In this post, you’ll learn about how you can use your content marketing to provide thought leadership which will, in turn, give you a distinct advantage over your competition.
In this extremely competitive environment, technology has made often feel like a race to the bottom. You can always find somebody cheaper in your industry.
When your prospects are searching for answers, they want to learn from the experts like you.
Think to the biggest names in your industry. Who are they and what do they all have in common?
- Seth Godin is a marketing wizard who always manages to shift your perspective.
- Steve Jobs loved technology and it showed in everything he spoke about
- Elizabeth Gilbert is a creative genius, her TED Talk has inspired millions.
- Bill Gates is now is a thought leader in global issues.
- John C. Maxwell is the go-to trainer in leadership skills.
- Arianna Huffington is a great resource on a variety of topics from culture to success
- Tony Robbins is someone who has helped millions reshape their lives.
They have all put out amazing content whether that is in the form of articles or videos or books. (If you want to learn more about writing a book read my blog post HERE)
In some cases, it’s not the actual thought leader who creates the actual content but someone around them who takes their ideas and disseminates them to the world.
What Is Thought Leadership?
Thought leadership is building a platform using credibility as a leader in their company or field. The main goal of thought leadership is to become recognized as the go-to resource in a particular field.
To become a thought leader, one might create and promote educational, helpful content and become active in the industry community, particularly on social sites.
A person or company might use thought leadership as a content marketing strategy because providing value to your audience demonstrates your brand helpfulness.
Then, down the road when someone is seeking a product or service like the ones you provide, they’ll consider you an expert and turn to you first.
If you’re good at it, you’ll increase awareness among your target audience, generate more leads, improve social proof, and boost engagement online.
Thought Leadership Strategy
So, how do you incorporate thought leadership into your marketing strategy?
We’ll analyze some tips you can use to increase your thought leadership.
Have a Plan
By creating a monthly roadmap, or “editorial calendar,” you won’t be left scrambling and trying to figure out what to write week to week.
Your content calendar should be aligned with your marketing plan and have obtainable, measurable targets.
It should also consistently be addressing relevant pain points or challenges that your target audience is searching for.
Now that you know what and when you are going to write, you can identify your internal experts.
Know Your Audience
Knowing your audience is the key to succeeding with any marketing strategy, and thought leadership is no different.
Begin with your buyer persona.
Who are they? Their age, demographics and as much information as you can possibly get.
What motivates, inspires, or causes your audience pain? What questions are they asking? To figure this out, look on social media or conduct customer interviews.
Once you know these things, you can begin answering their questions with thought leadership content.
Additionally, it’s important to continuously check-in and revaluate your buyer personas from time to time.
Are your customer’s questions changing over time? Do their pain points look the same today as they did when you first began as a company?
Create Valuable Content
In order to truly succeed at thought leadership, you obviously need to create original and valuable content.
You need to show that you’re an expert in the industry by speaking intelligently on specific issues in the industry. It’s important to dig deep and show off your expertise in one subject area at a time.
For instance, it can be tricky to prove yourself an expert in marketing as a whole (unless you are Gary Vee) but you can distribute content about SEO to distribute on your blog, Medium or LinkedIn to demonstrate your brand’s specific expertise in SEO.
Content is Meant to be Shared
Promoting your content is essential to get it in the right hands.
Do you have a signup on your company blog? Are you pushing your content through email newsletters? This is the easiest way for your interested readers to automatically receive your updated posts in their email inbox.
You can also leverage influencers and other businesses by featuring them in your blog and they, in turn, will share your content to a broader audience.
How else can you share your content? Try guest posting on other sites, doing a social media takeovers or being a guest on a podcast.
This will naturally get you in front of people who aren’t in your audience, and if your message is strong enough, it will build your following.
The last piece of advice is to cut up your content into more bite-size pieces that make it easy to consume.
Protip: Remember people share content in different ways so don’t feel like content needs to be presented in a certain way.
Be Active On Social Media
Creating thought leadership content doesn’t just mean posting on your blog and leaving it there. You need to get it in front of people which means being active on social media.
Social media is the most effective opportunity to build your brand and expertise and you don’t even need any advertising budget to do it (although social media ads will definitely help.)
What social media platforms you use, really depends on two things: which ones you like the most, and which ones your target market hangs around on.
If you hate Instagram, you are not going to sustain it for the long term and you’ll stop posting and participating. (And social media is playing the long game.)
To find out where your audience is hanging out, you’ll have to do a bit of research. Since you’ve already identified your audience persona, you should start by asking around. There are groups for literally everything; all you have to do is type them into the search bar.
Once you’ve identified the platforms you’re going to use, you can use it to comment on news and ensure your voice is heard in conversations regarding relevant industry trends.
Plus, you can use social media to promote thought leadership content in an organic way without seeming too promotional.
Lastly, remember it is important to mix it up with owned posts versus with other sources. Nobody likes you popping up in their feed too much and after awhile it just seems, well, narcissistic.
Video Is Powerful
If you are a dynamic thought leader, video can be the most efficient way to showcase your thought leadership.
If done correctly, you can create the most powerful form of content that can connect with your audience in ways no other form of content can.
Remember to always think about the target audience and who you are trying to reach. With modern technology and how good cellphone cameras are these days, it’s now easy to create your very own studio in your office or home.
You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars but you will still need some good lighting and good sound. To capture a great video takes practice. Before you embark on video, watch some Youtube tutorials.
Analyze Your Competition
Who is your direct competitor in your space and what are they doing?
If your competitors are doing videos the perhaps you should also be doing videos.
Another thing to think about is how often are they posting and where do they hang out online.
Don’t be afraid to get inspiration from your competitors.
However, the real secret sauce is to find out what your competition is not doing, or are lacking and do that even better.
Everybody is scrambling for original content and ideas. If you can come up with more in-depth research or have better information then you’ll come up on top.
Be Yourself
In today’s online world, being too promotional doesn’t connect with your audience. Direct sales has a time and a place, but you need to be a gatherer, not a hunter.
You should produce content that is genuine and authentic to you and your brand.
You want to make sure your content makes sense to your target market, offers your perspective. If at all possible, it should be supported with market-backed research that’ll help inform your audience’s opinions or decisions.
Using examples, facts, and quotes will go a long way. People love reading about studies, surveys and research. The more you can create data-driven content with your point of view, the better it will be and the shareable it will get.
The Bottom Line
Nowadays, thought leadership should not be an afterthought, something you think about at quarterly reviews, it should be something you think about every day. You should obsess over what makes your knowledge, your skills, and unique point of view worthy of other people’s attention.
It is so easy to be mediocre but your business will not be able to survive if you’re mediocre. You need to be the best and then discriminate your abilities through content marketing.
If you want to learn more about content marketing and why a ghostwriter might be a great option, read this blog post HERE
Joel Mark Harris graduated from the Langara School of Journalism in 2007. Joel is an award-winning journalist, novelist, screenwriter and producer.
He has ghostwritten numerous books in all types of genres including true life crime, business, memoir, and self help. With over 1,000 blog posts to his name, he has helped hundreds of business owners scale their business and increase their visibility. You can email him at info@ghostwritersandco.com
