Take the long way to produce thought leadership content

Are you on the hunt for a clear and practical thought leadership content guide and after reading many blogs, your mind is unable to come up with a concrete definition?

Can we guess? It’s not that we’re psychic, it’s that we know that place because we’ve been there too. It was an effort from our entire team, as it was a huge challenge to reach common ground.

We were always getting confused between quality content , editorial content, ABM strategies, case studies. Each one had their own work to prioritize or results to achieve and even other concepts about work that simply made it harder to co-create something new and, at the same time, tailored to our brand.

Now that we’ve finally made it, we want to share with you the process that helped us arrive at our own definition. And remember, the focus here is on the process (this long and detailed path) and not the final product .

We say this because what fits Rock Content may not fit your business exactly the same way.

Keep reading and you’ll understand why!

What does thought leadership mean?

A Thought Leader brand is guatemala phone number list one that recognizes its individuality and from this perception creates original content with valuable knowledge for its audience .

This means standing out through a strong, almost personal perspective on reality, a vision that is at the core of the narrative and that represents the brand.

This insight generates specific opinions and points of view (knowledge) that are unique. If that is valuable to the audience and the market itself, then your brand becomes a pioneer, an authority, a thought leader.

We came to this conclusion after reading a lot on the topic, but also by combining it with brand building lessons (many thanks to Giuseppe Caltabiano) and this spectacular Jam Session we had with him and Andy Raskin , on strategic storytelling: it was truly transformational .

With that in mind, it is now easier to understand the role of content within this completely new concept.

What is thought leadership content?

Thought cmo and data marketing study the key is in the data Leadership content is used by brands in strategies that share valuable knowledge (again: a product of the brand’s individuality ) with the world.

Our own case study on how to generate leads without using paid ads is thought leadership content.

It speaks to our own experience, is data-driven, and supports our vision that Content Experience is the go-to strategy for generating sustainable growth – a view we have had since day one and have always applied to our business.

In order for the idea to gain traction and attention, we must make an effort to promote it and create memories related to it over time, as part of a long-term strategy, just as brand building should be, otherwise it will just be an activation piece.

In this way, each and every piece of thought leadership content should have a plan for its promotion and we should give it a reasonable time frame. A good starting point for larger projects is periodic releases.

We did this for many years for our Portuguese and Spanish speaking audiences by publishing comprehensive research on Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, Freelance Work and even with our magazine Rock Content.

This regular feature, combined with quality content and data, kept people engaged and excited about future releases. It works like magic, but it takes time and a lot of commitment.

This excellent LinkedIn article on thought leadership content uses Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report as an example . And it’s very hard to find someone in this industry who has never seen or heard of it before.

Based on this definition, thought leadership content cannot be defined as “a type of content” because we cannot limit it to its shape or size.

What is the purpose of thought leadership content?

As we’ve already said, brands afb directory typically create thought leadership content with brand building in mind. This is the most common path, as the idea is to create memorable pieces that help your brand grow.

When not promoted properly and without attention to creating something memorable, it will likely become another activation piece.

At Rock Content, we choose the first path: focusing on brand building. But it doesn’t mean that the piece can’t have activation elements, it’s just not the main focus.

This will impact the metrics we use, focusing more on traffic, mentions, etc. rather than conversion numbers.

How to define agendas?

In order to research topics to create our agenda, we did the following:

• We start with our brand narrative (this is our guiding star, it tells a lot about us and our way of seeing things, it shows Rock Content’s mindset and perspective on reality);
• We aligned it with product launches, ABM strategies, and other initiatives that could benefit from thought leadership content and were directly related to our brand and business goals;
• Once we understood our audience’s concerns, we visited other sites that spoke to their interests.

When choosing a topic, there are several approaches you can take that will help you extract the juice, the essence, and after some serious brainstorming (guided by the topics mentioned above), you will have created something valuable and not something copied from a bunch of other sites.

A good approach is:

Start with a small question or a specific event, analyze it and take it to a bigger picture. This can be done by thinking about what the essence/cause of that event is . For example, the fact that Facebook has changed its privacy policies is a sign that X problem is happening. Its impacts will reach the industry because…

With this way of thinking and analyzing a situation, you can go back and do a causal analysis (diagnostic analysis) or go ahead and do a predictive analysis.

Typically, a predictive analysis first requires a diagnostic analysis, but you can choose what your approach will be for that exact content.

This approach will work very well when producing different types of content, such as:

• opinion articles;
• market analysis;
• case studies.

You can also look into other analytical or creative/critical thinking techniques that help you bring unique ideas to life.