Episode 60: Grow Your Authority on LinkedIn

Learn how to strengthen your thought leadership platform on LinkedIn by clarifying your message, increasing your visibility, and boosting your credibility to level up your influence and grow your authority.

Blog Post

If you want to strengthen your presence on LinkedIn, it’s not just about posting—it’s about building visibility, credibility, and consistency. In this episode of Two Marketing Moms, Kelly Callahan-Poe is joined by Kelly Schuknecht of Two Mile High Marketing to break down how thought leaders can level up their influence.

The Three Pillars of Thought Leadership

To stand out as a thought leader, focus on:

Visibility – Show up consistently so your target audience sees you.
Credibility – Share insights and experiences that establish you as an expert.
Consistency – Keep your messaging regular and reliable.

Five Frameworks for LinkedIn Content

When you’re stuck on what to post, try these proven approaches:

I Used to Believe – Share a mindset shift that shaped your expertise.
Problem → Insight → Advice – Walk through a challenge and solution.
Behind the Scenes Lesson – Give your audience a peek into your process.
Mini List Post – Break down lessons or mistakes into quick takeaways.
Credibility Boost – Highlight achievements and how they help others.

Why Books Boost Authority

Kelly also shares how writing a book can open doors—whether it’s speaking gigs, media interviews, or new opportunities. One client’s heartfelt book about caregiving led to community recognition, speaking events, and media features, all because she shared her authentic story.

A Handy Tool to Measure Your Platform

Want to know where you stand as a thought leader? Try Kelly’s free Thought Leadership Score Tool. In just a few minutes, you’ll get a score and tailored ideas for strengthening your platform.

Transcript

Kelly Callahan-Poe

Welcome to the Two Marketing Moms podcast. I’m Kelly Callahan-Poe and today’s episode is called Grow Your Authority on LinkedIn with Kelly Schuknecht. Kelly is the founder of Two Mile High Marketing in my home state of Colorado helping businesses sharpen their messaging, boost visibility, and build impactful strategies. She also hosts the Beyond the Best Seller, a podcast empowering women to share their stories and grow thriving platforms. Thanks for joining me today, Kelly.

Kelly Schuknecht

Thank you, Kelly, Kelly and Kelly.

Kelly Callahan-Poe

Kelly and Kelly, both from Colorado. So, you have an interesting backstory that we chatted about. I want to hear a little bit about it because it’s an interesting story in terms of how you backed into helping others and growing their authority online. Can you tell us about it?

Kelly Schuknecht

Yeah, well, I feel like it happened accidentally. I lost my job in 2024 and decided to take a chance on myself and start my own business. So, I took the skills and experience that I had and decided to go to market as two mile high marketing and help thought leaders develop their thought leadership platform.

Kelly Callahan-Poe

I love it. And so, you have a very specific platform that you promote. I’d like to dig into it. First of all, what do you see are the top three pillars of thought leadership?

Kelly Schuknecht

Well, I think anyone who is wanting to develop a thought leadership platform should be thinking of three things, visibility, credibility, and consistency. Those are, I feel, the pillars of thought leadership that if you really want to become a thought leader, you need to have those three things going for you.

Kelly Callahan-Poe

And you also have five frameworks for LinkedIn content. Can you explain what they are and how they work and how you use them?

Kelly Schuknecht

I do. So, I would imagine that you will link to this in the show notes.

Kelly

I will yes.

Kelly Schuknecht

Okay, perfect. So, you know, I mentioned the three pillars, visibility, you got to get visible in front of your target audience, credibility, you need to show up in the way that you want people to see who you are, that they see you as the expert and consistency. So, these frameworks help people with showing up consistently. So, I have some recommendations around how to show up consistently and I can share that next. But the frameworks that I have, I like to use them as just some, just to help me like in those moments when you’re sitting down, you’re like, what should I post today?

These frameworks kind of help me think through some things that have happened maybe recently in my work with clients or in my personal life or whatever. It helps me like think of those stories that I can then turn into content and share. So, the frameworks that I have, and I’ll kind of go through maybe just a couple of them because there’s a lot of words to this.

