What if we told you there’s a marketing approach that all successful entrepreneurs, authors, and content creators use? It is a technique that allows them to quickly establish themselves in the market and compete with the best.
You would want to know the secret of how they do it, right?
What is Thought Leadership Content?
Coined by Joel Kurtzman in 1994, thought leadership content is a strategy to build your brand by answering questions your target audience puts up.
These questions may be anything related to your brand, including but not limited to your products/services, the company’s short-term goals, long-term vision, etc.
Thought leadership content is one of the most powerful ways to establish your expertise in a particular field.
However, thought leadership content isn’t just another marketing technique that merely creates awareness for your brand.
Using thought leadership content, you can connect with your customers at a deeper level and quickly establish a sense of trust in their minds for you and your brand.
A perfect example of what thought leadership can do for you is to look at the marketing guru Seth Godin.
Over the years, Seth has shared his expertise and answered readers’ queries through his books and blogs. Over the years, these pieces of leadership content have impacted people, giving them the impression that he knows what he is talking about.
As a matter of fact, even today, he is active on his blog, sharing his experiences and learnings with the world.
Types of Thought Leadership Content
When it comes to providing answers to your audience, there isn’t an established strategy on how to do it. Depending upon your profession and personality, you can choose how you voice your opinion to the world.
That being said, here are the types of thought leadership content that have the most impact on audiences:
Case Studies
Case studies are one of the most popular types of leadership content you can post. Case studies can be anything related to experiences related to yourself, your organization, your customers, etc.
The primary purpose of a case study is to craft and tell an exciting story in which
- How did you accomplish something,
- How did you come up with strategies to achieve that objective,
- The reasons behind choosing a strategy,
- Even revealing where and why you failed and how you overcame that.
By telling your customers about your personal or professional journey in such detail, you establish a strong, positive connection.
Opinion Piece
An opinion article is published to stir up discussion about a hot topic or an unknown issue or simply to reply to a previously posted opinion.
Similar to a case study, you can use this content to talk about the current state of your business or industry, current or past scenarios, and much more. That being said, there are some notable differences between a case study and an opinion article.
- Firstly, to write an opinion piece, you must have an authoritative position, meaning you need to be an established expert in what you are talking about.
- Secondly, an opinion article will only be worthwhile if there’s an audience to read it. Therefore, it must be published on a website with a consistent number of readers.
- Unlike case studies, an opinion piece can establish a two-way communication channel. In other words, you not only post your opinion online, but this time your readers have a choice between being influenced by your opinion or criticizing it.
Conducting Interviews
Interviews are the best type of thought leadership content you can put out there!
The reason is the impact it has on your audience’s minds. You could invite other industry experts, someone from your company, or even your audience.
In addition, there’s no certainty about what shape the interview will take. It’ll depend upon who you choose to call.
For instance, when you call an expert, you could have a detailed discussion about your or their expertise. Whereas, if you called someone from your reader base, you could have a fun interview about their lives.
Whatever the interview turns out to be, as long as you are consistent in providing your audience with something useful, it’s a win.
Industry Analysis Report
As the name suggests, an analysis report encompasses an in-depth analysis of a business, industry, or sector.
An industry analysis report primarily talks about the following things:
- Past data and performance of a business
- How are you different from your competitors?
- What is the current status of your industry?
- Your growth projections are
- Upcoming opportunities in your industry.
The main aim is to craft an analysis explaining what a business is doing right or wrong in a language everybody understands.
Moreover, by telling your audience how you will help them with their questions, you may bring in many potential customers.
Data Narration
It’s no secret that backing up what you share (both online and offline) with statistical data develops credibility like no other.
Data narration is a type of content perfect for businesses that find it challenging to share with their audience due to the technical language and jargon.
Data narration involves converting complex data into a more visual format using pictures, graphs, charts, and much more.
It’s scientifically proven that we understand and retain visual information much better than monotonous texts. Not only does data narration make it easy for people to understand, but it also urges people to engage with it and share it with their network.
Who Are the Creators of Thought Leadership Content?
Thought Leadership Content naturally explains that it’s a piece of content that can lead people or guide you in a particular direction. And who can lead?
A person with experience or expertise in the field of which the content is about. They are the leaders who’ve built their products or brands through which they have helped hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people.
When they share their ideas, they become thought leadership content. And by taking help from their thoughts, opinions, or work, you can generate thought leadership content on your platform.
For example, the writer’s team at StanzaGo are thought leaders with years of experience in their field. And by using their knowledge, they are creating content that would lead people to take action to generate the desired result for their services, products, brands or organizations.
Some other examples of thought leadership content creators include,
- Oprah Winfrey
- Neil Patel
- Ben Horowitz
- Tony Robbins
These people hold strong opinions, experience, wisdom, transparency, the desire to share their knowledge with others, as well as the capacity to think beyond the box. When you read content by these people, you get inspired and feel like you need to work as they suggest.
Benefits of Thought Leadership Content
When you ask marketers, 65% say they’re already doing thought leadership content in different areas of their content marketing strategy. And due to that, they’re getting more than one benefit for their products, services or brand.
