You’ve heard it a million times. Be a thought leader. Be the authority in your space. But how do you do that? How do you build your company into an authority in your industry?
While there are thousands of definitions of thought leadership, TrizCom PR defines it as “content marketing’s lifeblood that uses a person’s opinion, perspective, insight and expertise that cuts through the clutter and positions them as a respected authority to influence others.”
And here’s the kicker—thought leaders don’t expect anything in return. More often than not, thought leaders reap great rewards by growing their audience size, building connections with influencers, and bringing new customers to their businesses.
What Does Thought Leadership Content Marketing Entail?
Content marketing is creating and sharing content that informs audiences. It’s the art of building trust and authority, and it can be disseminated via paid, earned, shared and owned media.
There are hundreds of different platforms that you can use for content creation distribution. Mediums like blog posts, videos, webinars, white papers, emails, social media, bylines, articles, interviews, eBooks, briefs, advertisements, case studies, infographics, slide shows, and opinion pieces are just a few ideas.
We truly believe that thought leadership is the lifeblood of content marketing. Thought leadership is, in fact, the central focus of our PR agency in Dallas.
Thought Leadership Basics to Improve Content Marketing
Thought leadership is a great way to position yourself as an expert. It’s influencing and persuading your audience to accept your point of view. Rather than marketing to your audience, you’re speaking to them about topics they’re already interested in.
Ways to Produce Thought Leadership
Here are five effective ways to produce thought leadership:
1. Before you begin (like anything!) any thought leadership, you need to know why (your objectives) and how you will measure it (your metrics). Thought leadership should not be objective – as it is a strategy or tied to a strategy.
2. Write down a list of ideas or themes you feel passionate about. While you might be an expert in these topics, people tend to overthink the word ‘expert’ when they hear it. It’s been used too many times.
Remember that our definition says thought leadership shares an individual’s opinion, perspective, insight and expertise. With this understanding, almost everyone is a thought leader in something, but the difference is the number of people who think they don’t qualify. So, that may be another question: why would you not consider yourself a thought leader? If you have passion and a drive for something, who’s to say you’re not the best fit?
3. Decide where you want to publish your thought leadership. Go back and look at your objectives. For example, if one of your objectives is to increase organic website traffic with referral traffic, you will want to publish your thought leadership pieces on sites that provide you with a backlink.
Conversely, suppose your objective is to capitalize national high-domain authority outlets to increase your organization’s organic SEO with keyword-rich content. In that case, you will want to publish your content on high-domain authority sites.
4. Write your content and differentiate yourself from other businesses and competitors with thought leadership. It’s also a great way to generate interest and build your audience. And, yes, it’s a great way to build that content marketing engine. Because what you deliver has the potential to earn thousands of backlinks, mentions, and social mentions, which leads to more PR mentions, links, and sales.
5. Be authentic and transparent to build trust in your audience. Show the world who you are, what you stand for, and what you’re not afraid to be open about. If you’re authentic and transparent, it will build trust in your audiences. Start by defining “thought leadership” as the opportunity to affect change and educate decision-makers about your industry.
Developing thought leadership means leading with purpose. It’s what makes a difference in your target audiences. Thought leadership is something that all businesses should strive for, but it also requires hard work and dedication.
Thought leadership is one of the most important things you can do. If you don’t have the time or resources to create thought-leading content, TrizCom PR is available to help – give us a shout at https://www.trizcom.com/contact.