The first framework is the I used to believe framework or the I used to believe post. So, I think of this as like I used to believe X, then I realized Y, now I help others Z, right? So, whatever those things are, like I used to believe that if I just did great work, opportunities would find me, right? But then I realized that visibility doesn’t just happen by accident.

Now I help others show up consistently online so that they can reach the target audience that they want to reach. Something along those lines. Obviously, if I’m writing this for LinkedIn, I’m going to have a lot more words on there, but for the sake of listeners, I’m going to keep it brief. But these frameworks, so I have some examples in there too. So, if you access these frameworks, which is it’s not gated content, you can access it. And I have kind of some examples in there to help you think through some ideas. A second one is the problem insight advice. So, here’s a challenge, here’s what we realized and here’s what we did. A lot of times I’ll use this one when it comes to a client story. maybe it’s something where, for example, a client was maybe looking to get speaking events and we were challenged in finding the right events for that client. So, we realized we needed to change maybe the approach, the pitch, you know, something about the target audience, something. And then, you know, here’s what we did and the results that we got. So, it helps me kind of turn this story into a piece of content that I can share.

But it also, when people read that, right, they see, this person can help me with this exact problem, or it might help them think through a problem that they’re having. So, it’s a way of just kind of turning some of your experiences into a lesson that you can share with your audience.

So, number three is the behind the scenes lesson. So, what you’re working on, a challenge or insight and a takeaway kind of similar to the last one. But again, it’s a behind the scenes look at the work that you’re doing and again, turning a story into something you can share. So, for example, I had a client or had somebody who signed up for a course that I have. So, I have a course on how to write a book in 12 weeks. So, I used the experience with this particular client who she would actually email me almost every day as she’s going through this course and we became friends during this process. And so, I would take some of the experience, the questions that she was having or the things that she got stuck on, and then I would turn those into pieces of content that I could share with people because surely if she had those questions, other people are going to have the same questions, right? And then it allows me to talk about the course that I have, the work that I’m doing with authors and things like that. So just kind of taking some of those experiences and remembering to share those with your community because you never know when people that are connected with you have the same problem or same questions.

Number four is the mini list posts. So, three things I learned or five mistakes I see. You probably see these a lot. People love list format, right? so taking it doesn’t have to be any kind of certain number, right? It could be three, five, four, whatever. It doesn’t matter. But the point is just taking something that you’ve learned or some, some sort of experience and then breaking it down into digestible information that people can scroll through and learn from. And then number five is the credibility boost post. So, here’s something I’ve done. Here’s what I’ve learned and how it helps others. So, here’s an example. haven’t been reading you all of the examples of the ones that I’ve shared. Again, these are all in the frameworks that you can download, but I’ll share this one. So, after helping dozens of founders get books on podcasts and panels, I’ve noticed a pattern. The best results come when people, or excuse me, the best results come when your personal story connects to your business strategy. That’s the sweet spot we focus on when building our speaker elevation plans. So again, I would make this much longer if it was a real post, but just for the sake of an example, I have just a brief example in there.

But it’s something where I’m sharing how I’m helping people. I’m sharing something I’ve learned. And then how I’m now using that to help other people. Those stories are really powerful. And I believe that the stories I’ve shared since I started my company have been really, really just people have connected with me because of that. And I think that they’ve been really helpful in growing my business. So those are the five frameworks. They’re all available for free, not gated, you could access them. And I just really like to play with them when I’m coming up with content. So, think they’re really helpful. If you’re stuck on ideas and trying to think of what to post on LinkedIn, this kind of helps you show up consistently.

Kelly Callahan-Poe

I love that. And one of your area of expertise is your podcast, Beyond the Best Seller, and how you work with women to create their dream books. How has developing a book increased authority for some of the people that you’ve worked for? Has it been a game changer? How is that measurable?

