The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Brand Using Thought Leadership
Within all industries, verticals, and professions, many seek to bring awareness to their personal or organizational brand and build credibility without traditional advertising or promotional methods. They attempt to differentiate themselves by educating audiences, advancing innovative ideas, or taking unique stances on things that appear to be the norm at the time.
When done successfully, they can elevate their status and become recognized as a well-respected expert within their field or industry — commonly known as a “thought leader.” While getting to this stature can be a long and complicated process, the ultimate goal of thought leadership is simple — to build credibility through education and help facilitate valuable conversations with peers and potential buyers.
So what exactly is thought leadership, and how can it be used to build your brand?
Thought Leadership Explained
Thought leadership is both a process and a strategy. From one viewpoint, it’s the ongoing activities, such as speaking engagements or content development, for a person to become recognized and maintain the status of a leading expert. Alternatively, it can refer to using tactics like education and providing valuable insights to grow your brand and expand your business.
Thought Leader vs. Subject Matter Expert
While all thought leaders are subject matter experts (SMEs), not all subject matter experts are thought leaders. The difference comes down to whether someone is highly knowledgeable in their field AND recognized as a leading expert by communicating it outward.
For instance, SMEs know their craft, whether that be sales, cybersecurity, law, or any other discipline. They have tons of knowledge and experience within their specialized fields — making them excellent back-end resources for content development. It’s why many articles and videos, for example, interview and cite SMEs for reliable information.
Thought leaders, on the other hand, are SMEs who are also the faces of their expertise. They go on the front lines to express new ideas, communicate knowledge, and promote industry best practices. They use books, social media posts, videos, articles, and seminar panels to extend their wisdom to their audience.
Thought Leadership Examples by Industry
Thought leadership is applied in all industries, primarily to promote solutions to common industry or professional challenges. No matter the vertical, you can use thought leadership tactics to educate your target audiences. Some industry-specific examples include:
- Data Analytics: An editorial team for an artificial intelligence (AI) analytics tool publishes weekly blog posts on how a “semantic layer” for data analysis lets business executives understand complex data concepts by converting them into standard business terms.
- Cybersecurity: A cybersecurity advisor promotes the Zero Trust Framework in published whitepapers as the modern-day solution to secure and observe enterprise networks with undefined perimeters.
- Sales: A revenue leader runs seminars discussing the importance of lead qualification (through lead scoring) rather than high-volume cold calling to produce a more efficient sales pipeline and close more deals.
- Marketing: A freelancer who successfully grew to agency status develops social media videos and courses to help freelance marketers and content creators scale their businesses and attract better, more profitable clients.
Progression to Thought Leadership
A brand is about perception. Therefore, progressing into a “thought leadership brand” requires creating and maintaining the perception of “one who is an expert.” It is best completed by delivering valuable content through various means reinforcing that position. It requires both visibility and viability. Simply knowing something isn’t enough, so thought leaders use technology and content delivery tools to show what they know.
You must first get widely seen and recognized, then understood and reflected as an expert through what you say, share, and how you present yourself. In the day and age where everyone has a platform with something to say, thought leaders can emerge from the crowd by carving out a unique but beneficial position for themselves, usually by saying something distinct or disruptive.
Maximizing Authority Through Assets
You can measure thought leadership prominence by the credibility someone (or a business) has on a subject or within their industry. Having such authority assumes the expert is well respected and has high recognition by their target audience — often indicated by their social media following and content engagement metrics. To build and preserve authority, thought leaders must express their ideas through different types of assets.
Written Assets
- Articles and Blog Posts: Written pieces (usually 500-2,000 words) used to outline a concept, an analysis, or how to do something.
- Whitepapers, Solution Briefs, and eBooks: Formal assets (around 1,500-4,000 words) that detail a specific challenge within an industry or profession, the ideal solution, and the benefits of doing such. They are often supplemented with quotes and stat callouts to reinforce the information.
- Case Studies: Written asset describing a real scenario (often a customer’s journey to adopting or purchasing a product) in which a person or business identified a relevant challenge, incorporated/purchased a solution, and how they extracted value.
- Infographics: A small asset (usually one to three pages) that presents a trend, idea, or industry solution, mainly using charts, graphics, stats, and quotes instead of traditional paragraph copy.
