Archive for January, 2010

Interview on thought leadership with PR practitioner Craig Pearce

Craig Pearce

This is the first in what will be a series of interviews with thought leaders from around the globe and from different walks of life and industries.

In this one I ask five thought leadership related questions of Craig Pearce, a PR practitioner who has an interesting blog on all things PR.  You can visit his blog at  http://craigpearce.info/

1.      Craig you are in the process, and a successful one at that, of positioning yourself as a thought leader in the PR industry – are there some tips you can give to aspiring thought leaders in other industries?

I am not so convinced I am in the process of positioning myself as a thought leader for one main reason: I think it is rare for me to put forward original thinking. Most of my discussions on public relations and marketing – my area of, um, expertise… – are based on ideas that have been promulgated by academics like James Grunig or that I have learnt off my peers.

There are occasions, certainly, where I have articulated notions that you don’t seem to hear too much of, such as when I wrote that marketing should report to public relations, social media belongs to public relations and PR is not media relations. But that might be more to do with one of the attributes that I do believe characterises thought leaders: bravery.

There are some that might say this is more like stupidity, or career suicide, but after a year in which I was retrenched and felt forced, to a large degree, to enhance awareness of my skills and knowledge, I have no regrets.

But you need to have some sort of point of difference. It doesn’t have to be huge, but there needs to be a point of view you are putting forward. In the best case scenario, this point of view adds value to those who you want to interact with or position yourself favourably with.

An inherent dimension of learning off others is that it may well be that even if your stakeholders recognise you are no genius, if you are making the effort to reflect on original thinking or issues, and occasionally shine a perceptive light on this thinking or issue, maybe that’s enough.

Certainly, there are lots of watchers and critics in this world: those of us that are actually contributing, or going beyond the bounds of what is absolutely necessary are in the minority. Because of that, we’re of some value.

For a thought leader to be positioned as a thought leader they need to engage in two essential activities: think and articulate that thinking.

Whilst I don’t claim to be an intellectual or a great original thinker, I do at least put the grunt in. The posts on my Public relations and managing reputation blog are not something I quickly reel off. It takes a considerable amount of time to get them to a point where I am (relatively) happy with them. It is not a walk in the park.

A third stream to this is going to the trouble of bringing your thinking to people’s attention. In the context of a blog, this includes SEO and using networks like Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

I think having a problem solving, aspirational attitude and/or approach is a good one to have. Being fixated with the negative is all too easy. I leave that to the media. Another dimension of attitude (and the bravery mentioned earlier) is that it is good to disagree with others, it is good to challenge the orthodoxy and taken-as-read assumptions, which are all too often arrived at in a lazy, undisciplined manner.

This will not always make you friends, but I have plenty of friends. And I don’t expect them to agree with me all the time, either.

One approach to thought leadership is looking at it from a strategic, or SWOT-centric perspective. Look at the information/topics out there and the approaches existing thought leaders are taking. Then a ‘strategic approach’ can be taken to the generation of a thought leadership platform or program.

And there is nothing wrong with this, but it does sound a bit contrived, doesn’t it? If the platform is not sincere, if it doesn’t add value, then it won’t get cut through. I don’t think the importance of passion to all this can be underestimated.

2.      What do perceive as the key benefits of a thought leadership position for an individual? 

Creating that point of difference between yourself and all the other hens in the chook yard is the main one.

What does that mean? Career opportunities, helping your organisation stand out from the crowd to win new and bigger business, enhanced self-esteem and peer recognition are some benefits.

The snowball effect of learning even more from those wiser than you is another positive, as is the constant challenge you feel in needing to come up with new topics. This brings with it a sense of ‘edge’ that I enjoy.

3.      In a previous life you were heavily immersed in the corporate world.  What are some of the barriers that stand in the way of corporations becoming thought leaders and what would your advice be to overcome these?

I think of the world’s leading public relations academic, Professor James Grunig, and his notions of two-way symmetrical communication in this context. Organisations, to be effective in their ‘management’ of stakeholder relationships need to recognise that they may need to change to meet stakeholder needs and wants. And they may need to give their stakeholders information they want if they are to satisfy them.

