JOB ADS GETTING IT WRONG ON THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

By Craig Badings and Dr Liz Alexander. (This piece first appeared in Human Capital, an Australian HR magazine)

A leading magazine publisher is recruiting for a Senior Editor, Thought Leadership Asia. A global law firm has posted a position for a Thought Leadership and Client Publications Manager.  A professional services firm is looking for a Thought Leadership Manager.

 Exciting positions but something is fundamentally wrong with each one of these adverts.  

 Job ads targeting positions such as those listed above reveal how little most of these organizations really understand about thought leadership and how they’re selling themselves and the position short. 

The term “thought leader,” once reserved for influential academics and visionary leaders such as Charles Handy, C.K. Prahalad, and Stan Shih (Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Acer Group), is now showing up in a wide range of job postings. In the majority of cases this is not only misleading but serves to further dilute and undermine the concept of thought leadership.

Why? Because most ads that mention thought leadership in the job titles are offering little more than glorified editorial or content marketing positions.

Don’t confuse content with thought leadership

Despite the fact that many companies like to think of themselves as “thought leaders,” few really are.

But before we dissect some of the job descriptions we found in a wide variety of adverts, let us address what we mean by thought leadership:

“Thought leaders advance the marketplace of ideas by positing actionable, commercially relevant, research-backed, new points of view.  They engage in ‘blue ocean strategy’ thinking on behalf of themselves and their clients, as opposed to simply churningout product-focused, brand-centric white papers or curated content that shares or mimics others’ ideas.”

Don’t mistake thought leadership for sharing or “curating” other people’s viewpoints or simply having your own strong opinions about a topic. And it’s certainly not about pumping out regular content.  If what you are producing doesn’t deliver new insights that influence your target audience to change the way they think, feel, or behave about an issue, then it isn’t thought leadership.

Here’s the problem

Let’s take a closer look at this ad for a Thought Leadership Manager that we discovered recently:

“The successful candidate will have a great track record of content development and managing multi-channel campaigns, ideally in a professional services environment or large corporation. Experience or understanding of thought leadership is desirable, ideally relating to the financial services sector.”

So experience or understanding of thought leadership—for someone with the job title of Thought Leadership Manager– is merely desirable? That’s like saying you’re prepared to hire an engineer who may not be fully cognizant of the principles of engineering. Who would do that?

Companies serious about finding someone to drive their thought leadership approach need to elevate it to a strategic level and ensure candidates have the insight and knowledge to plan, build and evaluate a true thought leadership position.

Some thought leadership ads are starting to get it right

It’s not all doom and gloom, however. Despite many poor thought leadership job adverts out there, a few organizations are on the right track. Here’s the best (edited) example we’ve discovered to date for a Director of Thought Leadership.

Job description:

Responsible for managing all public relations and thought leadership activities for X company, including creating the thought leadership plan, managing the company’s public relations agency program deliverables, coordinating editorial interviews with executives, coordinating news release approvals, placing executive speakers as part of the Corporate Executive Speakers Bureau program and creating their presentations, creating customer case studies, and both organizing and executing online webinars and live, multi-speaker seminar events.
Consults with Corporate and Business Unit Marketing leadership to ensure activities support overall corporate communications objectives and associated initiatives. Works with partners in Corporate Marketing, as well as business unit leaders and subject matter experts to support the company’s over-arching brand and image goals, both internally and externally.

Responsibilities:

• Ensures alignment with broader Corporate Marketing thought leadership program, coordinates with corporate marketing and X teammates, business unit leaders, legal/compliance and subject matter experts, and both internal and external vendors to create a comprehensive PR and thought leadership plan. Plan components will span all of the necessary elements from coverage analysis and thought leadership messaging development and media outreach through executive speaker topics and venues, webinar and seminar topics and participants, and the maintenance of a calendar of all activities and events.
• Understands and monitors coverage of industry issues and key thought leadership themes, and X’s comparative share of voice.
• Identifies new industry issues and thought leadership themes for which X may need to develop and communicate a position.
• Secures strategically effective speaking engagements for executives and ensures that they have everything they need to perform effectively.
• Manages all planning, coordination, budget and logistical elements of both on-line and in-person thought leadership events, including digital webinars as well as seminars for clients and prospects that typically feature analyst, client and company speakers.
• Works with Advertising & Branding leader to incorporate company’s branding philosophy in all thought leadership events.
• Prepares ROI evaluations of our participation in various thought leadership events, and measures and reports on the effectiveness and impact of activities through scorecard.

