Generally, a thought leader is considered to be an authority on a topic or field. They are the go-to person or organization to drive innovations as well as to create knowledge. For example, Steve Jobs, the renowned CEO of Apple, is one of the most popular thought leaders in the world of technology. With legendary inventions like iPod and iPhone, Jobs created an unparalleled reputation for Apple that still precedes the tech giant.
Today, however, thought leadership is a conscious practice for businesses and personalities to distinguish themselves and create a unique reputation in the industry.
Enter thought leadership content as a marketing strategy.
In this blog we have covered all about a thought leader and how you can utilize this strategy to improve your market reputation. So, let’s dive into it!
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What is Thought Leadership in Content Marketing?
Thought leadership is a content marketing strategy through which you showcase your authority and expertise in the industry. This allows a brand to build successful connections with their target audience and establish trust and credibility among them.
For business facing brands, a thought leadership content strategy proves highly effective since businesses focus on high-quality content and accuracy of information over sensational marketing strategies. Here a few pointers that you can keep in mind while optimizing your content for thought leadership.
- Address the Pain Points of Your Audience
- Speak your Truth without Bias or Fear
- Provide Research Driven Insights
Why Use Thought Leadership Content?
When you are working in a heavily competitive industry, thought leadership is the anchor point that everyone aspires to reach. Here are some of the reasons why you should be using thought leadership content.
1. Instill Trust and Credibility
One of the key benefits of thought leadership is that it gives a hands-on example to your target group about your analytical prowess, capacity to predict market trends, and awareness about the affairs in your industry. This positions you as a trustworthy and responsible entity in the market.
2. Build Deeper Connection with Audiences
No promotional strategy can be as effective as a good content that talks about the real-life problems of the audience. By making them feel heard and understood, thought leadership is a great tool to foster deeper connections with the readers.
3. Offer Opinion on Industry Trends
By successfully demonstrating thought leadership, you can go beyond the inevitable SEO limitations of writing only around keywords to drive traffic. Showcasing elements of thought leadership attracts recurrent viewers which allows you to boost visibility organically through Google features like Discover, News etc.
4. Position Yourself as an Industry Leader
Creating content that resonate with your target group and offers insights about the latest developments in your industry helps you in your thought leadership content marketing. It enables you to naturally surpass the competitors by creating value for the audience.
5. Reach People that Matter
Thought leadership content that critically engages with the topic and offers nuanced insights is an asset in any industry. It may not attract the maximum amount of viewers but will surely help you attract people in management and leadership positions.
Examples of Thought Leadership Content
Creating content is no easy feat and it becomes increasingly difficult when you aspire for thought leadership. Because, the best thoughts have to be original.
So, to help you become an effective thought leader, here is a few examples that may help you get started with it.
Zerodha Varsity
Zerodha is one of the forerunners in the fintech startup sector of India. However, what distinguished Zerodha from rest of its competitors is the fact that while the rest invested millions on marketing and promotions, the firm led by Nikhil Kamath, walked the proverbial ‘road not taken’.
With Zerodha Varsity, the investment firm introducecd valuable content on finance and investments. In a country like India, which typically has a poor financial literacy among the masses, it played a major role to educate and empower the people by offering high quality content.
It is by creating great thought leadership articles and videos that truly educate people that Zerodha was able to create a positive impact in the market. They resorted to thought leadership content marketing which allowed them to rely on organic visibility and word-of-mouth promotions to spread awareness about their services.
American Express Business Class Blog
Within a given industry, content can be a very effective way to showcase a company’s expertise. Like American Express did with their blogs.
This financial giant, with its Business Class blog, helps small companies and start-ups with prudent advice. They craft this section with inspiration and insight to help businesses grow and expand beyond their expectations.
They are using the trust the name American Express has built throughout the years within the banking and financial market, and using the content to help a huge number of people thrive in the industry.
REI’s Blog
REI’s blog is another great example of that approach.
This outdoor brand posts on a variety of topics related to outdoor living and activity with “expert advice” in the heading. They made it thorough enough for anyone, willing to go for a hiking adventure, to find everything necessary. Additionally, a reader can also get that item from their online store too.
By using real experts in the given field for advice, they are positioning the brand at a place of trust.
- Deloitte’s Research Page
A few major accounting firms in the United States handle the vast majority of financial research that the internet knows about.
Among those few, Deloitte is a significant name. They are working to spread ideas from their extensive research through their blogs. They cover highly important topics such as consumer trends and retail shopping surveys through the medium and help companies make better decisions.
Now, you have a more or less clear idea that you have to prepare yourself to produce grounded and authentic content to establish your brand as a thought leader in your space. So, it would be beneficial for you to take a look at the resources you have at your disposal that can help you achieve that.
