“Thought leadership” has become one of those phrases that pops up in most PR strategy meetings. Businesses want to be thought leaders, PR specialists promise to build authority via thought leadership activity and the media is full of them.
But publishing an article with your managing director’s name at the top doesn’t automatically make it thought leadership. If the same article could have been published by five of your competitors with little more than a logo change, there’s a problem.
Good thought leadership should leave people with something they didn’t know before, or a different way of looking at a problem.
Having expertise isn’t the same as sharing it
Most specialist B2B businesses have huge amounts of expertise within them.
Team members have often spent years working in their industries. They’ve seen markets change, solved difficult customer problems and built a detailed understanding of what works and what doesn’t. But when it comes to communicating that expertise in the media or via social channels, that expertise can become strangely diluted.
We see phrases like “businesses need to embrace innovation” or “sustainability has never been more important”. They’re difficult to disagree with. They’re also unlikely to tell your audience anything useful.
Strong thought leadership takes the knowledge already inside a business and turns it into a clear, relevant point of view.
Have an opinion
Sharing a real opinion is typically where businesses get nervous. It can mean saying something that not everyone agrees with. For organisations accustomed to carefully approved corporate communications, that can feel uncomfortable.
Don’t be controversial for the sake of a headline.
But don’t forget that there is a big difference between being deliberately provocative and having a well-informed position on an issue your business understands.
Perhaps your industry is approaching a problem in the wrong way or maybe a piece of regulation will have an unintended consequence nobody is discussing. Ultimately, your customer data might challenge a widely held assumption which would make a great, informative opinion piece.
Start with what your audience cares about
Thought leadership should always begin with thinking about your audience and how you want to influence them, rather than what the brand wants to say.
Ask questions about your audience, such as:
- What is making their job harder?
- Which decisions are they struggling with?
- What is changing within their market?
- What are they searching for advice about?
- What do they not understand but need to?
Then consider where your expertise can genuinely help.
For a manufacturer, that could mean helping customers navigate new regulation or addressing a persistent productivity problem. Or for a business operating in the built environment, it might be having useful experience around retrofit, building safety or skills.
The subject will be different for every organisation, but the principle should always be saying something useful to the people you’re trying to reach.
Evidence makes an opinion stronger
Original research, customer insight and business data can give thought leadership substance and create stories that belong to your brand.
You don’t necessarily need a huge research project either.
Your team are such a strong source of evidence. For example, sales teams often hold useful insight into changing customer priorities, technical teams can identify recurring problems with products and your own business data may reveal an interesting shift in demand.
Handled properly, those insights can provide evidence for a bigger industry argument and give journalists something concrete and unique to work with.
Your experts shouldn’t sound like your marketing department
We’ve all seen it: a technical expert gives an interesting, detailed opinion. It then goes through several rounds of editing and approval and by the time it’s published, every distinctive phrase has disappeared and the person supposedly speaking sounds exactly like the corporate website.
Thought leadership should still sound like a person. That doesn’t mean publishing unfiltered opinions or abandoning brand guidelines, it just means retaining enough personality and expertise for the audience to know that there is a knowledgeable human behind the words.
Good PR consultancy helps to find that balance: challenging spokespeople, identifying the strongest argument and turning technical knowledge into content people actually want to read.
Good thought leadership builds more than awareness
Thought leadership gives journalists a reason to come back to you for comment. It helps potential customers understand your expertise before they’ve even picked up the phone. It supports recruitment, strengthens credibility and gives your sales team useful conversations to have with prospects.
That’s why the best thought leadership isn’t treated as a marketing exercise, but as part of a wider communications strategy.
One good idea can travel
A genuinely strong idea can create opportunities across earned, owned and social channels. It might lead to a contributed article in an industry publication, journalist commentary, a discussion on LinkedIn or conversations with customers.
When you’re building recognition around the subjects you want your business to be known for, thought leadership starts to become commercially valuable too.
So, are you leading the conversation?
There is already more content online than any of us could possibly consume, and AI is making it easier to produce even more of it. So, adding another generic opinion to the pile isn’t going to build authority.
Businesses with genuine expertise have an opportunity to identify the conversations where they can add real value, develop a clear position and be prepared to say something their audience will remember.
Have plenty of expertise but aren’t sure what to do with it? Refresh helps businesses turn specialist knowledge into powerful thought leadership and PR campaigns that get the right people listening. Get in touch with our team to start the conversation.