This advert is far more strategic.  With ten mentions of the term no one could mistake this for a purely content creation, marketing, or PR role. Indeed, it’s clear that company X understands that thought leadership needs to be an integrated part of the entire organization, embedded within the culture, and not just another marketing, communications or public relations “add-on”.

There are, however, two critical pieces missing:

1. Emphasis on a proven ability to drive an overarching thought leadership strategy, and
2. The ability to oversee the kind of research that provides clients and customers with evidence that the thought leadership approach is credible and viable.

Without research, this company runs the risk of becoming just another organization that’s offering opinions. Whether they’re successful at “walking the talk”, however, is a different story.

A point of clarity for thought leadership job ads

Just because your company regularly publishes white papers, editorials, opinion pieces, research projects, conference papers and the like doesn’t mean you’re a thought leader.

Thought leadership is about differentiating yourself in the minds of your target audience by providing them with fresh insights that solve an issue or challenge that impacts their lives—insights they would not have seen or thought of themselves.  In other words, thought leadership serves to illuminate and solve a client or customer’s unmet needs.

The concept is far from faddish.  It’s been around for over 15 years and is a growing discipline recognised by many organisations as the way to truly elevate their brands above the considerable noise currently confusing the marketplace.

The number of positions in this field and affiliated support roles will grow.  It will be in the best interests of everyone responsible for creating these thought leadership positions to get their job descriptions right.  If not, they run the risk of attracting the wrong people and contributing to the erosion of a concept that, when done well, engenders trust, engagement and loyalty in an era when all three are becoming harder to elicit from increasingly sceptical clients and customers.

Craig Badings is a director at Sydney-based, Cannings Corporate Communications.  He is the co-author of #THOUGHT LEADERSHIP Tweet: 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign.  He published his first book on thought leadership in 2009: “Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership”Join him on twitter @thoughtstrategy and on LinkedIn.

Darwin effect to separate thought leadership content on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is making a serious play to be at the epicentre for business content and why not?

The logical step for any social media platform is to monetize and LinkedIn has seen the sponsored content dollar signs.   They already have a captive professional audience as well as industry and sector specific content that bodes well for related advertising spend – it could be a big money-spinner.

They have been successful with their LinkedIn Today initiative which enables users to follow industry related articles. Time will tell but we may see LinkedIn becoming the new hub of online B2B content.

Where does LinkedIn’s new ‘play’ leave thought leaders and content marketers?

LinkedIn can deliver content in an incredibly targeted manner and as a result content marketers should be forewarned – as LinkedIn’s audience becomes more discerning about their content choice it will only be the ‘fittest’ thought leadership-type content that will survive. Darwin’s theory will prevail in the content marketing wars.

Already there are tensions in the debate around the differences between thought leadership and content.  It’s nothing new.

Business people are turning their back on volume and more and more they are seeking quality, thought leading content.  It is the type of content that drives to the heart of their issues and challenges, offering new insights, shifting paradigms or cracking existing schemas.

The term thought leadership has been misappropriated by content marketers

How many times have you seen content erroneously labeled as thought leadership?  I see it every day on my thought leadership twitter feed and Google Alerts.  Often this self-labeled, self-serving thought leadership material is at best a collection of useful hints and tips at worst opinions of so called company experts.

But there’s nothing wrong with content. US-based Content Marketing Institute describes it as having the ability to:  “…attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” All well and good but I appeal to corporates and those in charge of their content production not to label it thought leading content when it isn’t.

My co-author, Dr Liz Alexander and I define thought leadership as follows in our latest book: #Thought Leadership Tweet: 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign: “Thought leaders advance the marketplace of ideas by positing actionable, commercially relevant, research-backed, new points of view. They engage in “blue ocean strategy” thinking on behalf of themselves and their clients, as opposed to simply churning out product-focused, brand-centric white papers or curated content that shares or mimics others’ ideas.”

Fiona Czerniawska from Sourceforconsulting put it brilliantly when she recently remarked that a lot of what passes as thought leadership these days is mostly thought followership!

Craig Badings is a director at Sydney-based, Cannings Corporate Communications.  He is the co-author of #THOUGHT LEADERSHIP Tweet: 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign.  He published his first book on thought leadership in 2009: “Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership”Join him on twitter @thoughtstrategy and on LinkedIn.

#Thought Leadership Tweet – what’s your communication strategy?

The way you take your thought leadership to market is critical.