Essentially, organisations should open themselves up more, share their expertise and not be so control-centred. They need to realise that there are profoundly important issues at play here, including the survival of the planet and the future of the human race.

Corporates rule the world, not governments, and most of them should be taking a much broader socially-centric (not shareholder-centric) view of the world and behaving in this manner, too. Public relations can help them do this.

Until they get real in this context their thought leadership is all about product and financial bottom lines. Yes, this pays our bills as PR folk but it doesn’t do much for the soul.

4.      What is the key differentiating factor between a thought leader and others in their industry?  

Well, one key differentiating factor is that they care about what they are talking about. In fact, they are probably passionate about it. I certainly am in my field.

If you are passionate and you are constantly making a contribution, I think you can be forgiven a lot. You are putting yourself at risk by challenging orthodoxies (and if you don’t ever challenge orthodoxies then I don’t think you are a thought leader). It is hard to pull that off without being passionate about it. You might get away with it for a while, but people will see through you in the end.

Not only are thought leaders passionate about their topic, they are often passionate about helping others, whether it is their peers, customers, the community etc

5.      Thought leadership and innovation – do the two necessarily go hand in hand?

The easy answer is yes, but I don’t think that is necessarily the case.

As I implied earlier, the distillation and/or crystallisation of ideas/thoughts into a form that is useful for stakeholders is an important criteria that I don’t think should be underestimated.

Innovation – first and/or best of species – certainly helps kick thought leadership along, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. Customisation of this innovation in a relevant way to stakeholders is also important.

Tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market – write and speak

This is a continuation of the post on 14/1/2010 on how to take your thought leadership position to market.

I spoke about six critical actions I believe need to be engaged in order to achieve this.  I have covered the first four (1. Make it a strategic business imperative; 2. Know your audience; 3. Share openly; 4. Cultivate the media).

Today I will cover the fifth:

1. Write and speak about your campaign

The last remaining will be covered in the last post in this series:

1. Pump up your content online

Action 5: Write and speak about your campaign

Your thought leadership point of view can be told through face-to-face story telling or writing. Ideally, you want to use a combination of both.

The value of having a number of compelling written stories around your thought leadership point of view is that they gives you a host of different options. With the web playing such an important role in our everyday lives, having a thought leadership campaign written up becomes critical if people are to find it online.

Writing could include one or any number of the following:

• articles written for the media
• letters
• opinion pieces
• white papers
• research summaries
• fact sheets
• background papers
• speeches
• presentations
• third party endorsements
• blogs

By using one or more of the above you are better able to share your information with your audiences. More importantly, you can make the information readily accessible to a much wider audience interested in the topic.

In their book How to position yourself as the obvious expert, Elsom Eldridge Jr and Mark Eldridge maintain that writing a book is essential in establishing your credibility in your field of expertise. They maintain that even if your book does not compete with those in the bookstores, you should write a book to use as a marketing tool to build your reputation as the obvious expert.

Tell your thought leadership story and drive word of mouth

I’m not saying you should write a book but wherever and whenever your thought leadership champion can, he or she should tell the story and get those around you enthusiastic about your point of view. Story telling is a powerful way to engage people and a great way to get people talking about what you have to say.

Word-of-mouth is the most convincing and believable form of marketing today. You should actively pursue speaking opportunities for your thought leadership champion.

These opportunities could include speaking at:

• local chambers of commerce and industry
• business organizations and associations
• academic institutions
• consumer bodies
• conferences
• seminars
• workshops
• webinars
• your own work functions

Depending on the appeal of your thought leadership point of view and your thought leader’s oratory skills, he or she could consider joining a professional speaker’s circuit. There are many organizations out there with a variety of speakers on their books. It makes it much easier to join them if you have a library of written material on your topic as well as speeches and presentations which you or your thought leader champion has already given.

Get out there and spread the word!

Tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market – online

This is the final post of a series across how to take your thought leadership position to market.  The last one was on the 14/1/2010.

