If you want to be a thought leader on the internet, there are only two things you need to do really well…
Assuming that you’re already an expert of some sort — and according to Seth Godin we are ALL experts at something — the two main things you need to do are:
Deepen your expertise. In other words, get smarter by effectively managing the content you need to become even more of an expert at what you do…
Document your expertise. Simply put, let people know you know what you know…
Deepening and documenting your expertise may actually facilitate thought leadership by using a few “good, fast, and cheap” tools to get you a share of voice which may get you a share of mind which ultimately could get you a share of market…
Monday is the day I normally post on my most important topic; blogging and content marketing for ‘thought leadership‘ marketing. As I was posting this morning, I thought it might be a good idea to do a screencast on the ‘mechanics’ of curation. You can see that post here…
Doing the screencast, there were so many times I referred to other aspects of curation that I decided to round them all up in the following Storify story so here it is in one place; almost everything I think I know about the artful curation of content using Twitter and Windows Live Writer along with a host of other tools…
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Every screencast I’ve ever done on the mechanics of curation!
Every screencast I’ve ever done on the mechanics of curation!
…as much as I am an internet mechanic who helps thinkers become thought leaders! Here’s what I mean…
Yes, I do WordPress websites buy my emphasis is not on high maintenance sites that look pretty and deliver no traffic. I’d rather you think of me as an internet mechanic that can keep your content marketing engine running smoothly. Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to you and your organization…
…or how to be a thought leader in your industry without breaking the bank! Prepare yourself — I’ve been thinking about this one all weekend…
I had a chance to have lunch last week with Dana VanDen Heuvel, an internationally known ‘thought leadership‘ marketing expert who happens to live in nearby Green Bay. Dana and I travel in similar circles although his focus is more on strategy while mine is more on the mechanics of thought leadership marketing. Back in November I was trying to get my mind around content marketing and thought leadership and I asked Dana whether or not the two were synonymous. Either he didn’t have time to answer my question or you wanted me to figure it out on my own; in either case eventually I concluded that content marketing is a means toward thought leadership but the two are not the same. You can use content marketing to create share of voice on the internet but it’s the quality of your ideas that determine whether or not you ultimately become a leader by getting share of mind and share of market.
To me, thought leadership is the process of becoming and being known as the expert. In my oversimplified view of things that requires two activities; you have to deepen your expertise and detail your expertise or, get smarter and show people you’re getting smarter. IF you do that well they may actually follow your ideas…
Are you a wannabe thought leader? You can test the waters in this area for $17 per year using WordPress.com as your thought leadership marketing hub. The $17 will buy you a domain and the ability to map that domain to your free WordPress site. Then, all you gotta do is publish something…
Deepening your expertise
In in order to deepen your expertise I think there are three things you need to do
Use Gmail to manage your just-in-time information
Use Google reader to manager just-in-case information
Use Gist to track other thought leaders
Detailing your expertise
In order to demonstrate to people that you are an expert
Either create or curate your ideas in WordPress.com
Share the content you create or curate on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Paper.li, Twylah and MailChimp
Engage in conversations using HootSuite and/or NutshellMail
David Kanigan of davidkanigan.com is an example of someone who had done exactly what I recommended on his WordPress.com blog…
New to blogging — only 6 months in — and he is already rocking his site! His Alexa rank is currently 61,500 in the US — testimony to both the power of WordPress.com and his frequent posting [too bad that due to his work in the financial industry he can’t engage in business blogging]…
You could be a David, too, and take on the Goliath’s in your industry using the tools and tactics I mentioned above. Here are links to every tool and a few more…
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imho, here are the best tools for content management and marketing for thought leadership. All free, all cross platform…
imho, here are the best tools for content management and marketing for thought leadership. All free, all cross platform…
Now, either you look at this and say “Ah, that makes perfect sense — why didn’t I think of that before?” for you look at this and say “What a fustercluck!?!?!?” In either case, I may be a resource for you. Either I can help you simplify your existing thought leadership marketing workflow or I can set it all up for you and teach you how to run it. It’s your call, but if you’re looking to establish a thought leadership position you have just run out of excuses…
I had an interesting opportunity to sit on a panel of ‘experts’ yesterday and advise website development students on how they should develop a portfolio of their work and present it to prospective hiring authorities or clients. To be honest, I don’t know how I got on the panel; the others were truly experts — I’m just a lowly WordPress developer who creates websites out of necessity because of their role in ‘thought leadership’ marketing…
As I thought about it in hindsight there’s an important piece of advice that I left out but it’s a good one for all of us. When it comes to displaying a ‘portfolio’ [btw, to me a blog is a kind of a portfolio of thoughts so bear with me] of your life’s work I think there are only two activities that matter:
Deepening your understanding of your craft [or continuous ongoing education]
Letting people know you have deepened your understanding of your craft
I think all of ‘thought leadership’ marketing can be summed up in this statement: become and be known as the expert.