Taking your thought leadership campaign to market is the final chapter in the book #Thought Leadership Tweet 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign.  You may have the best thought leadership campaign in the world but if you don’t communicate it effectively to your desired audiences you’re going to waste a lot of valuable resources and your campaign will fail.

To overcome this, research is critical.  I refer to Tweet no 107: “Have you researched what your clients read and where they source their information so you can tailor your thought leadership accordingly.

Building a thought leadership platform is a long-term program. As such you need to be sure that you are packaging and reaching your audience where they are consuming their content.  Someone who heads up the thought leadership program for a multi-national once told me:  “We’ve researched our audience and they tell us they don’t want long reports, they want pithy, executive summaries and time with senior partners to talk through their issues.”

The tweet outline in this chapter will guide you to coming up with the best possible communication strategy for your campaign.

Internal and external thought leadership communication drivers

One of the aspects so often overlooked in a thought leadership communication strategy is how you work with your employees to ensure they become your best advocates for the campaign.  As tweet no 111 says: “To what extent is your sales team adequately equipped to use this thought leadership material in conversations with prospects.”

When it comes to external communication we use the term leverage.  It is a cardinal thought leadership sin not to leverage your content in as many ways possible and across all your client or prospects touch points.

Customise your thought leadership

Finally customise your thought leadership as far as possible for each prospect and client.  Every senior person likes to think that your insights are written exclusively for them.  Ensure you modify your content for the different stages of the buying cycle – what you give a new prospect when you first meet them compared to when you have established a relationship with them should be very different.

A thought leadership methodology

#Thought Leadership Tweet concludes with a special addendum – a practical chapter with a step by step methodology on how to successfully plan, develop, communicate, evaluate and recalibrate your thought leadership campaign from start to finish.

We set out to write this book to make it easy for those new to the concept to understand what thought leadership is and how it works.  However it is also a valuable guide for sophisticated thought leaders to help them ensure they are covering all the bases and that their campaign is track.

If you have any questions on this or once you’ve read the book please feel free to contact either myself or my co-author Dr Liz Alexander.  We are more than happy to answer your questions.

#Thought Leadership Tweet covers the seven essential elements of a thought leadership campaign.  This post is the last in a series that covered:

1. Your guide to winning the content war and what is thought leadership? Covered in past post.
2. What does it take to become a thought leader? Covered in past post.
3. What impact do you want to achieve? Covered in past post.
4. How will you know you’ve succeeded? Covered in past post.
5. What space has already been claimed? Covered in past post.
6. What will be your unique point of view? Covered in past post.
7. What’s your communication strategy? Covered in this post.

Craig Badings is a director at Sydney-based, Cannings Corporate Communications.  He has consulted to companies small and large, listed and unlisted across Australia and South Africa about their communication strategies, corporate reputation and thought leadership.  He is the co-author of  #THOUGHT LEADERSHIP Tweet: 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign.  He published his first book in 2009: “Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership”

Join him on twitter @thoughtstrategy and on LinkedIn.

#Thought Leadership Tweet – What will be your unique point of view?

Thought leadership is about two key things: First, making sure your platform is client centric and goes to the heart of their issues or challenges and second, delivering new insights that anticipate, solve or lessen the effects of these challenges.
If you are able to achieve this you will be sought after by your clients and prospects.

Tweet #80 in the book #Thought Leadership Tweet sums this up: “What keeps your clients or prospects awake at night? Why? How can you use this to inform your thought leadership point of view?”

Critically to identify you unique point of view you need to be asking a lot of the right sort of questions. As tweet #85 says: “Thought leaders ask “why?” a lot more than what?” or “how?” Are you asking the questions from the start?”

First do the research

From experience, you should do your homework before embarking on your thought leadership journey. First identify what you are really good at, what great intellectual property do you have. Second does this or can this be adapted to answer/address your clients or your prospects issues/challenges.

Next identify whether anyone else already occupies this space. If so you may be two steps behind already. Thought leaders are always two steps ahead. Then research your market to gain an in depth understanding of their issues and possible solutions.

Thought leaders don’t play it safe

Look at some of the great thought leadership material out there: BMW’s Activate the Future, IBM’s Smarter Planet, McKinsey’s focus on the art and science of Management. It’s all new and ground-breaking stuff.

Being faint-hearted is not for thought leaders.

#Thought Leadership Tweet 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign covers the seven essential elements of a thought leadership campaign. I have covered off some of these in previous posts.

Already covered in this series:

1. Your guide to winning the content war and what is thought leadership? Covered in past post.
2. What does it take to become a thought leader? Covered in past post.
3. What impact do you want to achieve? Covered in past post.
4. How will you know you’ve succeeded? Covered in past post.
5. What space has already been claimed? Covered in past post.
6. What will be your unique point of view? Covered in this post.

