During the past few days, I won’t be wrong to say that not everyone is vast with the term, thought leadership strategy, or you prolly have heard about it but don’t understand the concept. Storytime! Recently, I had an appointment with a financial advisor who works at a financial institute. So I was preparing myself to hear him drop several points in order to convince me to invest with them.
During the conversation, I was expecting to hear “Come and invest with us” and “We offer the best investment offer,” but he was giving me tips on financial investment. He referred me to a lot of podcasts where financial planning was discussed as well as advice on the future of investment. He barely even mentioned his company.
At the end of the session, I understood that it’s not about what his company will offer me; it’s about what he knows and can do as a person. That’s a “thought leadership strategy” in play. Now tell me why I won’t want to invest in a company with someone this knowledgeable.
Thought leadership is a common approach for companies and leaders who want to establish credibility in their industry and stand out from the crowd. Trust me, its more than this definition, in this article, I will gladly walk you through all I have learnt about this approach.
What Is Thought Leadership?
Thought leadership is all about establishing yourself and your business as experts that others can turn to for new ideas. It is the type of marketing strategy that focuses more on establishing you as an expert in your field than content that just sells.
The goal is to answer questions that those in your target audience are asking. It goes beyond marketing products or services; rather, it’s about contributing to an industry’s collective knowledge and providing insights that help others solve problems.
There are many ways to develop a thought leadership strategy that works for your business. However, here are a few key points to keep in mind:
- The first thing is to find out what can make you special and focus on it
- Create informative content and ensure it is distributed through the channels your target audience is using
- Be patient; if you are not patient enough, you might miss the opportunity to establish yourself as a thought leader
A thought leadership strategy simply means a way to increase your visibility and influence in your industry while sharing what you know and can do. It will help you position yourself as an expert in your field, attract new customers and clients and grow business and sales. Before this thought leadership will work for your business, you need to identify the unique selling point that will separate you from the crowd and also create content that positions you as an expert.
Thought leadership starts by understanding and listening to trends, answering questions and alleviating the concerns of your industry through a consistent and steady stream of answers. It means consolidating information, seeing patterns and helping people navigate their own journey better.
Key Points
- Establish yourself as an expert in your field by focusing on providing valuable insights and solutions rather than just promoting products or services.
- Differentiate your business from competitors by showcasing deep industry knowledge and understanding through thought leadership content.
- Increase brand visibility, build trust, and ultimately drive sales by consistently sharing informative content across various channels, such as blogs, podcasts, and social media.
How to Build Thought Leadership Strategy
As a general guide, here are the core steps to follow regardless of your company’s size and reputation.
#1. Define Your Goals
The first thing to do is to define your goals. What exactly do you want to achieve with your thought leadership strategy? Who is your audience? These people should be aligned with your buyer persona(s), although you should consider who might benefit the most from hearing what you have to say. Who are you communicating directly with? Is it the CEO? Is the manager?
You have to keep all these things in mind while defining your goals. Sustainable thought leadership must align with your company’s mission, business targets, and measurable KPIs. Once you have understood your goals well, the next thing is to align them with your strategy. It’s a waste of time to create thought leadership that doesn’t align with your business goals.
#2. Review Existing Thought Leadership
You can research competitors and industry experts to identify a gap in brand content. This will also allow you to familiarise yourself with who the primary thought leaders are currently. You can use many communication channels in your industry, like online forums, social media, company blogs, conferences, webinars, and news resources.
You should also keep in mind that not all thought leadership is worth emulating. Just find someone who speaks the same language as you. Increase your knowledge of what the current thought leadership trends and ideas are. Also, ensure you don’t accidentally fill the existing customers with a new and controversial idea that contracts a previous position.
Collect all your company’s existing thought leadership content, create a plan for how you will make thought leadership content and then create a system for distributing your thought leadership content.
