Some Thoughts on Thought Leadership
You finally sold in thought leadership. Yay! After (maybe years) of trying to get your higher ups to think about something besides an article on the cover of the WSJ, you have the opportunity to leverage your authentic story to build a community of raving fans who will help you grow membership and brand passion at a breakneck pace.
Now, where to get started?
Know your superheroes
Maybe you put Yvon Chouinard at Patagonia on a pedestal while your CEO puts Elon Musk on one. Having a healthy conversation around analogs is foundational to developing a strategy that will resonate. Look beyond tone. What is the brand trying to accomplish through thought leadership? Where are they distributing? Is it paid or organic? A lot of thought leadership is simply about growing brand recognition. If your goal is customer acquisition, ask yourself constantly where this fits in your funnel.
Don’t masquerade
If your CEO wants to be the spokesperson and he’s a 5’ tall 100 lb engineer from Kansas, his message about body building isn’t going to stick. The spokesperson needs to fit his character. Don’t be afraid of letting your engineer who stutters a bit talk about a product’s engineering. People prefer authenticity to perfect pitches.
Prioritize depth and breadth of distribution channels
If you want to get to the moon, don’t head towards Mars with the goal of ricocheting off and hitting the part of the moon. Decide the primary and secondary content distribution hubs before you create content. For example, maybe you want content that’s intended for Instagram influencers to distribute, and you’d also like to catalog aspects of the content on your Medium page in order to generate direct traffic to your site. You can promote that content on Facebook as well, but don’t expect content designed for Instagram to resonate on Facebook in the same way. It’s secondary.
Be intentional when passing the megaphone
Giving the story to influencers to tell in their own voice can be powerful. But realize that it’s not going to include the exact words you’d use to describe your story.
The stronger your brand identity is, the more uncomfortable this might be. But this can be one of the most effective ways to help your brand resonate with a wide swath of people.
This can also be an amazing wake-up call. Maybe your brand isn’t really speaking the language of the people.
Track your goals, including where they’ll go off the rails
Of course you and your team have defined overarching metrics for tracking success, but until you deploy thought leadership, these metrics are little more than a hypothesis. Working this high in the funnel, controlling the customer journey is like trying to tell raindrops where to land. You’re the wind, and you can move the clouds, but behind every top line goal is a much more complicated story.
With each new content push, take the time to think through not just the ideal customer journey, but the also the places people could fall off the path. How did this person come to see your content? Why do you think they are reading? Was this their first visit or have they seen you before? What are other places that they’ll be searching for information, and how can you and your influencers be there, too?
This isn’t a hypothetical conversation anymore. Keep your metrics tab open. Know what’s generating meaningful traffic and not. Not in some monthly report, but daily. Don’t create content twice that doesn’t work.
Let your influencers influence you
The best influencers are experts on their community. They receive questions daily from followers seeking advice and opinions. When incentives are aligned, these influencers can be one of the most powerful places to obtain user feedback. Including them in focus groups, asking them for feedback on prototypes and ideas on features can be a meaningful way to unlock new opportunities. If you can understand why it works for them, you’ll get insight into how to expand your audience to people with similar needs.
Your ability to show that you’ve been listening is essential to forming closer relationships. People love to share products that solve problems that are relevant to them, personally.