Five Sources of Thought Leadership Content
You create thought leadership content with the knowledge you gained while figuring out something difficult. You share that unique knowledge (or, earned secret) through your content that informs your audiences of the philosophy of your brand.
Here are the five sources or inputs that will help you to generate excellent thought leadership content:
1. Industry Analysis
If you pay attention to the industry that surrounds you and what works in it and what not and figure out why that is so, you get high-quality source material to craft analysis-based technical content.
You can start by choosing a framework, applying that to a famous SaaS company, and evaluating the company based on the framework.
2. Network Connections
Your network can be your product. If you are a venture capitalist firm, the founders, operations team, and vendors you work with are the features that pull new deal flow into your firm where connections turn into value-added features that work as a powerful content marketing tractor beam.
However, if you are not a venture capitalist firm, you can still create network-based content by recognising and elevating insight in others.
3. Data Storytelling
Data is an extremely potent engine that helps one generate high-class content. However, data directly does not produce such content. Data enables one to gather insights and form analysis that helps one to produce.
One can use data driven thought leadership content as an effective brand marketing strategy by gathering data about how the industry and the target audience engage with a product.
4. Personal Narrative
A story about your journey can be an excellent way of doing thought leadership. Of course, the story should have something valuable (unique in the relevant space) to offer that can compel people in the industry to engage.
Furthermore, as you gain experience in such storytelling, you would be able to find new insights to share by going back to the core experience over and over again.
5.Counter-narrative Opinions
You are a fit candidate for a counter-narrative thought leadership content if you have a strongly held opinion that differs from the traditional wisdom.
However, a counter-narrative is not about just coming out with a flashy opinion that attracts attention, it also carries the responsibility of making the industry a better place.
How to Determine if You Should Do Thought Leadership Content or Not?
Before doing thought leadership one should check if the following conditions are met:
- Credibility
Credibility is crucial in all types of content marketing. It is even more so when it comes to thought leadership content. Credibility comes from knowledge that gives you clarity over which topics you have authority over and over which you do not. Yes, only years in the business does not build credibility.
- Ability
As thought leadership is very closely tied to your brand, it demands your close attention to bear any real fruit. So, you cannot order thought leadership content off the menu that perfectly represents your brand.
If you want outside help, you would have to share your opinions, tell personal stories, provide proprietary data, offer industry analysis (for the third party to mine insights from) etc.
Furthermore, going into thought leadership means you cannot stay in your comfort zone. Your powerful opinions about the industry would surely provoke someone invested in the status quo, and you have to settle into this discomfort (if it is a discomfort).
How to Build an Effective Thought Leadership Strategy
To master the art of thought leadership you have to understand that the elements depend on the stature of your business.
The one-size-fits-all approach would not work as your company makeup comes into play; however, a few pointers stay consistent regardless of the company’s stature and reputation.
Here follows the six core steps that you can call a general guide to building an effective thought leadership strategy:
1. Define Your Goals
When you position yourself as a thought leader, the first step of the strategy is to expound on what you want to achieve from all angles. To do that, you have to go through each of your existing marketing goals and consider how thought leadership is going to help achieve them (or not).
Furthermore, clearly identifying who your audience is is also a crucial part of this process. Audience identification is necessary to design the ideal buyer persona or personas. Additionally, consider people who will be greatly benefiting from your opinions and experiences in the industry.
You have to keep in mind that all of your audience would not become your clients; however, they will expand and include more and more potential buyers gradually.
For example, are you looking to contact and communicate directly with purchasing decision-makers, other CEOs, or marketing managers? In an ideal scenario, you should try to reach a wider audience who would help to increase awareness about your brand, act as brand advocates, and become an integral part of your community.
2. Go Through Existing Thought Leadership
The 2nd step involves research and observation of the variety of already existing thought leadership content. However, you should only care about the ones related to your niche. The research also involves analysis of you and your competitors.
You need to explore several communication channels in your field such as:
- Online and offline news resources
- Online forums and communities
- Personal brand platforms like Medium and LinkedIn
- Journals and trade publications
- Seminars and webinars
- Conferences
- Social media
From here on, you would start to increase your knowledge and build an idea about the current thought leadership trends. But, why do you need that? You need it to understand the concurrent issues in your field and where you can contribute to solving the problem.
Furthermore, it will help you figure out who the current thought leaders are.
Do not forget to keep track of your competitor’s activities. Take note of the kinds of stances they are taking, whether they are producing thought leadership content or not, how are they delivering it, etc. You can analyse all that and apply it to your strategy.
You have done your research, and you have studied your competitors, however, you should also go through your previous blogs and communications to get a clear understanding of your past opinion about certain subjects. It will eliminate the chances of contradiction and confusion.