I spoke about six critical actions I believe need to be engaged in order to achieve this.  I have covered the first five (1. Make it a strategic business imperative; 2. Know your audience; 3. Share openly; 4. Cultivate the media; 5. Write and speak about your campaign) and today I will cover the sixth and last:

1. Pump up your content online

Action 6: Pump up your online content

By maximising the use of the online world for your thought leadership material, you are making your point of view easily accessible to your identified audiences and sharing it with anyone in the online world who might be interested in the topic. This could be via a blog, twitter, your website, pod cast or vlog – you name it! There are many options open to you and more are becoming mainstream every year.

The objective is to inject your brand’s/company’s personality into the debate by using social media tools to give a human face to your company’s point of view.

Importantly the web gives you the right to engage with your online audience – it is a forum where you can ask questions, your audience can ask you questions and you can have discussions with other interested parties through discussion forums, chat rooms and the ‘ask us’ facilities available on most websites.

Traditional marketing tools for campaigns have changed

The traditional levers which we have pulled as marketers, advertisers or PR practitioners to sell products and services or change behaviours, advocate causes or build brands have changed.

Word-of-mouth is by far the most powerful form of marketing a company can access, and its greatest ally is the internet.

Brands today need either to be part of or to create their own conversations online. It is becoming just as important as driving media coverage. Why? Because the internet has accelerated and amplified public opinion – rumours start and spread online.

Moreover, while newspapers, magazines, TV and radio are here today and gone tomorrow, online coverage can potentially remain filed and accessible for a long time.

Online is the domain of new, powerful content created by consumers for consumers. It is competing for our attention and trust against traditional media sources, and in some cases it is winning.

This is well illustrated in a Media Centre Global Trust Poll conducted in the US in 2006 which found that 228,000 Americans think companies do not tell the truth in advertising while 276,000 think that word-of-mouth is the best source for purchasing decisions.

Word of mouth can be powerful for your thought leadership campaign

Word-of-mouth is enshrined in social media and is now commonly recognized as the most powerful form of consumerism in the marketing mix.

If you are looking at driving a thought leadership campaign for your brand or company you need to be aware of the tools available to you online in order for you to take part in and influence this powerful medium.

Your aim should be to supercharge your thought leadership content and, in so doing, engage the company with relevant online communities and help facilitate conversations in the digital world.

A digital influence strategy should deliver four key things:

·        Knowledge about what is being said about your brand/company in the digital space and the ability to track it and take part in it.

·        Productive engagement with customers, stakeholders and influencers in the digital space.

·        Optimised content, in order to attract the search engines and increase your ranking.

·        Measurement of your digital influence campaign’s return on investment.

There are a few key things you need to consider before embarking on an online campaign:

·        Senior management buy-in is critical, as they need to understand the importance of the task. This point cannot be over emphasized

·        Engagement online is done in a collaborative community: it is about marketing with rather than marketing to an audience.

·        Commitment – there has to be a commitment to communicating on an ongoing basis.

·        Honesty and integrity are also vital. Untruths, half truths and misrepresentations are cruelly exposed online and can be damaging to your brand.

That’s the last in a series of six posts on how to take your thought leadership campaign to market, however, I know there are a lot of people out there who know an awful lot about how to do this really well.  I would love to hear from you if you have any new or fresh ideas or if you merely want to add to what I’ve said already.

Another definition of thought leadership

On reading a very useful paper on thought leadership by the Content Factor, ‘Is anybody following your thought leadership?  Five best practices that can help establish your company as a thought leader’, I came across a definition on thought leadership from Brian Carroll which I have not seen before.

“Thought leaders genuinely influence others by creating, advancing and sharing ideas.  Their objective is to help others.  In business, thought leaders revolutionise the way others (both inside and outside their companies do business.  That’s thought leadership.” 

For other definitions of thought leadership please click on my other blog posts under the category “Definitions of thought leadership” in the column directly on your right.

Media tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market

This is a continuation of the post on 11/1/2010 on how to take your   thought leadership position to market.

I spoke about six critical actions I believe need to be engaged in order to achieve this.  I have covered the first three (1. Make it a strategic business imperative; 2. Know your audience; 3. Share openly) and today I will cover the fourth:

1. Cultivate the media

The two remaining will be covered in subsequent posts, they are:

1. Write and speak about your campaign
2.  Pump up your content online

Action 4: Cultivate the media

While in many cases the media will be an important conduit for your thought leadership ideas, there are some campaigns that do not necessarily need media support.

