The secret questions of successful thought leaders

• Share
• Tweet

The four secret questions for effective thought leadership

Good thought leaders or thought leadership campaigns should ask four key questions before they even start:

1.      Where do we get most of our business and what are their key issues/challenges?

Without this knowledge your thought leadership position is much like shooting in the dark in terms of whether it will have the desired impact on your targets.

2.      What knowledge/expertise do I/we have that we can research further to deliver something of real value to address these issues/challenges?

You want your thought leadership position to enable you to play to your expertise and showcase this and your thinking in your chosen space.  Wherever that knowledge or intellectual property can inform your thought leadership point of view, use it wisely.

3.      For what do I/we want to be known/famous?

When your ideal client base says that is the firm/person who has incredible insights into x.  What is that x?  What is it you want to be famous for?

4.      How do I/we best leverage our thought leadership content to share it with our market?

Many thought leadership campaigns I have seen are not leveraged to their full extent.  Once you have identified your point of view, make sure you apply a sound, strategic content management strategy to your thought leadership property.  Are you squeezing every element of your content across every touch point your target audiences?

How you answer these four questions is critical to your thought leadership point of view and how you take it to market.

Thought leadership must have a business objective

However, there is one, űber thought leadership question that remains.  It is the glue that should bind and guide your whole campaign:

“What are our business objectives for this thought leadership campaign?”

This should underpin everything you do.  Without a business objective or objectives your campaign isn’t measureable and you will probably have difficulty eliciting the commitment from senior executives.

I can’t stress this enough – your thought leadership needs to be drive very clear business objectives in order to gain the credence and top-level commitment it requires to succeed.

It can be as simple and focused as:  “We want to gain one-on-one access to the CFOs of the top 200 listed companies.”

Alternatively, you can have two or three objectives.  My view is that if you have more than three you are probably spreading your objectives to thin.

Your objectives should:

·        Be singular in focus

·        Be easy to measure

·        Rally everyone around it

Get these fundamentals right and you give yourself every chance of success for your thought leadership campaign.

Good luck.  Let me know if you have any other questions you think should be framed up front to help guide your campaign. 

2 Responses to “The secret questions of successful thought leaders”

1. David Drickhamer says:

   April 8, 2011 at 00:34

   Enjoying going back through your thinking reflected in your past posts, Craig. I second your point about having a “business objective.” It’s really essential at companies beyond the big consulting firms where the value of thought leadership is better understood. But taking it one step further, not only must a campaign (distinct from a program) have to have a business objective of some sort, it has to be linked to current business objectives. Some customer target or market opportunity in the current or next quarter. Without that link, it’s difficult to maintain the resources, attention and urgency that are required to execute well, and then achieve the desired results. Thanks again.
2. craig says:

   April 8, 2011 at 09:26

   David, couldn’t agree more. The more focused and linked to customer or market opportunities your thought leadership can be the better.
   Cheers and thanks for your interest.