3. Identify Your Brand Focus and Its Thought Leaders
Where your thought leadership lies on an organisational level? You have to find an answer to that in the third step.
To decide who is going to be your company’s authentic thought leader, consider your specialisation and expertise, your wider brand story, whether you seek any change as a company or not, etc.
A roster of thought leaders is a good idea if you want to talk about a variety of topics. To make, consider key experts working at or with your organisation.
Here are five things that thought leader role models have in common:
- Powerful opinions and innovative ideas
- Alignment with your brand
- Proficiency in sharing experiences
- Industry expertise
- A loyal following
However, the last one (a loyal following) takes time.
4. Create Your Thought Leadership Content
Learning how to write thought leadership content is a crucial part of content production. Follow these five pointers:
- Focus on Your Strengths:
It will help you stand out from the average quicker. Concentrate more on original insights, research and data for better results.
- Exhibit Depth:
Do not shy away from investing time or other resources while going deeper into an issue or subject matter.
- Solve a Real Problem:
Your aim should be to provide effective solutions for problems that your target audience face.
- Use Storytelling:
It is a time-tested method of delivering information to people that results in good retention.
- Be Concise:
Go for long-form content only if the subject requires it; otherwise, make the most out of every word.
5. Distribute and Promote Your Content
If you are experienced in the field your thought leaders would already have a network of contacts that are willing to promote your content, however, if that’s not the case you have to find out other ways for effective content promotion.
Start-ups and small businesses can consider the following tactics:
- Pitch it to publications, journalists, and other industry influencers
- Team up with influencers and opinion leaders
- Market it on external and internal company channels
- Form an alliance with non-competing brands
- Analyse content creators in your field
Additionally, you can consider using sponsored content too if you have a budget for paid promotion.
6. Measure the Results
Success with any strategy depends on this factor. Measurement of performance ensures success and sustenance.
It is crucial to know if your thought leadership marketing is reaching your goals or not.
Here are for essential content metrics to measure the performance:
- User Behaviour:
- Users
- Page Views
- New and returning users
- Bounce rate
- Average time on page
- Traffic sources
- Pages per session
- Engagement
- Comments
- Upvotes/likes and shares
- Mentions
- Incoming requests
- Re-publications
- SEO Outcome
- Backlinks
- Organic traffic
- Dwell time
- Keyword rankings
- Company Revenue
- Conversions
- New lead generated
- Existing leads nurtured
- Content marketing ROI
- Cost per acquisition
Step by Step Method to Create Thought Leadership Content
Effective thought leadership content creation can be extremely difficult and to be honest quite overwhelming if you are new to this. So, you can use our step by step approach to it:
1. Find Out Your Topic
This can be the most challenging step in creating your brand’s thought leadership content. A thought leadership content ideally should give the readers new helpful insights about the topics that they care about. For instance, if you are into manufacturing packaging solutions for FMCG brands, then your target audience are the decision makers in such organisations.
In such a case, you can talk about new-age sustainable, recyclable packaging solutions that can reduce carbon footprints for such companies.
2. Perform thorough Reserch
Now, this is the most important step. Because, thought leadership requires precision and accuracy. So, having a comprehensive knowledge about the topic, relevant data, and established narratives in the market is almost mandatory to produce meaningful content pieces.
3. Determine your Position on the Topic
A thought leadership piece of content is not a promotional content which may highlight value propositions across the spectrum. True thought leaders are not just experts in the industry, they are also the trendsetters. So, to truly become a thought leader, you have to give your opinion about the topic. Is it easy? No, Can it lead to controversies, damn, yes. But a thought leader has to be unafraid about speaking their truth, the goal of thought leadership is not only about giving information. Remember, it is social responsibility, a duty to be unafraid at expressing data and evidence backed educational information, even if it goes against the market trend.
Final Takeaway
Now, we understand that thought leadership content takes deep understanding, ideas and expertise to try to challenge the traditional ways of thinking or taking action. However, the “try” only gets successful when the communication with a target audience is effective and consistent.
Therefore, conducting in-depth topic research and choosing relevant topics that your audience would stay interested in is crucial to make that effective communication stay fruitful.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Who invented thought leadership?
Joel Kurtzman first used the term “thought leadership” in 1994. He was the editor of Strategy & Business. According to Forbes’ report, for a series of interviews conducted by the editor himself, the term is used as a theme and he defined a term as someone having ideas “that merited attention”.
2. What are the content pillars for thought leadership?
The thought leadership strategy framework has four pillars: credibility, concept depth, prolific writing, and profile.
3. How to identify a thought leader?
To identify a thought leader, find the following traits in an industry influencer: possessing extensive knowledge, bringing a unique perspective, welcoming debate, strong communicator, being passionate, and not shying away from hard times.
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