For those that do, it is important you cultivate your relationships with key media players who cover the topic or sector that your thought leadership campaign addresses. By following the tracking advice in the START IP methodology you should have already done your homework, scanning the newspapers, magazines, ezines and the web for what has been written about a particular topic. In so doing, you would have identified the journalists and bloggers who are covering this or related issues.

Most in-house PR practitioners, marketing departments, PR consultancies and advertising agencies have access to online media search tools. Some of the search engines also have some useful search tools and once you have plugged in your search terms you will automatically receive any online articles mentioning those terms.

Thought leadership benefits most from exclusive rather than shotgun approach

Thought leadership requires an exclusive media approach rather than a shotgun approach. Your media campaign should take into account the audience/s you are trying to reach and which media is most appropriate for that audience. As a result of this focus and your previous searches on this issue, you may find that you need to work with only a handful of journalists.

Ideally these journalists will be looking for exclusives. If you are using research to drive your thought leadership content you may want to break it into a number of different angles and take those angles individually to the targeted media. Let them know up front they are getting the exclusive angle on this story.

Importantly, the work you do with the media, the articles they write or interviews they broadcast, the information you supply them, the backgrounders and fact sheets you draft for them should not be all that you do to reach your audiences. This same information needs to be made web friendly and placed on your website so that interested audiences using the search terms covered by your thought leadership topic can easily find the information.

The media room of a company website is often the most visited landing page.

Why?

Because the media section is where people go for the most up-to-date company information. In his great book ‘The new rules of marketing and PR’, David Meerman Scott points out that your media room should not be designed only for the media. It should be designed with each of your ‘buyers’ in mind.

Once you start achieving success with your media campaign, you can start using the coverage internally through other media, such as your intranet, notice boards and meetings. This will help champion your thought leadership campaign internally – an area often overlooked but one which can generate enormous goodwill, help drive value programs and generate a wave of pride and support from within the company.

Tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market – share

This is a continuation of the post on the 4/1/2010 on how to take your thought leadership position to market.

I spoke about six critical actions I believe need to be engaged in order to achieve this.  I have covered the first two (1. Make it a strategic business imperative; 2. Know your audience) and today I will cover the third:

1. Share openly

The three remaining will be covered in subsequent posts, they are:

1. Cultivate the media
2. Write and speak about your campaign
3.  Pump up your content online

Action 3 – Share openly

All the true industry thought leaders I have come across have willingly and openly shared their information. The very nature of thought leadership means exactly what it says – being a leader with your thoughts. And being a leader with your thoughts means being brave and going first; saying things that no-one else has either thought of or dared to say.

It means taking the lead on an issue or topic and owning it. It is nonsense to hide behind the excuse you hear so often: ‘But this is strategic information.’

Willingly and openly sharing information may appear to be obvious but I cannot tell you how many companies I have come across who shy away from sharing their intellectual property.

Thought leaders aren’t scared

Timidity, fear and reticence are not words that sit well with true thought leadership. Being a thought leader means rising above the crowd, sticking your neck out, being prepared to take a sometimes controversial point of view and going where no-one else has ventured before.

Forget what the competition thinks or what the competition will do with the information. You are the brand/company taking the lead – they are the laggards.

It will take them a long time to get up to speed in your chosen area of thought leadership. If they want to enter your space and you have done a good job in planning and rolling out your strategy, they will look like Johnny-come-lately.

The potency of a great thought leadership campaign is that your audience will feel the genuine intent. They will view it as something fresh, something that adds value to their lives and something that no-one else is giving them.

They will respect you for it.

Thought leadership is one of the most powerful ways to create customer loyalty, which produces that most potent of market forces, word-of-mouth or customer evangelism.

It is through your thought leadership actions or the act of openly sharing valuable information that you provide the platform for creating that special brand connection with your audiences.

Is content marketing merely a form of thought leadership?

Is content marketing a misnomer for thought leadership?

Great content marketing is merely thought leadership dressed up in another form.  Or is it? 

