Your biggest thought leadership mistake

The San (Bushmen) of the Kalahari, the Aboriginal tribes in Australia, the North American Indians and the first movie makers all knew something modern corporations seem to have lost sight of – that the power of story-telling is multiplied a hundredfold through pictures.

The capacity of the human brain to be entertained as well as absorb and retain information through visuals is well researched and documented.  So why do most companies still insist on smothering their audiences with an avalanche of words as they churn out reams and reams of content?!

Thought leaders and content marketers are missing a trick

The exponential growth of visual online platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, Vimeo, Vine, Snapchat, Infographics, You Tube and Facebook is a blessing in disguise.  Why? Because it’s forcing brands to re-evaluate how they present their content and making them recognize that their audiences are crying out for visual representation of data and information.

I never forget speaking to the head of knowledge management at one of the leading global management consulting firms a few years ago and he said to me: “Craig we have researched our clients and they are telling us they don’t want the big, thumping reports, they want the two page executive summary – they just don’t have the time.”

With that in mind, it’s great to read in Sourceforconsulting’s latest online newsletter that the proportion of thought leadership videos has risen from 2% five years ago to 4% in 2012 and that overall the proportion of thought leadership in traditional article/report format has fallen from 92% to 79% over the same period.

Spice up your content with visuals

So the message about going visual is sinking in but ever so slowly.

I was in Perth, Western Australia a little while ago and visited the offices of Deloitte.  I walked out with a one page A3 page entitled ‘Western Australia’s Mining Boom Dig a little further’ (seen pictured above).  It’s not thought leadership but it is a great piece of content captured in a series of graphs, statistics and diagrams all visually displayed.  Within a minute or two I got it and didn’t have to plough through a weighty report to get there.

Other examples of brands that have been using the visual medium really with their campaigns include Dove’s Real Beauty sketches and BMW’s Activate the Future – if you have any more examples please let me know, I’d love to hear about them.

Creating content that converts

Ultimately you are producing content or thought leadership material for a reason.  You want to engage with an audience and position yourselves as the expert, the brand with the relevant insights and then eventually convert them into a client or a customer.  The brands who can differentiate themselves through great content and turn it into compelling, interesting visual content are the ones who are going to stand head and shoulders above their competition.

Make no mistake they will still have to be able to use words to articulate their story but the more visually you can interpret these words the more impactful and memorable your story is going to be.

What are you going to present your information more visually?

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.

How Jeff Bullas became a thought leader on social media – interview

Jeff Bullas is a thought leader on social media and online marketing.  I met with him last week and was struck at how focused he is on working with companies and executives to optimize their online personal and company presence through the use of social media and other web and mobile technologies. The thing with Jeff is he truly walks his talk:

• Jeff’s blog is ranked #14 in the Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers by Forbes.com.
• His blog is rated by the Huffington Post as one of the “Top 100 Business, Leadership and Technology Twitter Accounts You Must Follow“
• He is the author of the best selling – “Blogging the Smart Way – How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” on Amazon.
• His blog receives over 4 million page views per year and is read in 190 countries
• He has 130,000 Twitter followers
• His presentations have been viewed on Slideshare over 200,000 times
• He has a Klout Score of 81.

I asked him how he got there and what tips he had for aspiring thought leaders.

Jeff over a period of 3-4 years you have positioned yourself as a thought leader in optimising content online and social media marketing strategies.  How did you do it and what tips can you give to other aspiring thought leaders out there?

It started with a passion for social media when I saw its impact on people and on the web. I then decided to create a blog which I could write and create content about my observations of the potential, growth and my experiences of the social media revolution.

The next stage involved building followers on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and sharing that content with them.

So those are my 3 tips.

• Build a presence online (blog) that is based on your passion
• Create focused content that adds value to your readers
• Build online tribes on social networks

If you persist with these and are consistent then the magic happens.

While we have a plethora of online platforms such as blogs, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, etc you have a very strategic approach to these platforms and how content should be used online – what are some of the golden rules?

