The complete guide to thought leadership

Chapter 1 – How to become a successful thought leader

There are four elements to consider in thought leadership:

• Innovation – presenting a fresh perspective
• Education – informing your readers
• Credibility – supporting your narrative with evidence
• Visibility – making your content accessible and noticeable

1. Innovation

Modern thought leadership doesn’t merely scrape the surface or share known information. Instead, it is content which dives deeper and further, building on knowledge and expertise to produce innovative ideas. It addresses the big questions on the minds of your target audience and the biggest trends and influences in your market. Thought leadership is the product of individuals or companies who are committed to a deeper understanding of their market and therefore create insightful analysis and content.

By enlisting both experience and passion, thought leaders look for unique perspectives with which to view these topics. Although uniqueness is important in thought leadership, what is even higher on the priority list is having the most informative answer, because ultimately thought leadership is a method of informing.

2. Education

Thought leadership is a product of those wanting to educate and engage with their customers in a meaningful way. You achieve this by consistently sharing high-quality content openly. The end goal of thought leadership is not to generate leads or immediate sales. Instead, the objective is to achieve a high level of engagement from your audience. Any other beneficial outcomes are a welcome bonus rather than a given. In this way, an organisation views thought leadership as the door to invite customers, competitors, or the general community in, so they can contribute to the conversation.

It is a means of educating and influencing by sharing knowledge. This relationship, in which the audience benefits at no cost to themselves, builds trust between them and you as the thought leader. For this reason, you should never use it purely for self-promotion, which will not only lose the audience’s interest but also erode the trust you’ve worked so hard to build.

3. Credibility

Thought leadership is content which influences and creates change. Therefore, it is important that it’s based on credible information. Although experts can of course have expert opinions, to be effective it must be backed up with data and underpinned by facts. This is where thought leadership research comes into play.

4. Visibility

To reach new audiences and become thought leadership, content requires visibility.

To increase your visibility, make sure you distribute your content strategically using different platforms and formats, then don’t be afraid to repurpose it to let the message sink in (see our section on ‘What forms can thought leadership take?’ or ‘Distributing your thought leadership content’).

Regular, consistent thought leadership content will in turn increase your visibility as the thought leader and quickly accelerate your influence, positioning you as someone your audience can rely on and making it more likely for them to share your content with others.

Why engage in thought leadership?

As brands (and thought leaders) eagerly fight for attention in an incredibly competitive and saturated digital space, the advantages of being a recognised thought leader have never been clearer:

To build trust between your company and its audience

Customers are going to trust companies who can explain how to solve their problems clearly. And they are going to trust individuals who work in these companies who share consistently and without asking for anything in return. By producing thought leadership pieces that show you know your market, audience, and the challenges being faced, but also demonstrate an advanced thinking on these topics, you can build trust in your audiences.

To build brand strength, visibility, reputation

Not only does being knowledgeable increase trust, but it looks good too! If a company or individual is producing thought leadership, showing they are ahead of the game and aware of what is going on around them, it shines a positive light on the organisation. Being part of the conversation and becoming more visible means your audience will get to know you – things feel more relatable, more accessible and more social, which is good news for your brand’s reputation and affinity.

To provide power, status, and authority

Of course, being a leader in your field instinctively puts you in a position of authority. When others seek you out for knowledge, expertise, and insight, they also see you as a persuasive figure and follow you in decision-making situations. In a B2B setting, people view producing thought leadership as the pinnacle of authority.

To provide opportunities

Becoming a thought leader opens a world of opportunities, such as:

• Reaching new audiences and growing current ones
• Building relationships with other leaders in their fields/in your field
• Exposure and access to people who can propel or develop new ideas
• Demand generation, sales and partnerships – sparking new conversations or strengthening existing relationships.

What forms can thought leadership take?

Thought leadership can take many forms. It can be written or spoken, online or offline, long or short, independent or collaborative – the list goes on. But the main premises remain; it is informative, it is credible, and it offers insight or innovation from an expert.

Generally, a thought leader should use different types of thought leadership and strategically choose their platform:

Who is a thought leader, and what do they do?