I have been reading a bit about content marketing of late and it appears there are, in many instances, close correlations between thought leadership and content marketing.

My understanding is that content marketing is high quality content packaged in a way that presents the intellectual property of that brand in order to attract, engage and retain customers.  The question is how that is different to thought leadership?

I don’t believe it is.

The key, however, lies in what and how a brand gathers and uses its content.  I have previously posted that content alone does not make you a thought leader and I still believe that.  Rather it is the insights and intellectual property that comes with your content that measures whether you are providing thought leadership material or not.   It is how you frame and stimulate new thinking and debate in your field, how you empower people with your knowledge, how you stimulate them to think differently as a business or as consumers.

Is your content thought leadership or not?

Anyone can piece together content but the trick lies in whether it makes a difference to your target audiences and whether they see it as thought leading content or not.

In a recent white paper entitled ‘Marketing is Content’ by PR Newswire, it states:  “Marketers are investing more aggressively in content in myriad forms, all in the interest of driving engagement with new customers, enhancing brand loyalty and share of wallet among existing customers, and creating both buzz and substantive value exchange across social, online, search, mobile, viral and traditional channels.”

It goes on further to say: “compelling content…is becoming the glue that re-integrates brand marketers’ audiences…”

All great but one important thing is missing.  The thought that goes into this content, the intellectual property or the compelling insights that the content so clearly needs in order to have the desired impact is in fact the thought leadership piece.  It’s the stuff that sets your brand apart from the others.

Any old content can be dangerous to your brand

Content marketing without the thought leadership component is merely dangerous drivel which runs the risk of irritating your consumer and potentially damaging your brand.  Hence the importance for strategic input and senior management commitment to focusing on what this content should include and how it is resourced.

Content without thought leadership is just that – content.

The marketers who were interviewed for the PRNewswire white paper said: “…rich, high-quality content, in multiple forms and formats and distributed intelligently to the right media channels, has emerged as the backbone of their marketing strategies.”

So is content marketing a misnomer?  I think it is.  Content without thought leadership properties will merely end up in file 13.  Content on the other hand that will engage consumers and clients alike is thought leading content.

Tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market – audience

This is a continuation of the post on 27/12/2009 on how to take your thought leadership position to market.

I spoke about six critical actions I believe need to be engaged in order to achieve this.

I have covered the first (1. Make it a strategic business imperative) and today I will cover the second:

1. Know your audience

 The four remaining will be covered in subsequent posts, they are:

1. Share openly
2. Cultivate the media
3. Write and speak about your campaign
4.  Pump up your content online

Action 2: Know your audiences

Knowing your audience intimately should be a prerequisite for any brand campaign, let alone a thought leadership campaign.

To know your audiences means to understand their needs and to understand how you can add value to their lives. The best thought leadership ideas mainly come from the desire to enrich the quality of the target audiences’ lives.

Once a company puts itself in the shoes of its target audiences, it is better able to identify their needs and how it can influence what that audience should think, feel and do with its services or products.

How do you get to know your audience? If your marketing department hasn’t already done so, you research them: where they live, what they consume, what micro and macro issues impact their lives, what their dreams and aspirations are, what their perceptions are of your brand and what values they associate with your brand.

Thought leadership means engaging with your audience

Where possible you also talk directly with them through focus groups or online. You could live with them or go on site visits with a community leader. Combine this with customer visits with the sales team; picking up the phone and speaking to them; hosting coffee chats or customer lunches; and using that wonderful two-way, online communications tool called a blog to facilitate dialogue.

Depending on your business and the nature of the product or service you sell, it is up to you to pick which forms of communication are best suited to your customer group.

The point is you should be listening to what they have to say in order to understand the issues important in their lives as well as the factors impacting their purchasing decisions.  This combined with a number of other factors such as your areas of specialty, pockets of intellectual property you may already have and others, should inform the direction you take with your thought leadership campaign.

The more you understand about your audience the more able you are to form a relationship based on trust and mutual understanding.

Remember their point of view is all about them not you.  You don’t have to agree with why an audience feels or acts they way they do you merely have to understand it and know how to provide information that addresses this.