When done well, thought leadership content is an incredibly powerful asset. But most companies miss the mark.
“Thought leadership” has become a buzzword, elusive in its meaning.
The term has been overused. It’s been co-opted to describe many different types of content — much of it not actual thought leadership content.
Many people confuse any content that takes a stance or conveys an opinion to be thought leadership content. But true thought leadership is more than just having an opinion.
Although any article can contain snippets of thought leadership from the right author, a full thought leadership strategy results in more deliberate content.
Everyone wants to create thought leadership content, but pinning down how to do that can be difficult when you don’t have a solid definition.
And that’s a problem because thought leadership is perhaps the most impactful style of content marketing, particularly for smaller firms who don’t want to (or realistically can’t) compete in the search landscape in their industry.
The content marketing landscape is incredibly crowded. Your prospects are inundated with content from all sides. Winning their attention is tough.
Your opinions, experience, and insights are some of your most valuable assets. If you aren’t distilling those into clear content for your audience to consume, you are — as the kids say — dropping the bag.
And that is what thought leadership content is all about.
What is Thought Leadership, Exactly? What Is It Not?
Many companies think they are publishing “thought leadership” content when in actuality they aren’t.
Thought leadership content isn’t a type of content, in the same way that a how-to blog post, listicle, SEO article, or customer success story is a type.
Instead, thought leadership is a complete approach to content. You are describing an outcome that you would like to create.
You would like your brand — either personal or company — to be viewed as a true authority in your industry. You want your audience coming to you for relevant insights and a better understanding of your industry at large.
That’s easier said than done. And producing great content is only one piece of the puzzle. For content to be true thought leadership content, it needs to be authentic, drawn directly from your experience.
You can’t just pull up the search results pages and mash a few of the top articles together and call it “thought leadership.”
There’s no leadership there, and almost no thought.
That isn’t to say that all thought leadership content needs to be 100% original and unique. As they say — there is nothing completely new under the sun.
But it is your unique perspective and insights that can take an unoriginal idea and make it feel fresh to your readers. Thought leadership comes from you, and no one else should be able to authentically replicate the content that you create when you are doing thought leadership right. They may draw the same conclusions, but the story of how they got there should be different.
It’s that originality and personal storytelling that makes your thought leadership engine hum.
Your audience becomes your audience because they are attracted to you — your personality, your way of thinking, your experience, or your brand at large.
That’s something that every Founder wants — to cultivate a dedicated following of people that love them and the brands that they are associated with, simply for being them.
To do that, you have to publish.
Thought leadership can and ideally should come in many different formats — articles, podcasts, videos, and social media content included. Or just one of those channels.
But you have to publish.
If you don’t, that would-be audience never gets the chance to find you or become your fan.
Thought Leadership Content Is Not SEO Content
This is a common mistake that I see companies make all the time. They want to produce true thought leadership content but are unwilling to invest in anything that won’t boost their organic search presence.
The problem with that is that thought leadership content doesn’t generally fit nicely into an organic search strategy.
Let’s be clear — SEO content is important. It does work. And yes, some thought leadership articles are capable of driving decent organic traffic. But coming into thought leadership content production with an organic-first mindset is going about things backward.
Here’s the thing.
Most SEO content is top-of-the-funnel, awareness-building focused content. And that has its place.
But by design, thought leadership content generally fits more snugly into the bottom-of-the-funnel than the top. In search, Google is looking for thoroughness. But thoroughness isn’t necessarily what drives sales for B2B companies. And those 10-30 clicks that you might get in search for that type of content is extremely valuable, but not sexy. It can be a tough sell.
But bottom-of-funnel prospects aren’t really interested in thoroughness. They want competence. They want content that digs deep, analyzes something in a new and interesting way, and answers questions.
They can smell shallow content from a mile away.
Thought leadership content is usually a better fit in your sales processes. You create content that directly answers questions and concerns that your prospects have about your product, company, or industry.
For most companies, SEO is a numbers game. If you can generate 50,000 visits, and convert 1% of those into buyers, that’s a healthy return.
But for most B2B services companies, that strategy doesn’t really fit. You probably won’t have time to sift through the unqualified leads. Your focus should be less on traffic numbers, and more on the quality of the leads that you generate.
5 Categories of Thought Leadership Content
Creating great thought leadership articles isn’t like writing an SEO article. You can’t type in a query, open up the top 10 results in tabs, and get to writing.
Yes, you do still have to do your research. Great thought leadership content backs your assertions up with either original or third-party research, to show that the stance you’ve conveyed rings true.
But thought leadership content starts with an idea. Some internal truth or realization about your work, company, or industry.
Often, it’s something that’s been tugging at your brain for a long time. You just hadn’t found the time to write it all down and spell it out.
You can’t just sit down and write thought leadership content without an idea in mind. You’d be staring at a blank screen for days.
And even having an idea isn’t enough. Ideas are a starting point but they need to be refined.
It is unlikely that you are a dam of knowledge, insights, and opinions ready to burst. You might be. But it is going to take some thought to get those ideas out, distill them, and formulate them into an impactful piece of content.
I’ve broken down “thought leadership content” into five common categories, that you can consider and pull from as you look for content ideas to create.
1. Unconventional Opinions
Offering an unconventional opinion about your industry is the most recognizable form of thought leadership content.
