A thought leader is a trusted expert who provides advice and opinions on topical industry issues delivered through content such as by-lined articles, media comments, blogs and social posts.
As B2B decision-makers rely on thought leadership content to stay informed on the trends affecting their industry, becoming a thought leader is a highly effective way of reaching senior-level execs, building their trust and influencing buying decisions. In fact, after reading a piece of thought leadership content, 48% of business decision-makers say they awarded business to that organisation, and 54% purchased a new product or service from an organisation they had not previously considered buying from, according to research by Edelman and LinkedIn.
But despite the benefits, there’s been a saturation of content since the pandemic with decision-makers saying there’s more than they can manage. This makes cutting through the deluge with high-quality content that is informative, useful and engaging, critical. So, if you’re keen to find out more, below are seven steps you can take to create the right type of content and become a thought leader:
1. Work out your strategy
The best strategy is a mixture of earned and owned media. Earned media provides you with third party credibility which helps reinforce your position as an expert and enables you to reach an extended audience. Owned media, such as your organisation’s blog and social media are important content platforms to voice your point of view and engage your followers.
As you build your strategy, think about the following: Beyond generating awareness, what business objectives do you want your thought leadership to achieve? What are the timely issues affecting your customers right now? Will your content teach them something new? How can you stand out from the crowd?
Research what other thought leaders in your sector are saying, what are they commenting on? What are their points of view? To stand out, you need to strike a balance between being authoritative and provocative yet ensure you’re human in tone.
2. Create a steady stream of trade by-lines and guest blogs
While we’d all like to appear on the BBC giving our point of view on breaking news, you need to start by building up your presence online first, particularly among trade publications. Trade by-line articles and guest blogs are an effective way to showcase your knowledge and opinions and can be anything from ‘How to’ guides, ‘Top tips’ and ‘Predictions’ to thought-provoking ideas on topical issues. This will help boost your online presence and get the attention of your prospects.
3. Focus on Newsjacking
Media are constantly looking for experts to provide industry comments on breaking news stories, so monitor the news agenda daily. Then every time a relevant news story breaks, prepare a short, succinct quote with a hard-hitting point of view. Don’t state the obvious, ensure you add a fresh perspective to the story. But you need to react quickly, journalists are writing their story that day, so comments need to be turned around within the hour. National media are short of time, so might just cut and paste your quote if they use it, whereas trade media sometimes prefer a telephone interview to get deeper insight and a unique quote. Broadcast media also require experts daily for their programmes, but you need to demonstrate a strong online presence and possibly experience on local TV or radio first. Podcasts are another useful target and often take guests to discuss recent news stories.
While your newsjacking strategy needs to be agile and reactive, you can also take a planned approach. Find out when industry reports, announcements or relevant changes in legislation are due. Then prepare quotes in advance and respond quickly on the day. If possible, prepare template quotes for specific kinds of stories that can be quickly tailored to save time drafting and approving.
4. Draft content for your organisation’s blog
While writing by-lines and guest blogs in industry publications gives you strong credibility, don’t forget about drafting regular blogs for your website. This not only builds awareness around specific topics but also improves your SEO and helps drive more traffic to your website.
5. Find the right speaker opportunities
Speaker opportunities are not only a great networking opportunity, but they also provide a strong platform to build your personal and organisation’s brand. If you’re a vendor, you may find many speaking opportunities are sponsored. But if your area of expertise is more niche or you’re fairly high profile in the industry, it’s still possible to secure unpaid slots.
To get started, check out your trade media, trade associations and other industry events and start building out a speaker programme. Research the audience and the types of speaking slots they offer, whether panel debates or keynotes.
When you speak, make sure you promote yourself across your organisation’s blog and social media. If your speaking slot is recorded and posted online by the organiser, be sure to promote the link.
6. Extend the debate across LinkedIn
Use LinkedIn to promote your blogs and media coverage. Make posts succinct, and ask your community for their opinion on the issue. You can also use the LinkedIn quiz feature to launch a poll to get their opinion on a particular subject.
7. Measure the value of your results
Key Performance Indicators (KPI)s can include measuring traffic to your website, number of social media followers, number of backlinks to your website from media articles, media mentions and also sales enquiries.
However, it’s hard to align each piece of coverage to leads, but building awareness and trust among your audience will help influence sales. It also enables you to be recognised by the right people for the right things. But ‘being a thought leader’ isn’t an end game, it should be considered as an ongoing approach to lead generation.
Maintaining momentum ongoing
The most effective thought leaders gain trust and respect from their audience by sharing their expertise and demonstrating credibility. However, this takes time, dedication and patience to achieve. Once you’ve launched your thought leadership strategy, you need to make it consistent. You can’t just switch it on and off, you need long term commitment. But with the right content targeted at the right people, thought leadership can lead to an enhanced reputation and help drive a growing pipeline of sales opportunities for your organisation.
Photo by Sam McGhee on Unsplash