Still to come:

7. What’s your communication strategy? Still to come…

Craig Badings is a director at Sydney-based, Cannings Corporate Communications. He has consulted to companies small and large, listed and unlisted across Australia and South Africa about their communication strategies, corporate reputation and thought leadership. He is the co-author of #THOUGHT LEADERSHIP Tweet: 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign. He published his first book in 2009: “Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership”

Join him on twitter @thoughtstrategy and on LinkedIn.

#Thought Leadership Tweet – what impact to you want to achieve?

Tweet number 41 in #Thought Leadership Tweet probably best captures the essence of what you should be trying to achieve with your thought leadership: “Do you clearly understand your client’s issues and what keeps them awake at night?  Will your thought leadership address some or all of them?”

While most companies think about themselves when it comes to thought leadership they should be turning it around and focusing on what’s in it for their clients.  As the late Dr Stephen Covey said: “Begin with the end in mind.” And that end should be what matters to your clients.

Being a thought leader is not something you claim, it is something bestowed upon you by an audience.  To achieve this you need to be sure that you have done your homework, followed a rigorous process and ensured that the point of view you are developing has relevance to your most important market.

A great starting point for a thought leader is START IP

I first covered START IP in my book Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership published in 2009.

Essentially there are seven steps which will help you in your journey to creating maximum impact for your campaign.  They are:

1. Scan the online environment and the market in which your clients operate to help identify their issues and challenges. Scan the competitors to ascertain what their thought leadership or content position is.  Remember it is far more difficult to compete in an already crowded space.
2. Track your competitors to ascertain their thought leadership and content positions.  Remember it is far more difficult to compete in an already crowded space.
3. Analyse your ‘true north’ i.e. your vision and values and let them help guide your choice of a thought leadership position.
4. Research new points of view or review your intellectual property and see whether you can drive a thought leadership position around this or whether you can repackage and reinvigorate this IP to deliver great thought leadership content to your market.
5. Trends – understand the trends impacting your clients or target market and drive your thought leadership position around addressing these and thereby adding value to your market that goes beyond your product or service.
6. Identify a thought leadership champion.  You need someone to own and take your point of view to market but ensure they are involved from the beginning, that they are coached in how to deliver the story.  The second part of this is to include other members of the team across all disciplines so they can become word of mouth advocates and ambassadors for the thought leadership point of view.  This done well can have a remarkable impact on the morale of the business and pride of employees in their brand.
7. Panel – identify an independent panel outside of the organisation who  can add that much needed third party, objective advice and act as a sounding board for your campaign.

#Thought Leadership Tweet covers the seven essential elements of a thought leadership campaign.  Over the course of the next few weeks I will go into each one in more detail.

1. Your guide to winning the content war and what is thought leadership? Covered in past post.
2. What does it take to become a thought leader? Covered in past post.
3. What impact do you want to achieve? Covered in this post.
4. How will you know you’ve succeeded? Still to come…
5. What space has already been claimed? Still to come…
6. What will be your unique point of view? Still to come…
7. What’s your communication strategy? Still to come…

Look out in the next few days for the next blog piece in this series covering #Thought Leadership Tweet which will touch on how to know you’ve succeeded with your thought leadership campaign.

Craig Badings is a director at Sydney-based, Cannings Corporate Communications.  He has consulted to companies small and large, listed and unlisted across Australia and South Africa about their communication strategies, corporate reputation and thought leadership.  He is the co-author of  #THOUGHT LEADERSHIP Tweet: 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign.  He published his first book in 2009: “Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership”

Join him on twitter @thoughtstrategy and on LinkedIn.

#Thought Leadership Tweet – what does it take to become a thought leader?

The best way to introduce this topic which is covered in section one of #Thought Leadership Tweet: 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign, is to quote Eric Wittlake, senior director of media at Babcock & Jenkins: “Everyone wants to be a thought leader today, but can they?”

Those under the illusion that thought leadership is a white paper, a bit of random content there or some curated content over here need to think again.  This random approach to content will never cut it and in the process time, money and valuable resources are wasted for little effect.

Becoming a thought leader requires a planned and disciplined approach.  To start there some preliminary questions anyone person or organisation embarking on this journey should ask.  In #Thought Leadership Tweet we make it easy by posing these questions for you.  For example #Thought Leadership Tweet no 2 asks: “Have you defined clearly what thought leadership means to your organization and what you want to achieve from it?”