In order to do this you need a system that will help you effectively manage the content you need to master in order to become an actual expert. I wrote just last week about the tools I use to accomplish this. They are:
As it applies to this particular topic, the two most important tools in this process are Google Reader and Gist. Google Reader allows me to create a virtual newspaper of the sites and searches that I need to track in order to stay on top of my craft — my areas of ‘subject matter expertise’. Gist is like Google Reader but for people and companies. In an easy to use dashboard I can see everything that someone has produced on the internet for the past 24 hours so I never miss a thing that someone who is important to me has said. The two go together like peanut butter and chocolate to help me become more of an expert…
Getting smarter is only half the battle — letting the world know you have gotten smarter is the other part. Blogging and social media are perfect for this! As Chris Brogan said in Trust Agents “As you now know, if you have no Google results, in a sense you don’t exist.” Active blogging on your area of expertise is a great way to let the world know you are an expert. Does it work? Well, are you reading this? Sharing your ideas in a public forum like the internet gets you a share of the voice which may get you share of mind if your ideas are good enough and may eventually lead to share of market. My tools of choice for getting found are:
WordPress
Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook
Google+
The order here is intentional and they tools are stack ranked in order of priority. Master one and move on to the next.I’ve written often about homebases and outposts — blogging should be the first priority because it is OWNED media — everything else should be evaluated based on the audience you’re trying to reach. Here in Northeast Wisconsin, LinkedIn rules — things might be different in your world…
Like content strategy, thought leadership is a relatively new option for companies that want to improve their visibility and connections online in ways that prompt sales leads to come to you.
But thought leadership is, much more than content strategy, subject to the Bill Joy rule, which says that most smart people in the world don’t work for your company.
How, then, do you possibly develop a thought leadership strategy?
If you get your thought leadership strategy right, customers will see you as a go-to source of expertise, your new products or incremental improvements will find easier acceptance, you’ll stand a good chance of bolstering product price (which is critical in many industries where commoditization is at work), and you’ll attract talent more easily.
Inevitably, some companies will get it wrong, so in this article I will outline why that happens, how to avoid the major mistakes companies make, and what to do to excel in thought leadership.
I encourage you to go to the source and drill down on Haydn’s strategic recommendations. When you’re looking for the tools and tactics to make it work, come right back here and I’ll get you started! Comment or ‘connect’ to discuss how this applies to you and your organization…
An editorial focus and calendar that reinforces it may be the single most important thing you can do if you want to blog for thought leadership. In his ground breaking book ‘Brand Stand’, Craig Badings writes…
The more research you do on the topic [on which you choose to focus] the more you will understand the space you want to enter. Ask yourself: Who is already playing in that space? What they are saying? Are they achieving cut through? Does our company have substantially more to say or something unique to offer in that space or not? Your deciding question should be ‘Can we own that space?’ If you cannot own a space my advice would be do not go there.
If you have decided you can ‘own the space’, here is an overly simplified formula for achieving alignment in your content marketing strategy and getting ownership:
Brainstorm around your unique offerings in the space. Ask yourself “what are the problems my clients expect me to solve and how do I solve them in a unique way?”
Use Google’s keyword tools to research keywords around those unique offerings
Track trusted sites and keyword searches in Google Reader; read primarily those things that deepen your expertise in your unique offerings without losing the context of the whole space
Only curate or create content on your blog related to that unique offering
Leverage social media, etc. to amplify your content
Connect effectively with the readers you draw in
If you do those things in that order, you will have alignment around solving your customer problems and you will be found when people are looking for your solution[s]. In order to effectively cover my space, for example, which is content management and marketing for thought leadership, I track the topics content management, content marketing and ‘thought leadership’ marketing as well as the following tools:
Blogging
Facebook
Google+
LinkedIn
Twitter
and supporting tools like Google Reader, Shareaholic, Storify, etc.
Thursday, for example, is Twitter day. Every Thursday I reflect on Twitter as part of a balanced content management and marketing for thought leadership strategy and ‘storify’ a summary of the best articles from the previous week. This tactical approach ‘forces’ me to not only review the best content from the previous week in Google Reader and Twitter, but be sure to cover it in my blog.