Anyone can become a thought leader providing that they consistently deliver great content that:

• Inspires people/future generations
• Showcases innovative ideas
• Turns ideas into reality
• Leads the thinking of their field of expertise
• Creates revolutionary advances in their industry/influence the development of their discipline
• Creates foundations for others to build on

Thought leadership content can come from anywhere, but a popular option is to conduct primary or secondary research to inform it.

Keep scrolling down to Chapter 2, “Enhancing thought leadership with market research”, to find out more.

Tips for an effective thought leadership strategy

In order to become a thought leader and create great thought leadership content, you should always have a strategy that allows you to stay focused and effective.

1. Identify your audience and know your topics

Know your audience – define who you want to speak to, educate and influence, then identify the challenges they face. Even though everyone can access thought leadership, you should always write each piece of content for a specific audience.

Identify topics – identify the talking points in your industry and what your audience wants to hear more about.

Understanding who you need to speak to and what they want to hear about will also help you determine how you can reach them (i.e. how/where to distribute your content and which channels are more appropriate).

2. Write down your goals 

Start at the destination and think about the story you want to tell – decide what headlines or angles you would like to make and let that lead the way backwards as to what you need to research, or what questions you need to ask and who you need to ask them to.

From here, define the goals you want to reach from your thought leadership strategy.

3. Do your research

Research should be a critical part of any thought leadership strategy, to inform your approach and help you to successfully deploy your strategy. Here’s how you can do it:

• Collect data, information and existing thought leadership – look at relevant news articles, research papers as well as any other accessible data sources to get an idea of important themes and topics. Then, look at what you have already done to ensure consistency and see what needs updating to fit in with your new strategy. 
• Use a third party – by conducting primary market research with a third party, you can ask your audience the questions you don’t know the answers to. This approach generates data and insights you didn’t know existed, providing inspiration and feeding your content pipeline for months on-end while ensuring your findings are credible and validated.

Read chapter 2 to find out how you can inform and enhance your thought leadership strategy with market research”.

4. Develop your strategy 

• After you’ve conducted the research, go back to your initial goals and decide which areas you will communicate about and the unique angles you will take on those topics.
• Choose where to distribute your thought leadership content – where does your audience look to for inspiration and information?  If you don’t already know this, make sure to incorporate some questions in the previous phase (primary research) to find out!

For example, if you want to reach specific B2B audiences, then niche outlets related to your specific industry may be the way to go.

Bonus tip – ensure harmony in your strategy:

Ensure that you can bring together all your thought leadership pieces in a way that is harmonious. Lots of content that is not harmonious will not be influential.

Finally, your thought leadership strategy should always align with your wider marketing and comms strategy, as well as with the overall business strategy

5. Tell the story

Writing your thought leadership content:

Choose one or two core points related to your goals/strategy and centre your story around these points. On top of this your content should be:

• Informative and insightful– incorporate opinions and recommendations as well as facts.
• Providing a unique point of view – make points which add something to the conversation, or something the media might find interesting.

Read more about storytelling in our blog.

Distributing your thought leadership content:

• Be present – keep the stream of thought leadership content consistent over time, as consistency will create a presence that cannot go unnoticed.
• Be diverse – make sure to mix it up regarding the content itself so your thought leadership addresses various issues your audience faces, and keep it varied with the formats you use to reach a wider audience. For example, this can include regular blogs and articles, posts on social media (using different formats such as text, video, carousel, image etc.), responding/engaging with other people’s comments, answering expert industry questions (e.g. ‘LinkedIn Experts’), speaking at industry specific webinars and conferences, sharing your insights and advice.
• Be visible – the first step to achieve this is to use diverse formats. That said, you should also publish your content through a few selected main channels that align with your target audience, then reinforce the primary content by using multiple other platforms to drive traffic back your website and social media pages.
• Be both planned, and reactive – regular, planned thought leadership will create the consistency and trust that you are after. Reactive thought leadership is also important – you need to be on top of the big stories and trends, and make sure you have budget and time buffers to allow you to make the most of this and be seen as one of the top voices in your field.

6. Repurpose, recycle, make it last 

Although you might want to create one hero piece with the information gathered from all your hard work, that doesn’t mean your thought leadership on this area stops there.

