Anyone can become a thought leader — you just have to be brave enough to start.

This is the year I will put myself out there and share my expertise with the CS community. Have you ever had that thought? Maybe it’s on your list of goals or resolutions? 

We talked to four luminaries in the CS world, who share how they found their voice, which platforms have moved the needle, and what the benefits have been. Follow their advice to find your voice and increase your visibility. Who knows what new opportunities will come of it? 

Our four thought-leadership experts:

• Alex Turkovic is the host of the Digital CX Podcast
• Elodie O’Rourke is Global Customer Success Director at Financial Times. 
• Stino Smet is Head of Customer Success at Whale and hosts or co-hosts three podcasts, including The Customer Success Hotline. 
• Jenelle Friday is Customer Success Manager at Whale and runs LionheartCS, an EQ consultancy. 

All four contributors are members of Vitally's Success Network. 

When in Doubt, Start With LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the go-to place to develop your voice and experiment with the style of content you want to put out into the world. “For me,” says Stino, “the starting point was when I discovered this entire Customer Success community on Linkedin — people like Kristi Faltorusso, Diana de Jesus — those were the people that accelerated my career. I wanted to give back to the next generation of Customer Success managers who are coming behind me.”

Alex agrees, saying, “LinkedIn is a perfect jumping off point because everybody's there.” And you can just “start small,” says Elodie, “build yourself a little online presence, simply by liking posts of the professionals that you find inspiring.”

How to Grow Your Audience on LinkedIn 

Let’s say you’ve started posting on LinkedIn. Great! Now, how do you catapult yourself into thought-leader territory? Our experts suggest these four tips to start building momentum:‍

1. Keep your posts practical and relatable. 

Don’t feel like you have to reach a peak in your career before posting your thoughts and opinions. Jenelle always tells her mentees to log on and share the nitty gritty of their daily tasks. “We need more thought leadership about the day-to-day activities of a CSM,” she says, “and ideas for how to simplify, streamline, and scale those activities.”

Alex agrees that you should write in an off-the-cuff style. “People are tired of standard thought-leader babble,” he says. Instead, he suggests writing down the problems you are tackling. “The vast majority of people out there don't share their receipts. They're not sharing the things that they're doing on a daily basis and the work that they're doing that's making them successful in their career. If you're in operations, for instance, and you just created this killer automation, share those details. I guarantee people will glom onto it. I think that's where the magic is.”

2. Turn your struggles and successes into content. 

“The best thing is to treat LinkedIn posts like your diary,” says Stino. “Don't do research; don't try to copy or mimic someone else's voice. There is always something that keeps you up at night that you're passionate about. Write that down.” 

Stino is speaking from experience: The first LinkedIn series he did that hit a nerve, he wrote it like a diary. “It started off as something like, ‘Dear Diary, today was a f*cking sh*t show. But this is what I've learned.’”

3. Try video. 

“LinkedIn has been rewarding video content. So if you feel comfortable turning the cell phone camera on yourself, go to town, instead of just writing it up,” says Alex. “I post a lot of walk-and-talk videos, which are just me taking a walk and talking about something that's on my mind.”

4. Post consistently, not constantly. ‍

“I have experimented with cadence, and I would say the sweet spot is probably twice a week,” says Alex, “ because then you're not getting yourself into fatigue, but you're keeping up a presence.” 

As far as when to post, Jenelle has this advice: “LinkedIn loves algorithms, right? So if you post on the same day at the same time, you're feeding into the algorithm that will help your visibility,” says Jenelle.

How to Launch a Customer Success Podcast

A couple of years into his role in digital Customer Success, Alex was having regular conversations with other leaders in the industry, trying to get a sense for what other people were doing that he could implement. “At some point it dawned on me,” he said, “that, hey, I really should be recording this stuff and putting it out there for others who might be struggling with the same thing.”

He parked the idea for months, until one day he was partaking in one of his so-called “stupid side hobbies,” which is “‘looking to see what URLs are out there and spending a stupid amount of money on URLs that I never use.”

He searched digitalcustomersuccess.com, and the domain came up. “I was like, okay, here's your sign, go start the podcast, just freaking do it. So one and a half years later, 80 episodes in, here I am.”

When considering whether to launch a Customer Success podcast, Alex says there are three things to consider (“and the first two don’t really matter that much”). 

1. The tech: “Everybody gets stuck on assembling the tech. There are any number of different schools of thought there. But it’s not something that is ultimately that hard to figure out.”

2. The branding: “It’s useful to identify your branding and style and how you want to present yourself. But don’t overthink it.” 

3. The content: “There are so many BS podcasts out there that you have to figure out a unique angle, whether that's topic-related or format-related. And you have to make it as entertaining as possible, because listening to one or two people talk for an hour is hard”

Stino has found a unique angle on a podcast – actually, three of them, including the latest, The Customer Success Courtroom, which is launching in 2025. 

As far as tracking results, Stino doesn’t really bother doing that. “I'm not looking at the numbers. I'm not looking for sponsorships. I'm doing this because I love it. And I really do this because I want to give as much back to the community who has given me so much.” 

So how does Stino measure success? “It’s not really the likes or the listeners, or the impressions. It's more the DMs. It's the people coming up to you and saying, ‘Thank you. It resonated with me.’”

How to Find Customer Success Speaking Opportunities

Elodie started with a cold call to organizers of an event, offering herself up as a speaker. “I like being bold and saying, ‘I want to do it.’” It worked: She spoke on a panel about the future of CS. It didn’t hurt that Elodie has a unique position in the field (“the Financial Times is not a place where you would expect to see a Customer Success team”). 

It’s worthwhile to try to get on the circuit. “Networking at Customer Success conferences has probably been the biggest needle mover for me just because it's social proof,” says Alex, who has his eye on New York Customer Success Week for next year. “That one is really cool and quote-unquote non-denominational.”

Why You Should Consider a Newsletter 

“My newsletter came naturally as a companion piece to the podcast,” says Alex, who started seeing “a pretty dramatic spike” in repeat listenership after he launched his newsletter. It’s a reminder to listen to this week's show and engage with his content, he explains. 

The Benefits of Building a Personal Brand 

So what has been the outcome of all this effort — the LinkedIn posts, the podcasts, the speaking engagements? A few things. 

1. Establishes credibility. When Elodie is pushing an idea with her boss, she’s noticed that her opinion has more weight. She’ll say something like, “you know, in the CS industry, this is what I've heard.” And her boss perks up.
2. Enables a side hustle. “I have been doing quite a bit of advising and consulting on the side, and practically every one of those engagements came from the podcast or speaking,” says Alex. “My ultimate goal is to build a consultancy.”
3. Opens doors. Jenelle and Stino met at an event thrown by the Customer Success Collective, where they were both up for the Leader of the Year award. Jenelle won, and she called out Stino and the other nominees in her speech. The two became friends, and Stino recently hired Jenelle for a full-time position at Whale. 
4. Lends visibility. “You need to have some sort of presence online. If only your family and direct colleagues know that you're great, that's fantastic, but it's not enough,” says Elodie. “When people Google your name, they should be able to find stuff.”
5. Builds confidence. By showing his personality on LinkedIn instead of suppressing it, Stino learned that being true to himself can actually be an asset in the workplace. “I want people to look at me and be like, he's loud, he's flamboyant, and look how far he’s gotten. We're all human, at the end of the day. It's the authenticity and the knowledge that we have that gets us far.”

Need an extra push to get started as a Customer Success thought-leader? The Success Network is a community of Customer Success experts and visionaries who power all of Vitally's content with their cutting-edge insights. Apply to be a member and start sharing your CS insights with the world!