Keep reading and you'll understand why!

[shammis606]

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 business owner database can help 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.



What does thought leadership mean?
What is thought leadership content?
What is the purpose of thought leadership content?
How to define agendas?
Common Types of Thought Leadership Content
How to present thought leadership content to the world?
How to promote your thought leadership content?
Conclusion
What does thought leadership mean?
A Thought Leader brand is 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 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.

thought leadership content
This is our truth that speaks to how we were able to succeed in staying consistent . Thought leadership content should present that vision, even when we are not talking specifically about ourselves.

Remember: our narrative is beyond us, it is about what is best for our audience and we are the ones who can help them achieve it.

While the case study is a great example, it is important to understand that thought leadership content does not stand alone .

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.

Another approach is to connect different smaller pieces of thought leadership content to the same central theme and use them as the same campaign, or even just launch the content and continue to promote it frequently.

That's also very common, but you and your team will need to be very aligned for it to be effective.

Bottom line: Thought leadership content is valuable knowledge, a product of brand individuality, and should be strategically shared with the industry.

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.

When we understood this, everything became clearer and we stopped trying to fit it into the common "labels" we were used to as content publishers.

We also defined some guidelines that are actually the essence of our strategy and that should always be present in our mind when producing and editing thought leadership content.

Our thought leadership content should answer these questions:

Is it relevant to Rock Content as a brand and aligned with our narrative?
Does it provide a relevant perspective (relevant can mean new, less common, very important for a given context)?
Is it impactful, memorable, and limited to the essentials?
Does it appeal to our audience?
Is it based on reliable data and methods?
To help you never settle for less, here's a motivational statistic: 38% of decision makers say poor thought leadership has diminished their respect and admiration for an organization . Source .

What is the purpose of thought leadership content?
As we’ve already said, brands 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.

Common Types of Thought Leadership Content
As we said, there is no exact type, but we surely found that some were easier to produce and would have a bigger impact on our market. We decided to start with these 5 different types:

Opinion articles
Case studies
Industry Analysis
Interviews
Storytelling
1. Opinion articles
Counterfactual opinions work very well in this type of content. To produce them, we need to reflect on common sense to see what is true and what is not, and find a “right way” that relates to our narrative. It is like finding the “old way” and showing “our way, the new way,” as Raskin says.

For example: growing organically was just a counterfactual opinion to the prevailing narrative (and still is) for many people.

It may also be a new approach to the same model/argument, something that has been "ignored" or simply needs more attention.

These topics can also be related to a trend or hot topic relevant to our audience, but it must have timeless value.

Authors should preferably be people from the company itself who are knowledgeable about the proposed topic.

Apart from being written by the author himself, another way of developing this category of content is through interviews. The opinion text is developed from an interview with the author.

2. Case studies
It can be a personal narrative (our own case or someone from the company) or a client's story.

The idea here is to share a story where we learned something or achieved a goal when we used an empathetic strategy, method, or mindset with our narrative.

It also needs to be empirical and show those results and really focus on the storytelling, where we have a great opportunity to connect with the reader.

3. Industry analysis
This usually begins with an in-depth analysis of a company or sector by making a diagnosis of its current state through questions such as:

Why is it successful?
Why is it failing?
What is right and what is wrong?
What will the future of this sector be like?
Like all thought leadership content, this will need to tie back in some way to our brand narrative.

We also tested that a couple of times by producing content on how a specific sector (one that was the focus of our ABM strategy) was using Content Marketing and what it meant in terms of branding for a couple of big brands in that market.

Beyond having a huge impact at the time, it also brought us many clients interested in being as successful as their competitors.

4. Interviews
This can be done by conducting full interviews (those that follow the ping-pong style), using parts of different interviews to create content or even to enrich the content and give weight to evidence from an expert on the subject.

The interview can be about the person's background, their business, something they are an expert in and can provide valuable advice on.

To interview someone, the most common ways are:

CSM or sales suggestion on who to interview.
Actively seeking Marketing interviewees.
With the transcript in hand, an editor must work on the text to make it easy to read and ready for publication, highlighting the most important parts of the text.

5. Storytelling
Storytelling is one of the best ways to create new insights that will benefit our audience. We can do this by collecting data from our own historical strategies, from clients (if possible), from the audience itself (as we did with the reports), from partners, and more.

It is important to be credible, to use methods that work and are “scientific” ( remembering the mantra: correlation does not equal causality ).

Someone who does a great job with it is Cyrus Shepard from Moz.

How to present thought leadership content to the world?
Here, we're considering the look and feel of thought leadership content pieces: their layout, title, and everything else that works to make the experience more interesting.

Design
If you have an amazing blog design that's perfect for your message, great, but don't stop there.

Thought leadership content should have custom visuals that are valuable and help highlight important concepts and information. It should also have interaction points, such as quick polls, calculators, and infographics that are able to engage the reader.

When we think about larger campaigns, such as a report, we can go even further, creating a special identity for it, which is used in each content (blog, social networks, email).

A good example is what Microsoft is doing on its “stories” page, where there are different visuals and audios and everything is personalized, they even flirt with a couple of interactions. Check it out here .


Securities
Titles should be creative, unique and provoke emotions, we must go beyond SEO titles, so revolutionize your titles, at least the H1 ones!

Think about your company's brand and add some distinctive assets to it. For us, rock is vital to our culture, so adding subtle elements of rock music can be a good way to draw attention and cause us to be associated with a nice and innovative idea . Knowing how to create creative, interesting and direct titles is essential.

How to promote your thought leadership content?
As we showed in the introduction, promotion is essential for thought leadership content. We also know that a well-performing promotion campaign depends largely on planning, time and budget.

That being said, we must follow a timeline for everything to be possible:

define the agenda for the month/quarter;
define the types of content to be produced;
establish the exact number of pieces of thought leadership content;
create guidelines for these contents;
schedule interviews or take time to plan data collection methodology*;
conduct interviews and collect this data*;
send it to the drafting stage;
map design opportunities for promotional pieces: social channels, hellobar, etc. and beyond (interactive elements, images, diagrams and more);
send it to a designer;
correct it;
go to translation stages if necessary*;
publish it;
schedule Pushnews;
Post the link on social media channels and excerpt short clips to promote on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram throughout the week;
send emails;
ask your coworkers to post it on their own LinkedIn;
share it in related communities;
promote it using paid channels if it makes sense for the content and for your business.
You can also invest in partnerships to expand that promotion.

This is a very basic plan. You should always brainstorm with your team to define new ways to refine your promotion; crazy ideas are always welcome.

Remember: create a plan to make these ideas famous! Our Rock Content magazine was, until the pandemic, printed and delivered to our community. Many people thought we were crazy to go back to printing, but it made sense and worked really well. We were innovative by being retro.

Conclusion
To test whether your thought leadership content has achieved its objective, before publishing it, ask yourself and your team:

Is this a repeat of what everyone else is saying?
Does this sound like something the CEO or founders would say (something that reflects the brands' perspective)?
One month after publication or even in the following quarter:

Do I remember that content?
When I think of an amazing thought leadership content strategy, am I confident that I can say that my company’s strategy is an inspiration? An example even for people outside of it?
If the answer is yes, you have some real thought leadership content. Congratulations, because it's no easy task.

At the beginning we said that we focused on the process and its essence, because, although we show you how we do it, this is our perspective and our definition.

We strongly urge you to use it only as a reference to create your own thoughts, definitions, questions and start testing your own long road to building a strategy.

Do you want to know how you can use all of Rock Content's experience with content marketing to grow your business? Talk to one of our consultants!