#3. Identify Your Organisation’s Focus and Its Thought Leaders
To identify your organisation’s focus and its thought leaders, you need to understand what makes your brand unique. What are you exceptionally good at? What’s your company’s purpose? What values do you stand for? What impact do you want to make? Answering all these questions will help you identify the areas where your company has thought leadership potential.
Consider your wider brand story and beliefs. Is there a bigger agenda or change you are seeking to make a company? These are good starting points when deciding who your company’s authentic and revolutionary thought leaders are going to be. To identify your thought leadership You have to look internally first, check out conferences and events in your industry, see who is being quoted in the media, and use online tools such as Google Alerts, etc. Find people with strong opinions, innovative ideas and concepts.
#4. Select a Content Management System
This is just a platform on which you host your blog and distribute your content. There are so many content management systems to choose from so take your time in order to choose what’s best for you. Once you have selected, start creating your content. but there are things to keep in mind while creating this content. They include
- Speak about something you know too well and can comfortably answer questions about.
- Write clearly and concisely
- Remember your audience as you write—whom are you trying to reach and what kind of content do they need?
- It’s a must to proofread before you publish
Your content format should be easily understandable, engaging, repurposable, evergreen, original, compelling, interesting, compelling, and consistent with your brand.
#5. Create an Editorial Plan and Content Marketing Strategy
This list lists the topics you want to write about; it should be comprehensive, covering all the areas you want to be known for. Start by brainstorming a list of topics you want to write about. After listing, start thinking about ideas for articles, blog posts, whitepapers, repeats, and more. The editorial list must cover all the areas you want to be known for.
Once you are done with the plan, create a content marketing plan. Figure out what you want to achieve, do your research and understand your audience, create a content calendar, repurpose and promote your content, analyse your results, rinse and repeat, and be patient and consistent
#6. Publish and Manage Content
Content is the foundation of any thought-leadership strategy. This process involves defining your coveted audience, understanding what the audience needs, developing a content strategy that meets those needs, publishing your content regularly, promoting and monitoring your content through social media, making changes when there is a need, repeating steps 4–7 regularly, evaluating your thought leadership strategy regularly and making changes as needed. And lastly, be patient!!
#7. Internal Marketing
Internal marketing can be done by:
- defining target audience, which can include employees or stakeholders who are important to your thought leadership process
- Understand what motivates your audience to recognise their interests, values, strategy, and goals to create relevant content.
- Develop a clear messaging strategy. Craft something that aligns with the company’s thought leadership narratives, highlighting its expertise and vision.
- Distribute your content through multiple channels, such as emails, to reach employees and also encourage them to share thought leadership content
- Analyse your result and adjust your strategy accordingly
This checklist is all you need to be on track with these processess:
Thought Leadership Strategy.Pdf
How to Measure the Result After Creating Your Thought Leadership Strategy
By tracking the metrics, you can get a good sense of whether your thought leadership strategy is effective or needs adjustment. There are several ways to measure the success of your thought leadership strategy, but there are things to keep in mind, such as reach, engagement, and authority. How many people were you able to get to? How engaging is the content? Is it helping you establish yourself as an expert in your field?
#1. Track Website Traffic
What do you do when you like a piece of content? You checked the website, right? So obviously, when people like your content, they will click on it. This should cause an increase in traffic to your websites. During special events or networking, check your websites for traffic increases. This helps assess your organisation’s outside efforts and saves time and money. How do people find you? Take note of social media website traffic. Knowing which sites are popular may improve them with SEO or create comparable content.
#2. Count Followers
In this model world, social media followers have an impact. It’s one thing to click on your websites or content and it’s another thing to click on the follow button. This means I like your content so much that I want to see more of it. See what social media is doing well. Devote more time and attention to it since its followers will likely spread to others.
#3. Track Branded Queries And Site Mentions
Branded inquiries are when consumers ask Google for your brand. They are vital to optimise since they indicate a brand-aware audience is more likely to continue looking for your goods and convert. Branded search audits help you track strategy results. The more queries you get, the better you rank in search results. Therefore, more people speak about you, your brand, and your business, increasing your thought leadership strategy.