This is a key question as it:

1. Helps you deliver a strategic framework from which to work
2. Aligns the campaign with your business objectives
3. Gives you a benchmark from which you can measure and evaluate your campaign

A successful thought leadership approach needs three things

When you are ready to embark on your first steps towards a thought leadership approach there are three areas on which to focus your discussions:

1. What type of environment do you need in order to foster a culture of thought leadership?
2. How does this campaign align with your overall vision and mission?
3. Do you have the right people involved at the most senior level and across disciplines?

#Thought Leadership Tweet no 21 illustrates just one of these questions: “Which members of your team will challenge your organization’s assumptions in order to engage in truly breakthrough thinking?”

I leave you with this thought: If you find people courageous enough to take your organization and clients into previously unexplored territory, trust them and back them with the right resources.

#Thought Leadership Tweet covers the seven essential elements of a thought leadership campaign.  Over the course of the next few weeks I will go into each one in more detail.

1. Your guide to winning the content war and what is thought leadership? Covered in past post.
2. What does it take to become a thought leader? Covered in this post.
3. What impact do you want to achieve? Still to come…
4. How will you know you’ve succeeded? Still to come…
5. What space has already been claimed? Still to come…
6. What will be your unique point of view? Still to come…
7. What’s your communication strategy? Still to come…

Look out in the next few days for the next blog piece in this series covering #Thought Leadership Tweet which will touch on what impact you want to achieve.

Craig Badings is a director at Sydney-based, Cannings Corporate Communications.  He has consulted to companies small and large, listed and unlisted across Australia and South Africa about their communication strategies, corporate reputation and thought leadership.  He is the co-author of  #THOUGHT LEADERSHIP Tweet: 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign.  He published his first book in 2009: “Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership”

Join him on twitter @thoughtstrategy and on LinkedIn.

#Thought Leadership Tweet – your guide to winning the content war

On reading ‘#Thought Leadership Tweet: 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign’, David Meerman Scott best-selling author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR had this to say: “This book echoes my view that people don’t care about products! Thought Leadership engages buyers about what matters to them, not your ego.”

And therein lies the clue to this book. Many organisations are squandering time, money and effort on thought leadership initiatives that do not move the needle in terms of establishing a differentiated brand identity, trust and a loyal following.

To win the content war requires smart thinking and content that critically goes to the very heart of your target audiences or customers’/clients’ issues.

Gaining an understanding first of what thought leadership is, is critical to the success of your campaign.

The first section of #Thought Leadership Tweet outlines what thought leadership is.

What is thought leadership?

There are many definitions out there.  In fact click on definitions of thought leadership to the right of this post and you will find a number of them.  However, co-author Liz Alexander and I have said this in the book: “Thought leaders advance the marketplace of ideas by positing actionable, commercially relevant, research-backed, new points of view. They engage in ‘blue ocean strategy’ thinking on behalf of themselves and their clients, as opposed to simply churning out product-focused, brand-centric white papers or curated content that shares or mimics others’ ideas.”

Why do some organisations struggle with thought leadership?

Individual thought leaders are in plentiful supply so why do organisations struggle with the concept?

My experience tells me it is for three reasons:

1. Organisations generally are not great listeners and many are not truly engaging with their  customers/clients around the genuine business, social, economic, environmental and political issues they face face
2. Many leave their thought leadership to the marketing department and it is not owned by senior management i.e. there is no culture of thought leadership
3. Most companies are too product or service focused and sharing content or intellectual  property is a big ask for them

As we point out in this book, we all need to listen more, understand better, and re-energise our relationships with increasingly discerning, demanding and sceptical customers and clients.  Our believe and experience shows that the way around this is to differentiate with compelling points of view that are intriguing, innovative, inspiring and wholly relevant to your audience.

Thought leadership is a discipline requiring a process

Adapting to the content war currently raging for share of consumers’ and clients minds requires a disciplined approach and focus.  #Thought Leadership Tweet makes this easy.  It takes the reader on a journey and in process delivers a complete methodology for a thought leadership campaign.

These are the seven essential elements of a thought leadership campaign covered in the book.  Over the course of the next few weeks I will go into each one in more detail.

1. Your guide to winning the content war and what is thought leadership? Covered in this post.
2. What does it take to become a thought leader? Next post.
3. What impact do you want to achieve?
4. How will you know you’ve succeeded?
5. What space has already been claimed?
6. What will be your unique point of view?
7. What’s your communication strategy?