Instead, you should prolong your presence and maintain momentum with auxiliary pieces such as with small blogs, infographics, social posts, or bylined articles. Use every opportunity to recycle and repurpose your thought leadership content in creative ways, always ensuring there’s a clear objective for every piece within your strategy.

And if you want to know more about how you can leverage market research to produce year-long thought leadership campaigns, make sure to read our tutorial.

So, why exactly should you conduct research for content & thought leadership?

To be an expert in your area 

Content is only thought leadership if you can establish authority by showing expertise on the topic. Expertise comes from in-depth knowledge. And while in-depth knowledge comes from experience, it can also come from research and having insights that others may not have.

To guide topics and angles to take

You want to communicate about topics important to your audience and you want to take a unique perspective. But how do you know what is important to your audience? How do you know what is fresh and what has been done before?

By doing research, you can answer the questions such as:

• What challenges are your audience facing?
• What do people want answers to?
• What are they interested in?
• What hasn’t been looked at before?
• How are opinions changing?
• Who are your current/potential customers?

To flesh out content with cold hard facts

Being an expert in your industry looks good. But an expert’s opinion backed up by cold, hard facts looks even better. If a piece of thought leadership incorporates statistics and data in support of its aim, it:

• Improves credibility – research looks more reliable and trustworthy, especially if done with a third party.

• Increases chances of gaining media coverage – including facts and figures make content more relatable and therefore more engaging.

• Adds longevity – facts and figures can be cited over and over. This means a piece of thought leadership content can be repurposed for months on end, making it less likely to become outdated and helping you get more mileage over time.

How can you conduct market research for thought leadership?

Building the right research approach for your thought leadership

Quantitative research

Quantitative research collects and analyses structured, numerical data via surveys and questionnaires, to:

• Uncover facts and understand important trends in your market
• Measure opinions, attitudes and behaviours
• Validate your theories, or test a hypothesis
• Produce statistics to influence, substantiating (or refuting) claims
• Reveal insights for editorial angles and produce compelling headlines

Qualitative research

In contrast to the numerical focus of quantitative research, qualitative research is an in-depth, flexible and interpretive approach focused on understanding human experiences, behaviours, perspectives, and opinions. Applied to thought leadership, its purpose is to:

• Gain more in-depth insights
• Gather anecdotal stories and information
• Produce quotes

For better results, we recommend deploying both qualitative and quantitative research to strengthen your findings. There are three main ways you can do this:

1. By conducting qualitative research before doing a quantitative survey (exploratory research) so that you can incorporate all of your findings into your questionnaire design.
2. By running a quantitative survey first and then conducting qualitative research (explanatory research) to get context on your research and validate your findings.
3. By running both qualitative and quantitative research at the same time.  This is most useful when timeline don’t allow for a one-after-the-other approach.

Other techniques include:

• Desk research – to understand your competitive landscape, conduct early explorations of topics and shape your overall thought leadership program, or to provide real-world context supporting the auxiliary research
• Benchmarks – engage your audience by letting them know how they measure against their peers
• Indexing/ranking – create insights that capture headlines and promote media coverage
• Tracking / barometers – asking the same questions over time can show how attitudes, behaviours and perceptions are changing, giving you a unique insight

Collaboration between thought leaders and market researchers

The relationship between thought leadership and market research can be seen as symbiotic.

When conducting market research, it is useful to have input of thought leaders to the research and findings. In collaboration with market researchers, experts in their industry can guide the angles to take, the type of research to conduct, and the questions to ask. They also add valuable inputs to the findings of that research and the reports made on that industry based on these findings.

Market research allows thought leaders to shed light on who your audience is, what they like and the challenges they face.

Conclusion

“Without data you’re just another person with an opinion” – W. Edwards Deming.

Remember, the true power of thought leadership lies in its ability to build credibility and trust over time.

At Sapio Research, we’re experts in research for thought leadership and content marketing.  We produce compelling data to help you back-up an opinion, build authority, and grow your profile.

Curious how data and insight can take your thought leadership to the next level? Book in a call to discuss your challenge!