The model I use is to own and build a personal brand with a blog that is self-hosted and has my own domain. I use WordPress as the platform for that. It is my online portal that I control. You operate it under your own terms and conditions and not Facebook’s or any other social network oligarch. I call it the “hub and outpost” model. The blog is the hub and the outposts are the social networks. Create and publish content at the hub and distribute it at the outposts.

The social networks are just the ambassadors that crowd source the distribution and marketing of that content. In terms of what social networks to play on the answer is simple; focus on the social media platforms where your target audience hangs out.

By the way I am on all of those platforms you mentioned as publishing to them doesn’t take much time.

Many people focus on Facebook but I have found that a deliberate approach to Twitter will pay bigger dividends to get your message and content onto the web.

What’s the best online thought leadership or content marketing campaign you’ve seen and why?

The problem with social media and content marketing is that it is sometimes seen the same way as traditional marketing, which is very campaign driven. You move from one campaign to the next. Social media and content marketing should be viewed as “continuous” marketing. One piece of content and one tweet at a time. You build an online personal and thought leadership brand by the consistent creation of multi-media content.

One great example of this is Gary Vaynerchuk who built a thought leadership brand around his knowledge of wine. He did this by creating a video blog 5 days a week on Wine and took the revenue from $3 million a year to $50 million.

You consult and speak to companies around the world; what are the biggest barriers to corporations becoming great content generators or even thought leaders? What would your advice be to overcome these?

The problem is that most companies are run by baby boomers who are still stuck in the paradigm of traditional marketing. They do not want to give away their ideas (content) as they see that as their “Intellectual property” or “IP”. That is a hard habit to overcome.

You need to give away your content till it hurts.

What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to an aspirant content generator or someone who wants to become a thought leader in their space?

You need to learn the how to write and create content that is easy to consume and read for the web. This includes writing great headlines, use plain and simple language (no acronyms please) and use subtitles and bullet points.

From your personal experience what are some of the key benefits of a thought leadership position for an individual or a company?

What I have experienced is that it opens up business opportunities globally. It also creates deeper ties and personal relationships that increase revenue.

Oh yes, it also makes business much more fun.

What’s the next big thing in the online world?

The biggest change and next big thing is that the web is becoming more mobile as high speed wireless data networks spread and smart phones and tablets proliferate. Creating content that can be viewed anytime and anywhere that is easy to read or view is vital.

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.

Does thought leadership need social media?

I wrote this as a guest post for Jeff Bullas blog.  Jeff is without doubt one of the global thought leaders on social media but particularly the strategy of how you integrate it into your marketing and your business as a whole – keep an eye open for an interview with Jeff on this blog shortly.

The natural reaction of most business people and certainly anyone in marketing, communications or social media these days is to label those companies and individuals not using social media as dinosaurs.  But are they?

Thought leadership is content on steroids.  It stands out from the crowd because it is different; it offers something new and the good campaigns deliver information or insights that address a client’s challenges or issues.  In some cases really brilliant thought leadership shifts paradigms of an entire industry.  Thought leadership is no ordinary content but rather content that sets one brand apart from the competition and, in the process, leverages a phenomenal platform for trust and engagement.

Good thought leadership content is sophisticated and intelligent and should be packaging and delivered appropriately to a defined audience.  And herein lies the key.

Do you know where and how your audience consumes content?

In our recent book on the topic #Thought Leadership Tweet 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign, co-author Dr Liz Alexander and I  ask in tweet #32: “Have you clearly defined who you want to reach with this thought leadership campaign and why?”

If for example your market is a small universe of 30-50 senior decision makers at listed companies in a certain sector and they are not using LinkedIn, twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, blogs and the like, why on earth would you need to be on social media?

Great thought leadership goes to the very heart of your markets’ issues – think Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, IBM’s Smarter Planet, GE’s Ecomagination,  Phillip’s Health and Wellbeing campaign and Booz&Co’s Global Innovation 1000. The planning for these campaigns had a very clear why, as Simon Sinek says in our tweet# 26: “It doesn’t matter what you do.  It matters why you do it.” Why are you embarking on a thought leadership campaign?