- Social Media Posts: Messages that consist of copy, videos, polls, and/or images posted on social media profiles where platform users share and engage with content in real time.
Digital Media
- Videos: Short or long recordings made available online, typically on-demand.
- Podcasts: Digital audio files made available online through downloading or streaming on a computer or mobile device. These are commonly available as a series of new installments subscribers can receive automatically.
- Webinars/Seminars: Events where speakers talk with large groups of participants to engage in online discussions or training events and share audio, documents, or slides. They can be in-person or done virtually, either live or recorded for on-demand viewing.
Other Outlets
- Speaking Engagements: Speeches and presentations at conferences, expos, or networking events.
- Panel Interviews: Discussions with other influential experts, often supplemented with Q&As from the audience.
- Audio Rooms: Group discussions among experts in a semi-private, hosted platform where audiences listen in, add questions, and contribute to the conversation.
Thought Leadership is a Catalyst for Brand Building
Thought leadership is essential for brand building. Leveraged wisely, it can create or expand opportunities that would not exist otherwise. Here are three main ways that thought leadership facilitates brand building:
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It Establishes and Enhances Authority
Thought leadership establishes credibility and provides evidence for trustworthiness to prospects, customers, and other stakeholders. Trust is the currency of any brand. With every appearance or authoritative piece of content produced, thought leaders build a case for why they should be listened to and trusted in their domain of expertise.
Thought leaders are well-known and understand their areas of expertise. While there are often many experts on a subject, a thought leader is not only willing and able, but visible and available to offer meaningful insights that add clarity and value.
For example, when news breaks or a trending topic emerges, someone perceived as a thought leader is far more likely to be considered the go-to source for information. In a world of mistrusted authorities, especially in business settings, guidance is highly-valued, and the influence of thought leadership can hold major significance.
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Its Highly Searchable and Shareable
Another benefit of thought leadership for brand building is that it creates a widespread, connected link of content that demonstrates credibility and evolution. Since thought leaders take advantage of all types of written, media, and speaking-based content, they actively create a digital trail that people can follow when they need expertise.
The more researched a person is, the more valuable content that comes back. Thought leaders make it easy to find and cite them. Tactics and mediums, such as videos, webinars, and podcasts, generate lots of online traffic and rank highly in search engine results, which yields a competitive advantage for consistent producers.
Today’s top thought leaders, like Gary Vaynerchuk, have learned how to leverage the power of social media and other tools and create memorable, shareable content that helps to put them top-of-mind.
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It Creates Memorable and Meaningful Differentiation
Thought leadership can leverage new, innovative perspectives to create differentiation. As business and technology environments constantly evolve, it’s vital to offer unique, fresh insights and stay ahead of the competition.
Thought leadership can help companies and individuals do this by providing new or provocative perspectives on issues and trends relevant to their industry. By leaning into these new perspectives, they can stand out and even become known for their contrarian but practical ideas.
When everyone else “zigs,” you can “zag.” One example of this is creating proprietary concepts, models, and frameworks, or curating the best of what is out there with a unique perspective. While many people have written about the art and science of habit-forming, for example, James Clear has used his novel, Atomic Habits, to become an oft-cited bestseller — making Clear one of the world’s leading thinkers on strategies for managing habits.
Positive Impacts of Thought Leadership
The power of thought leadership for building a business or professional brand cannot be clear enough. Many people today have a lot to say, and our access to knowledge is more available than at any time in human history. As our knowledge base grows, subject experts who are both visible and viable are only going to become more and more valuable.
As we’ve shown, thought leadership establishes and enhances authority on a given subject, creates valuable content easily searchable and shareable, and leverages new, innovative perspectives to create differentiation. These components work together to help businesses and individuals stand out from their competitors while building strong, trustworthy, and valuable brands that customers and stakeholders can rely on.
Elevate Your Thought Leadership
Enhance your brand’s value with the combined partnership of Enthuse Creative and PK Cyber Solutions. Enthuse Creative’s brand design, strategy, and management services allow businesses to position themselves effectively and boost their digital presence.
PK Cyber Solutions helps cybersecurity, IT management, tech consulting, and software businesses create or scale their content through B2B content development/ghostwriting (Blog Articles, eBooks, Whitepapers, Case Studies, Infographics) services. When paired together, you can ensure quality written assets get produced and distributed on the proper digital channels to maximize brand awareness or lead generation campaigns.
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