Kelly Schuknecht

So, you know, I mentioned the woman that was writing me during the process of writing her book. she was going through this course. The course is all email. It’s all even an email every day telling you what to do. So, she was getting the email from me and that’s why she would respond with a question or, you know, something. And we got to know each other. This was maybe about a year ago, actually. And she was a part of a, I created a community for women authors who are either writing a book or in the process of maybe marketing a book. They’re all nonfiction authors. because of the connection I made with her, I said, let’s start a group for other women. And so, we started this group. It’s been amazing. We meet every week. We just help support each other, learn from each other. I bring in guests to kind of talk on different topics, things like that.

But this particular woman that went through my course, published her book. It was a surprise for her dad around Father’s Day. So, she published it in the spring this year. And she is a therapist who wrote a book about her experience being a caregiver for her mom who is dealing with Alzheimer’s. And Dawn, I’ll just mention her book in case anyone’s interested in that topic. So, it’s Memories Matter, the author is Dawn Wirtz. As a therapist, she found herself looking for a book to kind of speak to the emotional experience she was having being this caregiver and losing her mom before losing her mom and the emotional side of that. And so, she couldn’t find the book.

She found my course and decided to write the book. She did. And right after the book came out, she was asked to be a guest at an Alzheimer’s fundraising event. I was actually at a speaking event and connected with somebody who was doing a conference on the topic of caregiving. And so, I connected them. then just actually just last weekend, Dawn went and spoke to that group as well. And she was asked to be a signer, you know, to do a book signing at a local bookstore and just so many things. She was interviewed on her local radio. Like so many things just came together for Dawn. And I think that the reason that she has such a great story is that she just she wrote that book 100% from her heart. She had this message to share. It wasn’t something that she wasn’t intentionally writing a book to for book sales or to get rich off of it. It was because she had this deep reason for sharing her message. And she did. And she’s had so many opportunities come her way because of it.

Kelly Callahan-Poe

I love that story. That’s very powerful and a great lesson. One of the other tools that you offer on your website is called the Thought Leadership Score Tool that helps you figure out how strong your thought leadership platform is and what to do next. I took the quiz, and I thought it was very helpful to help me to determine what are the opportunities that I need to focus on.

So, I have some things to work on. For me, I need to work on PR, testimonials, speaking engagements, and I hadn’t really thought about but looking at book opportunities. Can you tell us a little bit more about the tool and how you use it with clients? Because it’s really interesting.

Kelly Schuknecht

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mentioned that I just started my business last year and a couple of the things that I did immediately was I started my podcast. So, you mentioned my podcast. I wanted to just, I felt like I needed to start developing content and networking with the right people, right? And then the second thing on my list was creating that quiz. I wanted to have that resource for people that when I would go out and speak or be on podcasts or connect with people, had somewhere I could point them where it would give them some helpful, valuable information. So that quiz is designed to help you think through, it takes, as you know, it takes about three minutes. I mean, it’s really quick to go through. You answer some questions. I think it is thought provoking as you’re going through it, because you’re thinking about your answers to these questions and going, yeah, maybe I should be doing that. And then in the end, it gives you that score. It kind of tells you where you fall as a thought leader and then gives you those ideas of things to work on if you want to further develop your thought leadership platform. So, I think for most people, they probably think that they are further along than they are, right? But it really gives you a full scope of the things to be thinking about. not in an overwhelming way, but just like, okay, the next thing I should work on might be this, right? We can only do one thing at a time. So, it’s adding on kind of the next thing that you can work on when you have the capacity for it. But yeah, it’s a handy tool and it will give you that kind of takeaway. You should get an email with your results and then that’s something that you can use to work on developing your platform further.

Kelly Callahan-Poe

I highly recommend checking out the tool and I will provide a link to it on the website notes section. So, thank you so much, Kelly, for sharing your insights today. I’m hoping you’ll come back again and maybe we can talk about creating, letting women create their own dream books because I’m interested.

Kelly Schuknecht

Yeah, I would love that.

Kelly Callahan-Poe

We’ll post Kelly’s tools and contact information on the transcript on twomarketingmoms.com. Thanks for joining.

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