the output is so bad.

That post someone sent me? It had everything except a point of view.
That’s the one thing worth protecting.

Last month I was running one of my Thought Leadership training sessions. Fifteen executives, all with fifteen-plus years of experience.

One of them asked:

“Ok Martijn, I get it. Positioning myself and posting is important, but what should I post about and how? I don’t have time to dedicate one or two hours a week to writing, and I want to stay far away from those terrible AI-written posts.”

So I asked why she was so interested in the industry, and what shaped how she sees it?

Simple question, hard to answer.

She had plenty of expertise and experience to build a point of view from. Nobody had ever asked her that question before.

We start too quickly

Everyone is rushing to use AI for personal branding. AI has all the answers, it’s easy to use, and let’s all agree we’re all a bit lazy. The problem is that optimising headlines and rewriting About sections for your profile won’t get you anywhere if you skip the hardest step.

We go straight to “how do I look?” before answering “what do I want to be known for?”

Skip that step and it’s like decorating your house before pouring the foundation. It looks nice until everything comes crumbling down.

Your profile, your content, your conversations, they all need an anchor. Without it, you’re optimising without a solid foundation.

That anchor is your backstory.

What makes you different

Your backstory isn’t your CV. It’s the collection of experiences that made you see your industry the way you do.

• The client who changed your mind.
• The failure that taught you more than any success.
• The moment you realised everyone was approaching something the wrong way.

That’s the stuff AI will never know about. And from what I’ve seen, it’s exactly what your audience is looking for.

It’s difficult to get that backstory straight. Believe me, I’ve been struggling with it for the last three years. Last week I updated my personal website and finally had a breakthrough.

The six questions I asked myself

1. Turning Point
“The moment that changed my perspective on my industry was when {blank}”
Be specific. When did it happen? What shifted?

2. Expertise
“People often seek me out for guidance on {blank}”
Not your job description but your expertise. What do people keep asking you about?

3. Contrarian View
“My experience taught me that most people get {blank} wrong because {blank}”
What has your experience shown you that goes against common wisdom?

4. Driving Mission
“The industry challenge that energizes me to solve is {blank}”
Not what you sell. What you care about fixing.

5. Signature Insight
“The one thing I want every professional in my field to understand is {blank}”
If you had one message, what would it be?

6. Leadership Topic
“Based on answers 1 to 5, the industry conversation I should lead is {blank}”
The conversation you want people to associate with your name.

You don’t need to get this perfect on the first try. Write your answers, let them sit for a day, and then come back and sharpen them.

From six answers to three statements

Alright, that was the hard part, now the fun begins.
Once you’ve answered the six questions, combine them into three positioning statements:

Your Angle (Answers 1 + 3)
Your turning point plus your contrarian view. This becomes the content that challenges your industry’s thinking.

Your Authority (Answers 2 + 4)
Your expertise plus your mission. This becomes your positioning, what you help people do and why.

Your Voice (Answers 5 + 6)
Your signature insight plus your leadership topic. This becomes the consistent message people hear from you everywhere.

How this works in practice

My example in social selling:

My Angle:
Early in my career, I realised selling should be about helping, not quota-chasing. Most people treat sales as a competition rather than a collaboration. My content challenges that assumption.

My Authority:
I help professionals build trust through social selling that prioritises human connection over automation.

My Voice:
As AI handles more of our processes, the professionals who win are those who create real human connections. That’s the conversation I want to lead.

Three statements that guide my LinkedIn profile, my content, and who I connect with. When I’m stuck on what to write, who to connect with, or what to do, I go back to these.

Do this before you touch AI

AI is a tool. A good one, but it still needs guidance and direction. And the best direction isn’t a prompt template from someone’s viral post. It’s your positioning statements.

From now on, use your Angle, your Authority, and your Voice in every chat. It will help you draft content that sounds like you. Definitely not perfect, but way better than a general “copy-pasted prompt” you found somewhere on the web.

Your backstory is the angle AI needs. Without it, you’re outsourcing your thinking to a machine that doesn’t know you, your audience and your business.

And outsourcing your thinking to AI? That is a stupid idea.

The ones who stand out aren’t the ones with the best-optimised profiles, or the most polished message. They’re the ones who know what they stand for, and let everything else flow from that.

Your backstory already exists. You’ve been building it for years. You haven’t written it down yet.