Google alerts allow you to monitor terms. It’s a good approach to tracking what’s happening in your industry. Google Trends may help you identify media sites that reference your brand or your thought leadership, allowing you to develop contacts and be published.
4 Proven Benefits of Thought Leadership Strategy in Your Company
The following are the benefits of using a thought leadership strategy in your business:
#1. Helps Customers Understand What You Do and How It Solves Their Problems
For customers to buy from you, they need to understand what your business does and how you can help them. Using the financial advisor as an example, he can go ahead and create blogs and podcasts to explain complex financial concepts, helping customers understand how they can achieve their financial goals. When you produce thought leadership content, you are able to educate your target audience about your product or service in a way that builds trust.
#2. Differentiates You From the Competition
The financial advisor can show a deep understanding of financial markets and planning in a way that will differentiate them from their competitors. In any industry, competitors will always vie for the same customer. You can decide to set your business apart from the rest by establishing yourself as a thought leader.
#3. Increases Brand Awareness
Now, when the financial advisor goes ahead to share his content on social media, LinkedIn, and industry publications, this can increase their brand visibility and reach a wider audience. The more people see your company’s name, the more likely they are to remember it when they need your services. A thought leadership strategy can help increase brand awareness by getting your name out there in front of potential customers.
#4. Drives Sales
People like me who consume the financial advisor’s content are more likely to trust them and seek their services, increasing sales customers who trust you as an authority in your industry are more likely to do business with you. thought leadership strategy can lead to an increase in sales and revenue for your company.
What Are Some Thought Leadership Strategy Materials and Resources That You Could Develop?
Each format has unique benefits which may be maximised if deployed wisely at various points throughout the journey. So my advice to you is to maximise anyone you can get your hands on, I have seen people it worked for, and I know it will work for you too:
- White papers are condensed instructions that assist the reader in finding a solution to a particular issue. It is a fantastic tool for lead capture
- Ebooks are an excellent tool for dividing complex subjects into manageable sections called chapters. It can sometimes contain infographics and charts.
- Webinars are an excellent approach to enhancing your brand because they enable you to put a voice and face to the people who work behind the scenes at your firm
- Podcasts enable the production of episodes at a regular cadence. It is an excellent way to establish and maintain engagement with your audience throughout the buying process and in time between purchases.
- Infographics are a quick and easy way for businesses to share their knowledge and experience on a particular subject matter. They simplify complex ideas using images so people can better understand them.
- The speaking opportunities strategy raises awareness of your brand and generates an unparalleled degree of trust, which in turn can produce essential business prospects.
What Is an Example of Thought Leadership?
A thought leader might be a guest 9n podcasts that talk on shows to debate issues with other people in their industry or write reviews and opinion pieces in response to other leaders’ books and articles
What Is the Framework of Thought Leadership Strategy?
This thought leadership strategy framework consists of four pillars that work together: credibility, profile, being prolific and depth of ideas. You must work your way up to each pillar to become a thought leader.
What Are the Levels of Thought Leadership?
Effective thought leadership doesn’t happen overnight. While achieving results that increase ROI is paramount, getting there involves plenty of time and effort in building trust, credibility, and authority. The journey comes in stages: development, awareness, engagement, and validation.
Conclusion
Coming to the end of this article, I hope I have finally made you understand what thought leadership is all about and its importance. Aside from your company’s collective services, what can you offer as a person? What do you know and how much do you know about the services your company renders? If you think you know enough, then work on using a thought leadership strategy for your company. You can use thought leadership campaigns to make a successful thought leadership strategy.
I have seen people it worked for; I inclusive, you won’t be an exception. Also, ensure that you give out quality content. Content marketing and thought leadership can help you achieve your goals at the right time but you have to be patient and consistent. Good luck!
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