# Thought Leadership Tweet no 8: “A hallmark of true thought leadership is the confidence to take the route that 99.9 per cent of the industry experts don’t even see.  Will you?”

Look out in the next few days for the next blog piece in this series covering #Thought Leadership Tweet which will touch on what it takes to become a thought leader.

Craig Badings is a director at Sydney-based, Cannings Corporate Communications.  He has consulted to companies small and large, listed and unlisted across Australia and South Africa about their communication strategies, corporate reputation and thought leadership.  He is the co-author of  #THOUGHT LEADERSHIP Tweet: 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign.  He published his first book in 2009: “Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership”

Join him on twitter @thoughtstrategy and on LinkedIn.

#Thought Leadership Tweet – book delivers fresh insights for thought leaders

On reading ‘#Thought Leadership Tweet: 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign’, Dale Bryce, Group Manager Marketing , Sinclair Knight Merz had this to say: “If Confucius was a marketer, he would be tweeting proverbs like Alexander & Badings do on thought leadership.”

Thanks Dale very kind words indeed.

Co-author Dr Liz Alexander and I wrote this book because we wanted to deliver to companies and individuals a question-led methodology on how to identify, plan, market and measure an effective thought leadership campaign.  That’s probably what prompted Matt Church the founder of Thought Leaders Global to say: “This book is thought haiku. It asks penetrating questions about the how, why and what of leveraging the biggest B2B marketing idea around.”

Whether you are an existing thought leader or an aspiring thought leader, an individual, a large multinational or company, #Thought Leadership Tweet will empower you to act on and achieve a thought leadership platform that will truly differentiate yourself and your brand from your competitors.

Eric Wittlake, senior director of media at Babcock and Jenkins got it spot on when he said: “#Thought Leadership Tweet delivers a concise overview of what it really takes.”

What does thought leadership really take?

To answer this question, our approach is very different to normal books on the topic.  First, it is a quick, easy read – 50-90 minutes. Second, there are 140 tweets designed to lead to a thought leadership position and beyond.  The tweets will have you going back to them time and again as your thought leadership campaign unfolds. They are there to keep your campaign ‘honest’ and on track.

Here’s an example of one tweet: Tweet no 9: “Does your organisation have a culture of listening and what mechanisms have you put in place to truly listen to your market’s needs?”

The relevance of this tweet is that the most effective thought leadership campaigns are the ones that focus on and deliver insights to the heart of the issues facing your market or prospects.  If the premise of your thought leadership point of view is not underpinned by this approach your campaign will fail or at best limp along.

The essential elements of a thought leadership campaign

The other thing #Thought Leadership Tweet delivers is a practical, step-by-step approach across seven distinct sections enabling you to truly plan your campaign from start to finish.

Thought leadership is a discipline.  As such the good campaigns require careful planning, research, application, resources, a marketing strategy, evaluation and recalibration.

Below is a brief mention of each of the seven essential elements of a thought leadership campaign.  Over the course of the next few weeks I will go into each one in more detail.

1. What is thought leadership?
2. What does it take to become a thought leader?
3. What impact do you want to achieve?
4. How will you know you’ve succeeded?
5. What space has already been claimed?
6. What will be your unique point of view?
7. What’s your communication strategy?

The following quote sums up the reason anyone vaguely interested in this topic should read this book.  It is from the Forrester Research Report authored by principal analyst Jeff Ernst and titled:  Thought Leadership: The Next Wave of Differentiation InB2B Marketing: “Companies that lack a process or framework find themselves practicing random acts of thought leadership.  They react to industry and customer issues in an ad hoc manner rather than proactively planning a cohesive thought leadership platform.”

I’ll end off with our final tweet – tweet number 140:

# Thought Leadership Tweet no 140: “Thought leaders are brave; explore areas others don’t, raise questions others won’t, and provide insights others can’t.”

Look out in the next few days for the next blog piece in this series covering #Thought Leadership Tweet which will touch on your guide to winning the content war.

Craig Badings is a director at Sydney-based, Cannings Corporate Communications.  He has consulted to companies small and large, listed and unlisted across Australia and South Africa about their communication strategies, corporate reputation and thought leadership.  He is the co-author of  #THOUGHT LEADERSHIP Tweet: 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign.  He published his first book in 2009: “Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership”

Join him on twitter @thoughtstrategy and on LinkedIn.

Dove’s thought leadership platform changes face of advertising

Dove's FB campaign shows how thought leadership can drive innovation across a variety of platforms

Despite the obvious benefits, the beauty of a great thought leadership campaign is the spin off it can create for that person or the brand.

