Power Up Your Thought Leadership

Despite the pandemic boosting the amount of content being published by organisations and business leaders, true thought leadership is a rarity these days. As the name suggests, there is a need for thought leadership to demonstrate informed and insightful views that offer a unique perspective, on topics where the author can demonstrate a level of authority. However, due to the acute commercial pressures that brands have faced over the last two years, courtesy of the Covid lockdowns, the line between insightful thought leadership and promotional messages has become blurred.

And while, within a PR and marketing perspective, massively increasing thought leadership content output can be hugely beneficial for a brand, it needs to be strategically led. It has come to a point now where, with the over/misuse of the ‘thought leader’ title, it more often denotes promotion masquerading as insight.

Brands simply pushing out content for the sake of staying relevant has resulted in an oversaturation of content. This now means that when true thought leaders give their perspective, it can get lost in a sea of similarly titled pieces consisting of familiar/commonplace and commercially driven content. The issue presenting itself is that (due to a more urgent focus on conversion of sales) pieces have become more focussed on endorsing one’s own products and services and elevating the profile of the author. For true thought leadership, there’s a need to understand one’s audience and offer real, tangible value and/or actionable advice. The objective should be to become a source of knowledge and resource, which will in turn act as its own organic PR and marketing activity.

When done right, thought leadership can play a powerful role in brand positioning and can shape how audiences view the author’s authority and capabilities. In fact, according to a recent Edelman-LinkedIn study , 60% of respondents indicated that a poorly received piece of thought leadership would be enough to stop them from following or engaging online with organisations/leaders. More pressing though, from the same study, 29% stated that they had already decided against working with an organisation after reading thought leadership content that they considered poor. And what’s particularly telling from this study is that business decision makers judged 30% of thought leadership content in circulation as mediocre or very poor.

This could be down to the fact that the objectives for much of the more promotional content pushed out tends to be pretty transparent. Audiences can usually tell whether an organisation is sharing new opinions and views in a way that provides real value with authenticity and candour, or whether they’re commercially driven.

So, as Forbes advise, when it comes to thought leadership, often the best approach is to “be brief, be smart, be gone”.