1. More Credibility and Authority for the Brand
When you publish useful information, and people find it helpful, it means they trust your platform to solve the issues they’re facing. It directly implies that it’s improving the brand or organization’s credibility and authority in people’s minds.
When we are talking about credibility and authority, we can easily see that they will affect the business definitely.
Just like a viral piece; good content will also get its fair share of mentions, shares and backlinks. And it’s possible when you receive shares or backlinks, your brand will reach more people, and you’ll get recognized on a big scale which is 100% good for the business.
3. Attract Potential Customers
Shares, mentions and backlinks will bring users to your platform. But, it’s not necessary that all users would try to opt for your services. However, what’s vital here is that, from 100% of users, the traffic will also bring 10% of users who are there to buy and are interested in your services.
10% of potential customers are much better than 90% of cart abandoners.
4. Possible Source of Increased Web Traffic
Good content will have better user sessions, which is a better source for the search engine to evaluate the content’s worth. This simply means your platform will get better rankings, and when you get amazing rankings, you get amazing traffic.
The better the traffic, the better the business.
5. Enhances the Content Library
In addition to these benefits, your platform will have a huge library, or you can say archive full of quality content which, if the user explores, they never get bored of.
Overall, a platform with helpful information that leads the user to take appropriate action to enhace their business.
How to Create Thought Leadership Content?
Now that we got the “Types,” “Benefits,” and “What” out of the way, let’s discuss how you can create content that people will read and share. Here are a few tips to keep in mind during the content development stage:
Knowing Your Audience and Objective(s):
The number one tip for creating thought leadership content is to know who your audience is. Furthermore, try to get as much information as possible on their likes and dislikes.
To do that, you must regularly interact with them on social platforms like Instagram and Youtube.
Asking for their thoughts and opinions on a subject matter gives you an outline of what they will enjoy the most. Use that information to create your leadership posts.
Create a Content Strategy: Focus on Your Best Possible Content
Apart from posting good content. It is also crucial to be aware of whether your efforts yield any results.
You should frequently experiment with different ways to share your content.
Furthermore, keep an eye out for how the audience reacts to it. If the engagement on your content increases when you post short clips, then it’s a no-brainer on what you should keep doing.
Research as Best You Can:
If you’re overestimating your experience or expertise and downvaluing the role of research in your content, then it’s probable that you, 7 out of 10 times, will publish content that’s not applicable in the present.
The importance of research when producing content is that it makes it more reliable or trustworthy, which users can easily believe.
Therefore, when producing your thought leadership content, ensure it’s well-researched.
Draft It With Experts and Expertise:
We have already discussed who are the creators of thought leadership content. Thus, when you start working on a topic, ensure you take guidance from that field’s experts. Or learn more about that area from an established platform.
For instance, Neil Patel or Backlinko are one of the best people and places on the internet to learn more about SEO.
Make It Interactive:
Nobody likes monotonous content!
While designing your content, it is crucial that you make it interactive and immersive for the readers because if it doesn’t evoke a sense of connection in their minds, it is highly possible that they won’t come back for your content.
One way to make your content fun to read is to let your audience know its importance. Frequently, include polls, personalized interactions, infographics, etc., to let them know their opinion matters.
Review and Edit, Edit, and Then Publish
This can’t be ignored in any condition. By reviewing content you’ve already drafted, you get a better insight into where to improve it.
And by improving, it doesn’t mean you add more copy. Instead, you take out the gibberish from the golden.
Filter that would definitely help the user in every way.
Finally, Don’t Forget to Promote It:
After reviewing, editing and publishing the content, ensure you promote it on different platforms on the internet.
And by different, we mean the social media platforms that can bridge huge traffic, shares, and mentions. Thought leadership content shouldn’t only be get published on the website. Instead, it should do its job wherever it can.
You can utilize Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Gab, Mastodon, and many other great platforms users use these days.
Review Thought Leadership Content Performance and Repeat the Cycle
After publishing and promoting, it’s time to see the performance. Because without it, we might not know which content is performing better and where we should focus more.
Ensure you regularly see their performance reports to make the most out of your thought leadership content. And based on those reports, make necessary changes or implement something new to improve the content you publish in the future.
This will surely help you publish something unique that would engage the readers immensely.
The Bottom Line: Focus on Quality than Quantity and No. of Backlinks
The bottom line is that thought leadership is one of the most effective ways you can use to build your brand.
Not only is it cost-effective since there are no huge costs required to share your expertise on your website or social media, but it is also a great medium for you and your audience to connect more closely.
When rightly done, thought leadership can make your brand identity memorable in customers’ eyes for a longer period than any other content marketing strategy.
Furthermore, you shouldn’t focus on the no. of backlinks or the quantity of content you publish. Rather, produce unique and quality content, which definitely helps the users. On the internet, you may find information explaining that backlinks help you rank and more words on that. But, through our experience, we can say that if it’s a quality, then it will rank and provide value regardless of how many platforms share it.
Don’t buy yourself into that idea of getting more and more backlinks. Instead, focus on building something worth reading. And if you need any help with that, StanzaGo experts are here to help you make the most of your content marketing.
Please, reach out to us and learn more about how we can help you without killing your budget.