Take Dove for example.  Their Campaign for Real Beauty is one of the best examples of a consumer thought leadership campaign I
have seen (see the case study I wrote up about it here).  It has spawned a content-rich environment for them around this topic to such a degree that they pretty much ‘own’ the discussions around real beauty.

Dove displays innovation driven by their thought leadership position

Their next move announced this week is brilliant – a ‘Dove ad makeover’ Facebook app, which allows Facebook users to displace existing advertising messages on their pages with positive ads from Dove.

This is great innovation driven by a thought leadership position on real beauty.

Check this brief You Tube clip out to get the idea http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhI3Wzs2gJA&feature=player_embedded

I’d be interested in your thoughts.

 I’m a director at Sydney-based, Cannings Corporate Communications.  Please check out my book: Brand Stand: seven steps
to thought leadership,  follow me on twitter @thoughtstrategy or join me on LinkedIn.

12 experts on the key thought leadership trends for 2012 – content curation

The overwhelming sense from these experts is that content curation alone does not lead to thought leadership

I asked 12 people who I consider to be leading global commentators on thought leadership as well as a couple who have produced some amazing thought leadership programs in-house over the years to comment on four critical thought leadership questions for 2012.

Inspired by their answers I couldn’t help chipping in with my own thoughts.

As a result of the overwhelmingly positive response, I have split the interviews into four different posts – one post per question.

In the New Year I will make available an e book containing all the answers.

Interviewees include: Bob Buday, Erica Klein, David Meerman Scott, Jeff Ernst, Rob Leavitt, Britton Manasco, Dana van den Heuvel, Matt Church, Fiona Czerniawska, Dale Bryce, Elizabeth Sosnow, Marte Semb Aaasmundsen and me.

This is the last post in the series and it covers their answers to question four:

Question four: Can content curation alone turn an individual or company
into a thought leader?

Bob Buday, president of Bloom Group LLC, a firm that helps professional services and other B2B companies gain market leadership through thought leadership (http://www.bloomgroup.com)

“No – especially if all you do is collect articles. There are tons of automated ways to do it without a human intermediary – Twitter feeds, Google alerts, etc.

“At the very least, content curators need to provide more value to readers than simply identifying and collecting content on a topic. They need to explain why some piece of content is worth someone’s time – what new light it sheds.

“Yet still, even if you add that kind of value – providing commentary on interesting content – playing the role of content curator doesn’t go far enough to demonstrate that you are a leading expert on a topic.

“All to say there are no short cuts in becoming a thought leader.”

Erica Klein, Thought Leadership Writer and Strategist Specializing in Financial and Technology Companies(http://www.ThoughtLeadershipWriter.com)

“This may be totally self-serving on my part, but I think aggregating content marks a company as a “me too” provider and not a distinctive brand able to offer prospects and customers real, quantifiable value.

“True thought leadership can do so much more for a company than round up content at the OK Corral!”

Matt Church, founder of the Global Thought Leaders Movement and creator of the Million Dollar Expert Program. He is the author of 5 books including Thought Leaders and his latest Sell Your Thoughts (http://www.mattchurch.com)

“In the next 36 months maybe.  But after that those who synthesise, aggregate and curate Thought Leadership will lose position. It’s about extending the conversations or contradicting them. This means you have to go beyond ‘here is a good idea’ and start to say ‘here is what I think about X idea’.

“It’s about contribution and contradiction as ways of extending an idea.  A reader reads a book and goes ‘cool’, a curator reads an idea and goes ‘how can I share that?’ a Thought Leader reads an idea and goes ‘What do I think about that?’

Elizabeth Sosnow, managing director of Bliss PR a business-to-business strategic public relations and marketing communications firm based in New York City (http://www.blisspr.com)

“I love this question – it’s one I’ve debated myself.  I think the short answer is “yes,” but the long answer is “no.”

“In the short term, curation is a way to signal to your audience that you understand industry trends and “what’s ahead.”  However, longer term, curation signals a “me, too” marketing posture.

“True thought leadership requires differentiation to succeed, so curation just isn’t enough.”

Jeff Ernst, is the Principal Analyst, serving CMO and Marketing Leadership Professionals at Forrester Research and is probably best described as a thought leader in B2B marketing and sales strategy(http://www.forrester.com/rb/analyst/jeff_ernst)

“No, content curation alone is not enough to be a true thought leader.

“For people to trust you to curate or filter content for them, they need to already view you as an authority and trust that you are able to filter through the noise to deliver the content that is most useful to them.