I have been in the public relations game for 23 years.  There was an industry expression back then – “Spray and pray” – it meant sending a press release to as many media contacts as possible hoping to generate coverage.  Of course the results were always poor because three critical questions were not clarified up front: Why are we doing this? Who are we trying to reach? What do they read?

Content planning today is no different we merely have a host of other channels to use social media being one of them.

Using social media effectively for your thought leadership content

Let’s skip ahead.  You’ve done your research and you know that a lot of your market is consuming social media.  At this point it’s probably worth considering SKM’s Dale Bryce’s question in tweet# 120: “Are you ensuring your thought leadership facilitates a dialog?  Think of it as a conversation.”

One of the most critical aspects of any content is whether it facilitates customer engagement and acquisition.   I am singularly and cynically commercial in my view of thought leadership and content – if it is not driving engagement or acquisition why do it.

If you are using social media platforms to share your thought leadership content you may want to consider the following to measure its success:

1. Identify your prospect’s buying cycle – have you identified the various stages of the engagement and customer buying cycle and are you modifying your content for each stage and using the appropriate channels at each stage? For example what formats do your customers/prospects want – are you offering more than one option e.g. a powerpoint, a pdf, audio, video, etc
2. Leverage your content – do you have a process to make sure you’re sharing your content and leveraging it appropriately across all the relevant social media channels and are you optimising your content.  Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has changed and now it is all about targeted content using the key words people search for when looking for information on your topic and, more importantly, gaining links from authoritative influencers.
3. Go visual – all trends indicate that the visual mediums of YouTube, Slidshare, Pinterest, Instagram and using things like Infographics is the way people are trending in their consumption of content.  Are you graphically interpreting your content to take advantage of this trend?
4. Gear your content for earned media – are you paying enough attention to making your content shareable.  One of the greatest powers of social media is the ability for people to share your content.  Are you designing your content to be shareable and to make it easy for people to link to it?
5. Quantify the revenue impact – there is tons of content on this topic but one stands out – businesses will only allocate big money to your social media campaign if they understand which of your social media channels is truly working.  This means you have to find ways to gather feedback and data that better informs your understanding of your prospects at the various stages of the buying cycle and then critically what impact your content is having on them.

Your metrics may show how many back links you have, how many eyeballs you attracted, how many retweets you received, how many downloads you had, your click-through rate but the bottom line is whether your content enables you to capture these visitors, convert them into leads and ultimately nurture them into customers?

I leave you with this thought.  Research in a report by KPMG in 2011 “Going Social: How businesses are making the most of social media” found that regardless of industry group or ownership structure, business adoption rates for social media now average around the 70% mark around the world.  Perhaps even more tellingly, the report found that a high proportion of consumers now use social media to inform their purchasing decisions.

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 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 – how will you know you’ve succeeded?

One of the classic errors of a thought leadership campaign is a) not having campaign objectives clearly defined up front and b) not continually measuring and making informed adjustments to your campaign along the way.

The tweet prompts under this section in the book help you in your discussions around how best measure, evaluate and recalibrate your campaign.

The following tweets will give you an example:

Tweet number 54: “How do you plan to measure the internal (not just external) effects of your thought leadership campaign?”

Tweet number 56: “Have you created and communicated a detailed briefing document for all the parties involved, outlining expectations and deliverables?”

Finally be wary of measuring only the normal stuff like media coverage, speaking engagements and the like.  What you want to be measuring is the impact your campaign is having in steering clients and customers towards territory that will have major benefits for them and for you.

#Thought Leadership Tweet covers the seven essential elements of a thought leadership campaign.  I have covered off on some of these in previous posts but over the course of the next few weeks I will be adding to these 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 past post.
4. How will you know you’ve succeeded? Covered in this post.
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 identify what space has been claimed.

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.