Questions? Feedback? Comment below or use the connect form. In the meantime, here’s a summary of the best of what I found in content marketing, LinkedIn and Twitter this past week…
A friend who works with in construction industry is skeptical. He’s not convinced that ‘inbound marketing’ [blogging and other social media tools] can be applied to the construction industry. I respectfully disagree! I’ve seen content management and marketing for thought leadership applied to everything from Agriculture to Yoga and I believe it will work in the construction industry as well. Why?
Here are some of my beliefs:
Most companies have great stories and content — they just don’t use it as well as they could…
At the core, all great marketing is great storytelling
At the end of the day, every business is a people business
First, though what is this ‘thought leadership’? A simple definition might be a public display of expertise that can be easily found by people who are searching for it. How does a brand accomplish this? Though effective content management and content marketing. Because of my core beliefs, I think any company — even a construction company — can use the content they have or can create to tell great stories that attract people to their brand.
In his thought leadership classic ‘Brand Stand‘, Craig Badings tells the story of Dick Dusseldorp, a thought leader in the Australian construction industry before the phrase ‘thought leader’ was cool…
During the 1970s and 1980s, when union action on most construction sites in Sydney were crippling the construction industry, the sites on which Lend Lease was building suffered no such misfortune. This was because Dusseldorp’s philosophy was to create a community of interest between Lend Lease’s key stakeholders. When other companies around him were banging heads with the unions, with resultant long delays and cost overruns on projects, Dusseldorp was sitting down with the workers and unions and discussing their issues. The results were agreements, jointly committed to by workers and management, and a share in the resulting rewards for buildings completed on time. He was a master at getting people to transcend their traditional conflicts and work towards mutually beneficial goals.
How did he do it? In part he used content management and content marketing along with other communication skills to position his firm at the thought leadership center of his industry in his country. Speaking of Dusseldorp’s organization Lend Lease, Badings says…
It launched a website… along with a four-part DVD series, using a former TV journalist to interview a number of independent third parties about their views on the future workspace and its impacts across business, design, people and location. As a result, Lend Lease reached those who made decisions about office space and helped stimulate and frame the debate around the impacts and implications of future work environments in Australia. Through the series, the company engaged communities linked to its industry and positioned itself at the centre of this debate. It is the logical place to be as a leader in the construction industry, but Lend Lease has done it in a way that doesn’t push the company’s point of view. It took the approach that it would rather invite leading experts in this field across various disciplines to participate in and frame the discus-sion.
Joy Davis, CSI, CCPR, of CSI in Albuquerque, says…
“In many ways, construction is a relationship-driven business, and at the root of every great relationship is trust. No single person can know everything about construction, so we need trustworthy experts we can turn to who can help us achieve our goals. Thought Leadership is a strategy based on the idea that you can be your clients’ preferred expert – a person they trust, and whom they think of first when they have a question, or a new project.” Source: Thought Leadership and Social Media in the Workplace
Every business — not just construction — is a people business, but because of the critical nature of construction projects trust may be even more important. How can that trust be most effectively engendered? Content management and marketing for thought leadership may be an answer that the construction industry has overlooked! Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to you and your organization…
This morning I had to travel 225 miles from Warrenville, IL to Algoma, WI at 5 in the morning. Needless to say it cut into my blogging time. I thought I’d use it as an opportunity to test SoundCloud for audio blogging. This was dictated to SoundCloud on my Google Nexus S while driving in the Chicago suburbs. Let me know what you think about the content and the format…
Twitter has not always been a starting player in my content management and content marketing lineup — in fact, for a long time I must confess I neglected Twitter. Oddly enough, it was Google’s changes to Google Reader and privacy issues with Facebook and Google that made me rethink my content management and content marketing strategy…
When I started to think about the fact that Twitter is pretty much ubiquitous — one of my favorite college words for ‘everywhere’ — I rethought Twitter’s role in my content management and content marketing world. I had a big of a revelation a couple of weeks ago as to how Twitter could play a central role in my content marketing strategy — you can view it here. Now I’ve gone from neglecting Twitter — thinking of it just as one of the bases I have to cover — to giving it a starring role!