“At minimum, as you curate content, you need to be providing your perspectives on the content you are delivering. But ideally, you need a steady stream of your own fresh ideas and perspectives, while using content curation to supplement that.”

David Meerman Scott is one of the pre-eminent thought leaders on PR and marketing. He is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, seminar leader, and author of the #1 bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR (which has been published in 26 languages) and the Wall Street Journal bestseller Real-Time Marketing & PR. He recently launched his new online book: “Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage”. (http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/)

“No.  While content that is interesting will be passed on, I am a perfect example as I tweet interesting content, however, some
component of original content is important.

“Content simply created by others is not nearly as valuable.”

Dale Bryce is the group manager marketing for Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM), a global strategic consulting, engineering and project delivery firm. He has been instrumental in their successful ‘client first’ thought leadership approach (http://www.skmconsulting.com/Home/)

“Content curation is an essential ingredient in the overall mix that is thought leadership.

“Great content needs to be relevant of course but it should act as a social lubricant for engagement with an audience. Ideally content is just the conversation starter; a catalyst to a real dialogue about how people might react and respond to the idea just placed on the metaphorical table. And from that first conversation, big things can come….!”

Marte Semb Aasmundsen, graduated this month with her MSc Strategic Public Relations and Communications
Management at The University of Stirling in the UK.  Her thesis was on thought leadership.

“No, I don’t think so.

“I think content curation may perhaps be a reason why critics are inveighing against thought leadership in the first place.

“Of course it is a useful way of identifying and re-branding an issue. But I think the trend will be to move towards more sophisticated thought leadership initiatives. For that to happen, a thought leader must be authentic.

“Authenticity, transparency and trust are values that will become even more important in the coming years.”

Britton Manasco is the founder of Manasco Marketing Partners which specializes in creating thought leadership marketing and sales enablement solutions. Britton produces a thought leadership strategy blog Illuminating the Future and the executive journal, Elevation Quarterly. (http://www.brittonmanasco.com/)

“Yes, but only if they are a skilled curator.

“Among other things, I have billed myself as a “connoisseur of contrarians.” I seek out unexpected perspectives and provocative points of view. By tapping into their contrarian insights of others, I’m able to generate content for my clients that truly resonates with their customers.

“I’m thrilled that I can get paid to do it.”

Rob Leavitt is a B2B marketing strategist, specializing in issues-based marketing. He is currently Director of Thought Leadership at PTC, a $1 billion enterprise software firm. (http://www.reputationtorevenue.com/)

“Definitely not.

“Curation is useful both internally (for education and customer/competitive/market perspective) and externally (to build interest, traffic, and credibility) but it is no substitute for your own content and conversation that provide strong and different points of view.

“I’m all for curation initiatives but strictly as a complement to your own more substantial research, publications, and presentations. Done well (which itself requires a great deal of work), curation can help you become a useful and valued resource for information and ideas, but if they are not your own ideas you are still not a thought leader.”

Dana VanDen Heuvel is a marketing consultant, author and speaker. He is a recognized expert on blogging, podcasting, RSS, Internet communities and interactive marketing trends and best practices as well as thought leadership (http://www.marketingsavant.com/)

“No, it can’t.

“I’ve seen a lot of back and forth on Twitter this year about this, but at the end of the day, curation is helpful and even essential.

“I often tell my clients that the best leaders don’t always have the answers, but they know where to get them, which is how the thought leader should approach curation.  Know where to get good content, know who to trust and know what your audience values but never think for a second that curation = thought leadership.

“The Bloom Group has articulated, what I believe, to be one of the staples in thought leadership discipline with their “seven fundamentals of a thought leadership point of view”, which every would-be thought leader should use to check their work. Moreover, “novelty”, that is, saying something new about an issue and “validity”, having proof, are two of the most critical points of a thought leadership position.

“Curation satisfies neither of those.”

Craig Badings – author of this blog and the book “Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership”, and a consultant at Sydney-based Cannings Corporate Communications.

“Find me one recognised thought leader who has attained their position as a result of curating content only.

“If you can I will be convinced that content curation can create thought leaders.

“The very nature of the term ’thought leadership’ implies original, creative or innovative thought.  In contrast, curating content implies that you are not the original generator of that content and therefore cannot claim to be a thought leader off the back of it.

“That said, I believe that curated content can play a very important role in supporting and informing a thought leadership content program. Furthermore, if the person curating the content arrives at new ideas or insights as a result of that content then it could be construed as thought leadership.”

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