This is when you express an opinion that breaks from the conventional, in a (hopefully) interesting way.
If that opinion is a strong one, that’s even better.
However, that doesn’t mean that you should wander into the realm of clickbait. Unconventional opinions resonate when you can paint the picture for why you believe what you do.
Don’t be a contrarian just for the sake of it. Your readers will see through the facade. Back up what you assert — both with your own observations and third-party citations.
But delivering an opinion that allows your audience to see something in a fresh way gives them a peek inside your brain. It exposes them to the way that you think about things and uncovers a little bit about you as a person in the process.
Examples:
- Why I Don’t Care About Growth – Paul Jarvis
- Group Chat: The Best Way to Totally Stress Out Your Team – BaseCamp
- Your Blog Is Not A Publication – Jimmy Daily
2. Personal Stories
If you are building your personal brand, you have to let your audience get to know the authentic you. And not your resume either. But how you think. Or more importantly, why you think it.
And the why always comes back to stories and experiences.
As humans, we all love a good story. We are wired that way.
Storytelling is a natural part of thought leadership. If you are telling people about an idea, it’s only natural that you cover how you arrived at that idea. There are a unique set of experiences that make you believe what you do. Maybe some lessons or insights that you can take from what you learned.
Or, there is more overt storytelling. Such as a story about how you handled a hardship in your business. Or how your personal and business life intersected interestingly. Kind of like the broetry you read on LinkedIn, but less clickbaity, and, well, real.
Tell stories that speak to a deeper truth about your personal and company brand. Stories that highlight a core belief or mission statement that you have. Tie those into the results that you’ve been able to generate, and you’ve got gold.
Examples:
- The un-productization of Lead Cookie and evolution to higher-quality – Jake Jorgovan
- How We Built a Startup that Produced 5x the Output – Tuan Pham Barnes
- 7 Agency Mistakes I Made Passing $70k MRR in One Year – Brad Smith
3. Original Research & Data Stories
Few pieces of content can have a bigger impact than original research.
Typically, these articles involve sharing original data that you can’t find anywhere else — perhaps from your users, a survey that you conducted, or insights that you’ve pulled or aggregated from a public dataset.
Original research can be a hot-button piece of content that wins you backlinks, shares, and attention while growing awareness of your brand.
Using that data to provide unique insights into your industry not only establishes you as an authority but also a resource for your industry. Other companies will cite your data, link back to you, and reference you for years to come — especially when the story that you can craft around that data is compelling.
But original research doesn’t only have to be about data. You can also analyze other companies or actions in your industry — such as in this guide, where Chris Von Wilpert breaks down the strategy that HubSpot used to grow.
Original research is an excellent choice for thought leadership content because it not only allows you to create something fact-based and actionable but also lets you put your expertise on display as you analyze it.
Examples:
- Peek inside HubSpot’s multi-million dollar SaaS growth strategy – Chris Von Wilpert
- We Analyzed 10,000 Google Home Results – Here’s What We Learned About Voice Search SEO – Brian Dean
- Wise.com SEO Case Study: 5 Reasons Why Their SEO Rocks – Michal Pecánek
4. Insights From Clients and Your Network
Not all of your insights and thought leadership need to come exclusively from you.
As a Founder, your network is one of the most impactful assets that you have available to you. And relevant people within your network — whether clients, colleagues, or acquaintances — might have insights that are relevant to your audience as well.
And it’s a win-win for both parties. They get to share their insights with your audience, and you get to deliver value to them while putting your social proof on display.
This philosophy has powered the rise of B2B podcasting as well, which has quickly become one of the best channels for networking and lead generation.
You can publish deep-dives, interviews, Q&As, or traditional feature articles — whatever makes the most sense for the information that you want to share.
Examples:
- Startup Content Marketing How We Scaled a Startup from 0 Organic Traffic to 100,000 Visitors/Mo (In About One Year) – Tyler Hakes
- IBM’s Arin Bhowmick on designing ethical AI – Intercom
- How Cars.com Developer Mac Heller-Ogden Convinced His Bosses to Adopt Node.js – Nathan Collier
5. Actionable How-To and Tutorial Articles
If you are a consultant in a technical field, putting some of that technical skill on display is important for making the right impression with would-be prospects.
These wouldn’t be your typical step-by-step SEO articles.
Instead, focus on creating actionable content that intertwines with real-world experience that you’ve had.
We’ve all read those how-to SEO articles, and when we finished were left wondering who the author was and what they had done. What qualified them to write this article?
Most of the time, the answer to that is “nothing.” They are simply writers that were paid to tackle a topic. Unless they interviewed experts, there is no true experience driving the suggestions that they make.
Publishing these articles with a thought leadership angle makes it incredibly clear why the author is qualified to write the article — their real-world experience is sprinkled throughout.
Examples:
- The outbound industry is evolving… and what to do about it – Jake Jorgovan
- How a Recruiting Website Tripled Organic Traffic in 6 Months – Growth Machine
- Persuasive Writing In Three Steps: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis – Ryan Law
Thought Leadership Is Powerful
“Thought Leadership” might be a somewhat fuzzy term. But once you get straight on the particulars of what thought leadership is and what makes it so powerful — you see that investing in it isn’t just a good idea, it’s completely necessary.