I used Twitter in concert with Shareaholic — one of my ‘must use’ tools — in fact, I call it the ‘Swiss Army knife’ of social media. Thanks to Shareaholic I’m always ready to send any good thing I stumble upon to my Twitter account via HootSuite. Why via HootSuite? Well, there are a lot of reasons why I use HootSuite and I should go into that again sometime. In this case, though the reason is that HootSuite gives me great analytics on how my tweets are doing.
If you want to focus on Twitter for content management and content marketing like I do, try adding Shareaholic and HootSuite to your mix!
Here’s a summary of great Twitter articles I read this past week via @Storify…
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I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I summarize the top Twitter news every Thursday at this time…
I just started digging into Craig Bading’s book “Brand Stand” and it looks very promising…
There is a growing need among consumers for brand authenticity and informative content from which they can make up their own minds. Audiences are asking for and, in some cases, demanding true engagement with their brands. With the expectations and buying patterns of customers aligning more closely with their values, fertile ground is now provided for thought leadership campaigns.
Looking to sink your teeth into some good strategic thoughts for a Saturday? Chris Brogan’s got you covered…
2012 is the year where social media oversaturation hits hard. We will scale back on our participation in social networks, and we will most certainly scale back who we choose to follow as sources. This won’t be because someone is bad or good. It will be based on whether the connection with that person adds value to the stream of information we’re cultivating or not.
In determining how to deliver value and stay relevant and visible in this new landscape, I’ve written down 97 ideas to help you build a valuable platform. Note: some of this thinking comes from writing a new book with Julien Smith that isn’t out until Fall 2012. Want some up front hints? Read this post.
Go to the source if you’d like to consider all 97 ideas. Me? I like #66: “The old “ABC” from Glengarry Glen Ross was “Always Be Closing.” The new ABC is “Always Be Connecting.” Networks are what make selling easier. Your platform is part of how you network.” This is the second time ABC has come up in a couple of days and I was surprised that the person I mentioned it to was not familiar with this scene. It won Alec Baldwin an Oscar… [Warning; Not safe for work!]
For me, ABC means “Always Be Content” marketing – the connecting comes later! Chris has the ideas. I have a repeatable workflow for implementing them. Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to you and your organization…
I maintain that ‘how do I add content marketing to my plate and still get home for supper?’ is one of the most pressing issues in social media today. The pundits all say that this is the year for curation and content marketing but not a lot of experts are giving direction to thought leaders who hope to execute such a strategy effectively. In this 11 minute video I explore the use of David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done‘ principles to content marketing…
Craig Badings has put together an epic post on thought leadership trends for 2012. He starts…
I asked 12 people who I consider to be leading global commentators on thought leadership as well as a couple who have produced some amazing thought leadership programs in-house over the years to comment on four critical thought leadership questions for 2012.
In it, he quotes my friend Dana VanDen Heuvel on the topic of curation alone as a means of thought leadership marketing…
“No, I don’t think so.
“I think content curation may perhaps be a reason why critics are inveighing against thought leadership in the first place.
“Of course it is a useful way of identifying and re-branding an issue. But I think the trend will be to move towards more sophisticated thought leadership initiatives. For that to happen, a thought leader must be authentic.
“Authenticity, transparency and trust are values that will become even more important in the coming years.”
I agree with Craig, Dana and the general consensus of the article. Curation alone does not a thought leader make. It is, however, an effective means of bolstering a thought leadership position. “Content curation as a blogging model is widely misunderstood by most bloggers and marketers.” says curation enthusiast Jack Humphrey:
You absolutely must tie the content you curate into a post (i.e. links to different angles from different authors, bloggers, and news stories around the same topic) with original commentary. Commentary that makes sense and seeks to draw new connections, parallels, or shed new light on a topic others are writing and sharing information about.
I was recently taken to task on my curation style and I readily admin it may not be for everybody. In response I wrote this:
I always attribute content that I curate under Fair Use Guidelinesso that everyone benefits; the original author, the reader and me and I always encourage my readers to go to the source and read the original author’s entire article. I frequently use a curation post simply to share great content with my clients – my standard close of ‘Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to you and your organization…’ – is an invitation to get customized ‘value add’ that I deliver via telephone to fill windshield time as I drive across the great State of Wisconsin.
How you do it is up to you, but I strongly encourage you to consider Craig’s article before embarking on a thought leadership marketing strategy. Perhaps it would be a good idea to read his entire 4 post series? Should you decide to pursue thought leadership marketing, please connect with me so we can talk about how the ‘e1evation workflow’ can help. I’ve developed a ‘lather, rinse, repeat’ cycle of thought leadership marketing that can help take your strategy to new levels. Questions? Feedback?
