Optimising thought leadership for reputation management
You may consider it inappropriate if I say the term ‘thought leadership’ has become trite. But it’s definitely not misplaced to describe it as a corporate buzzword. I see feeds on LinkedIn and other social networks daily and how almost everyone tags themselves as thought leaders. Once they’re able to publish a few pieces on any subject, however peripheral, with some traction, they start brandishing themselves as thought leaders. The construct of thought leadership has been bastardised, as misconceptions now abound. In this piece, I situate thought leadership in its proper perspective while highlighting its centrality in corporate reputation management and personal branding.
Let’s locate thought leadership within the prisms of content marketing. You cannot divorce content from thought leadership. It’s content that an individual or a brand uses to lead thought. Think of content as the driver of thought leadership. Thought leadership means regularly sharing relevant content to provide insight which is helpful to your target audience. It’s the art of building reputation whereby an organisation leverages the expertise of its people to address the questions bogging its target audience.
A webinar series in which a top executive of an organisation gives valuable insights on salient industry issues; a weekly blog post or newspaper article on turbulent issues by a CEO; a bi-weekly podcast where a manager in an organisation provides intelligent thoughts on developments affecting their target audience; or a series of speaking engagements for the COO of a brand where they express invaluable ideas on industry concerns. These are examples of thought leadership.
Thought leadership is not scatty- it must be deliberate, planned and sustained, with a clear goal. It’s not a one-off. If you’re keen on becoming a thought leader, you must put your shoulder to the wheel. You must be consistent in providing content that addresses issues impacting your target audience. This is not a piece of cake; but it’s worth it.
However, people view thought leadership as an opportunity to conspicuously project their credentials. This is wrong. Thought leadership is not pedigree. It’s not telling your audience your resume and how you aced all courses at college. As a thought leader, you need not dwell on your qualifications. Just continually feed your target audience with content on pertinent issues. Do this in a credible and charismatic fashion, and you’ll become an authority in the eyes of your target audience while your organisation remains top-of-mind. Let your content cast you as a resourceful persona. Demonstrate that you have the most profound knowledge on the topics you cover in your high-quality content. See yourself as a trusted counsellor.
One major flaw of some thought leadership contents is their proclivity to sound promotional. Thought leaders should understand that the mere idea of putting out contents which their target audience can trust and work with, is enough promotion, both personally and organisation wise. It’s just counterproductive to advertise your company’s products in thought leadership. The audience considers it a turn-off and empirical evidence validates this. Once you start promoting your brand, you lose your audience. Consider thought leadership as indirect marketing- portraying your brand positively but with subtlety. What thought leadership does over time is that, it gives you and your company a favourable image which has its long-term pay-offs. It helps your brand assert authority in its industry.
Many believe that only C-suite executives can execute thought leadership. But thought leadership can actually emanate from anyone as long as the person has experience, knowledge and perspectives. Executives, managers, customer relations officers, public relations specialists, sales officers and business developers are all eligible for thought leadership. It requires disciplined efforts at generating content germane to the target audience. It also demands that you evince the ability to lead and inspire. Retired CEO of ProLogis, Walt Rakowich, states: “I believe thought leaders are not only on the cutting edge in terms of their ideas, but they also must know how to inspire and influence others”.
Thought leaders must be able to encourage the target audience to take a supportive action. When you accomplish this, you’ve built audience affinity for your brand. When a brand engages in thought leadership, it builds a relationship with the audience, earns their trust and stays top on their minds.
Some thought leadership contents are not actually thought leading. A thought leader should understand that they’re jostling for two things-authority and mind share- and there are scores of thought leaders competing for same. Thought leadership content is not just any content. It must be original, insightful, specific, interesting, relevant, brand enhancing and not be perceived to be promotional.
The thought leader is expected to lead with content, not mindlessly recycle existing content. Be forward-thinking. Analyse trends and make plausible forecasts. CEO of Skaled, Jake Dunlap, supports this: “Thought leaders possess an innate ability to contribute to the conversations happening today while also being able to speculate on what is going to happen tomorrow”.
Another CEO, Numaan Akram of Rally, posits: “A thought leader recognises trends before they happen and applies that insight to achieve actual business results”. Research developing themes and produce evidence-driven contents. If your content revolves around existing themes, explore unique standpoints.
When selecting content pillars, be conscious of your company’s specialties and your area of expertise. Dunlap advises: “Focus on what you know best and hone in on that message repeatedly. It’s more effective to go deep on a few topics than to spray across too many complementary topics.” It won’t be apt to produce an aviation-specific thought leadership piece when your brand plays in the banking space. The nexus between your industry and your content must be unmistakable. You also need to find out the questions which your audience seeks answers to. Elect the content formats and channels to employ- speaking engagements, webinars, podcast, press articles, interviews, case studies, blog posts, guesting on broadcast shows, etc.
If you’re considering content for publication, it makes perfect sense to run your content themes by a journalist-friend to ascertain the likelihood of publication. Journalists are gatekeepers and can tell you the ‘media fate’ of any content. But this is after you must have stated your goal and developed a strategy.
In conclusion, thought leadership is a very effective content marketing activity. And it’s a product of a robust content strategy. Organisations that are not gaining enough from it, should overhaul their strategies. It’s a strategic way of getting your target audience closer to your brand, beefing up talkability and raising top-of-mind awareness.
Stanley Olisa is a Media and Communication Consultant in Lagos. [email protected].
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