How to Position Yourself as a Thought Leader Writing Online

You have the credibility and the experience. Here's how to unlock infinite ideas to write about in 4 steps.

Many tech professionals stay invisible.

You’ve led teams. You’ve shipped products. You’ve solved complex people and technical problems.

But when it comes to writing online, you freeze.

Not because you don’t have valuable ideas, but because you don’t know where to start.

• What topics should you write about?

• Are you “expert” enough?

• How do you make your ideas resonate with others?

But here’s the hard truth:

The best opportunities—career-wise, financially, creatively—go to the engineers who know how to package their experience into ideas and share them publicly.

Not just code on GitHub.

Not just titles on LinkedIn.

But clear, specific, helpful ideas—published online consistently.

• That’s how you build real career leverage.

• That’s how you position yourself as a thought leader.

• That’s how you attract opportunities instead of chasing them.

By the end of this guide, you’ll know:

• What topics you're credible enough to write about

• How to choose ones that actually resonate with others

• A repeatable system to generate endless ideas using the 2-Year Test + 4A Framework

This is the exact method I’ve used—and taught—to turn personal experience into consistent content that grows an audience and opens doors without even knocking on them.

Let’s dive in.

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Step 1: Use the 2-Year Test to find your topic ideas

Finding the general topics you want to write about starts with asking yourself 1 simple question:

What are all the problems I’ve solved and topics I’ve learned about over the last 2 years?”

Why 2 years?

Good question:

Because you don’t need to be an expert.

One of the biggest mistakes beginner writers make is thinking they have to be an “expert“ to write about something.

But this is wrong.

The truth is, people don’t want to learn from experts.

They prefer to learn from those just a few steps ahead of them on the same path.

And once you realize this, it’s a huge creative unlock.

So answer the question and brain dump every problem you’ve solved and topic you’ve learned in the last 2 years.

Get them all out there with no judgment.

Narrowing Down Your Topics

Now you have a long list of topics.

Turns out you have plenty to write about!

From here, you are going to narrow it down to 3 buckets.

To do this, listen for internal resonance.

Which topics jumped off the page right when you wrote them down?

Lean into those and latch on.

When I did this, I emerged with 3 buckets:

1) Staying creative in tech.

2) Landing better job opportunities.

3) Achieving work-life balance as a tech professional.

You should have your 3 buckets as well.

Now, onto step 2: Adding specificity.

Step 2: Add specificity to match your credibility

Remember how I said you don’t have to be an expert?

That was only half-true.

You do need to be an expert in a topic to write about it, but you simply need to tweak the topic by adding specificity to match your level of credibility.

Here’s what I mean:

Recall the 2-Year Test.

These are all the problems you’ve solved in the last 2 years.

Now, you’re going to take your topics and add a level of specificity that makes the audience you’re writing to the same person you were 2 years ago, before you solved the problem.

Pause for a second and stare at that—it’s important.

You are adding a level of specificity to your topic that makes your target audience the person you were 2 years ago.

An example will help drive this home.

Here’s how my 3 topics evolved.

My Topics With More Specificity:

1) Thrive while you build:

For junior devs who want to stay fit, creative, and sane in a demanding tech world.

2) Break in from the outside:

For ambitious engineers from non-tech hubs trying to break into global opportunities.

3) Don’t lose who you love:

For young, hungry devs trying not to ruin their relationships while chasing their careers.

The Power of Specificity

Can you see how I cut out a huge number of people with my additions of specificity?

That’s the point.

This helps me generate ideas specifically to solve the problems of my target audience.

Here’s how to get specific.

You can add specificity in many ways:

• Age.

• Gender.

• Profession.

• Background.

• Level of experience.

I encourage you to dial these up and down until you feel uncomfortably specific, then add one more level.

That’s when you know you’ve gotten specific enough.

Step 3: Use the 4A Framework to generate ideas

You can express each of your topics in 4 ways:

• Actionable (here’s how).

• Aspirational (yes, you can).

• Anthropological (here’s why).

• Analytical (here are the numbers).

And here are some examples for each:

1) Actionable

These are actionable, implementable pieces of content.

The reader should gain some new insight or instruction that they didn’t have beforehand.

• Tips.

• Hacks.

• Resources.

• Ultimate guides.

Take your core idea and help the reader put it into practice.

2) Analytical

These are breakdowns involving numbers, frameworks, and processes.

Take your core idea and support it with numbers and analysis.

• Industry trends.

• Surprising numbers.

• Why your idea works.

Help the reader unlock a new way of thinking.

3) Aspirational

These are stories of how you or others put your core idea into practice.

• Lessons.

• Mistakes.

• Reflections.

• Underrated traits.

• How to get started.

Help the reader understand the benefits they unlock when they see the world through this new lens.

4) Anthropological

These are the things that speak to universal human nature.

• Fears.

• Failures.

• Struggles.

• Why others are wrong.

• How you’ve been misled.

Create a sense of urgency for the reader to fully embrace your core idea or be forever left behind.

Step 4: Choose 3 ideas to write about over the next 3 days

You’re sitting there with a ton of ideas on the page, and now you have the problem of potentially too many ideas to write about, which is better than having nothing to write about.

But many writers will fall into the analysis paralysis trap here.

Here’s how to overcome it:

Pick 3 ideas. That’s it.

Your next 3 days of content.

The 3 ideas that most resonated with you from that list.

And that’s all you’re allowed to take away from these ideas (for now).

Because here’s what’s going to happen:

When you start writing about your first idea (that idea that jumped right off the page), it’s going to feel effortless.

And in the process of writing, more ideas are going to jump into your head.

Audience Feedback Loop

When you hit publish on this idea, the market feedback is going to generate even more ideas (if you’re paying attention to the questions, critiques, engagement, resonance, etc).

This is the main point of the Endless Idea Generator Framework: to get you started writing about ideas that resonate with you.

And once you’re getting them out there consistently, it will be dead obvious what you should write about next.

So take your 3 ideas and get going!

The rest will take care of itself.

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If You Still Don’t Know Where to Start, Use The Advanced Idea Generator Prompt

Paste this into ChatGPT or Claude to instantly apply the Endless Idea Generator Framework to your own writing: