Get Your Thought Leadership Strategy in Order, One Step at a Time

55% of decision-makers say that thought leadership is their most important tool to vet any organization.

47% of C Suite executives say that they were willing to provide their contact information after being impressed with an organization’s thought leadership.

45% of decision-makers say that an organization’s thought leadership convinced them to ask them to bid for projects.

57% of decision-makers say that they have gained awareness about a particular company because of effective thought leadership.

These are powerful numbers. And they are from a recent survey undertaken by LinkedIn and Edelman, which clearly indicate the increasing popularity of thought leadership.

In a previous blog, we had discussed why you need to have a clear thought leadership presence. If you haven’t read it, we compel you to read it now. The article gives you the impact thought leadership can have on your brand.

How can you build an effective thought leadership strategy that not only builds your personal brand but does wonders for your professional one too? Let’s take it step by step.

Before you follow these steps though, there is something far more important that precedes this. And that is the kind of content you want to publish. LinkedIn – the most suitable platform for thought leadership – says that the content you publish as thought leadership can be broadly categorized into three:

• Industry-specific content: Where you talk about the news and updates in your chosen industry, and give insights and predictions on the upcoming trends   
• Product-specific content: Where you provide knowledge about your products (educational rather than promotional) and contextualize them
• Organization-specific content: Where you subtly discuss your company values and goals

So the very first thing you need to assess and decide is the type of content you want to focus on.

And now for the steps:

1. Set your brand priorities right

The very first thing you need to do is to align your brand priorities and goals to your content strategy. Ultimately, your content should:

• Contextualize your brand. What necessitates your brand? What need in the industry is it trying to meet?
• Place your brand in the bigger picture. How does it fit in the society? Here, focus more on the advantages your brand brings to the public as a whole and not just your direct consumer base.
• Bring out how unique your brand is. What differentiates your brand from the rest in the market? How does it meet the requirements in a sustainable and efficient way?

You have to align your content and your entire messaging with your brand goals.

2. Decide your thought leadership goal

Now that you have aligned your content and your brand goal, the next step is to decide why you want to have a thought leadership presence at all.

Is it to build brand awareness among the public?

Is it to broaden your customer base?

Is it to strengthen the trust of your existing customers?

Or is it to increase your revenue by directly influencing potential clients?

Once you decide which of these goals takes priority, you can tune your strategy to meet it.

3. Identify your channel

The very first thing you have to do is to identify where your target audience lies because your type of content depends on the platform. According to us, if you want to influence decision-makers and C Suite executives, then LinkedIn is the perfect choice.

Once you assess the context and mindset of your target audience, you can choose all or any or some of the following content types:

• Blog posts
• Short videos
• Whitepapers
• Anecdotes with personal examples
• Infographics
• Social media posts

4. Influence decision-makers to take action

If you recall the numbers we shared earlier, a large number of decision-makers revealed that they are influenced by thought leadership to make decisions that matter. So your number one priority must be to influence them. 

Give intelligent, unique perspectives to enlighten them on your brand as well as place you as a trustworthy voice. Your content should invoke them to take an action like follow you, invest in you, or be one of your customers.

5. Welcome external points of view

One of the most important things you have to remember is not to make your thought leadership a one-way conversation. Open up and invite conversations from your followers. Engage them so that they share their points of view. Create conversations and debates around your content, in a healthy way, of course.

Not only will this help algorithm-wise, but it also gives you valuable insights into your customers’ likes and dislikes, and expectations and requirements.

And the preliminary work is complete.

These steps constitute the preliminary work you need to do to get your thought leadership campaign off the ground. Once you are finished with this work, evaluate your progress. 

Have you reached your thought leadership goal, what we discussed in step 2? Have you been able to increase your customer base or strengthen trust in the existing one?

It’s okay if undertaking a thought leadership strategy turns out to be a full-time job. You don’t have to do it yourself. You can hire professionals to run it for you, like Econz Digital. Our content marketing and social media marketing services are designed specifically for this reason. Reach out to us, and we will surely be able to help you.