Thought leadership marketing may be hitting the big time. Forrester Research just published a paper entitled Thought Leadership: The Next Wave Of Differentiation In B2B Marketing. Jeff Ernst, the author of the paper, says:
Business-to-business (B2B) marketers need to position their firms as thought leaders on the issues their buyers face. But most firms don’t have a process or framework for managing thought leadership marketing initiatives, so they push out product brochures and white papers disguised as thought leadership content.
It’s a great endorsement for thought leadership marketing. I don’t know Ernst and haven’t read the report (at $499 it’s out of my price range), but if you have a Forrester account be sure to check it out.
Ernst is pushing the new Forrester platform for thought leadership marketing, which at first blush obvious (but who am I to complain about publicity for the cause). Forrester’s IDEA Platform for Thought Leadership Marketing consists of these four steps:
Identify your target audience, their issues, and the sources of information they trust.
Develop your thought leadership platform: the ideas and content that express the company’s positions.
Engage your audience through a considered mix of digital, social, and traditional channels.
Assess the impact on your business and revise or reinvest.
One thing I see missing from these steps is a consideration of the competition from a thought leadership perspective. Like in any market, if there are already lots of folks vying for a leadership position in an area, you may want to avoid that area. You at least have to determine whether or not you can compete. It doesn’t do you much good if you have ideas and content on positions where others are clearly in the lead.
Ernst also has some good stuff to say about thought leadership marketing in his blog. In It’s Time to Take a Stand … In Your Marketing, he says:
Marketers have to realize that in the age of the customer, business buyers don’t “buy” your product; they “buy into” your approach to solving their problem. Read that last sentence again. Your products aren’t as unique as you think. In fact, in most markets, the products and services are fairly commoditized. Buyers want to do business with firms that share their outlook on the world and have philosophies on solving key problems that align with their own. Yet so many marketers only talk about their features and benefits.
What do you do about it? Establishing a position of thought leadership in your market is becoming the next arena for differentiation in B2B marketing. When done right, thought leadership marketing is a way to stand out from the competition, create interest, and earn the trust of potential buyers early in their problem-solving process.
In checking out this information I came across Forrester’s CMO and Marketing Professionals’ Community where there have been some great conversations on thought leadership marketing that you should read.
Well, enough selling for Forrester today. Keep thinking.
As I’ve gotten older, the things I see in the marketplace bother me more and more. Since there needs to be some benefit to getting older, I’d like to think that I’ve earned the right to curmudgeonhood. That said, here are a few things that I wish you’d just do differently.
You call yourself (or your firm) a thought leader. That’s just chutzpah — arrogant, self-serving, and self-defeating. First, you don’t get to make the call, your audience does. When your audience sees you refer to yourself as a thought leader they react negatively — just like they do when you say you have the best software or the best services. Why should anyone believe you? Don’t self-promote. You don’t think. Well, maybe not you personally, but you publish content with no evidence that original thinking ever went into the creation of that content. Stop with the “me-to” marketing. Thought leadership is a competitive positioning strategy. That means you need to think up something better than your competitors. And that means that you, as the marketer, have to get some folks in your organization to make the effort to actually think. You don’t focus. You (well, again, maybe not you, but certainly your boss) want to be seen as the big thought leader – the IT thought leader, or the cloud computing thought leader. Well, if you have gazillions of dollars to spend, that might work (and if you do, please give me a call). But most firms need to focus narrowly on some aspect of their business so they can legitimately position themselves as thought leaders to win that business. That takes focus, a really clear understanding of your audience information needs, and a well-thought-out thought leadership strategy. You say we should stop using the phrase thought leadership. You claim it’s become overused, meaningless, a cliché, whatever. Well, all the alternatives I’ve seen are far worse. And it’s a perfectly good phrase that’s simply misused. So let’s define it clearly so folks agree, generally, what it means and use it right. Next thing you know you’ll want to stop using the word marketing (the same criticisms apply, you know). You call your white papers thought leadership. There’s far more to thought leadership than a white paper, or even a series of white papers. If you think that publishing a few items will make you a thought leader, you will fail. You’ll have to follow this blog over the next year or two or three to see what I mean.
If you agree with me, I’d love to hear from you. Or if you’re one of the folks I’ve described above, I’d love to hear how you’re going to change. OK, if you disagree with me, you can respond as well, but you better have a good argument.
Craig Badings has put together an epic post on thought leadership trends for 2012. He starts…
Bright, shiny objects! 
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