Thought leaders stand apart from the competition because they are informed, trusted, experts who inspire

With thought and commitment you can be a leader.

Thought leaders are informed opinion leaders and the go-to people in their field of expertise

Thought leaders are trusted sources who move and inspire people with innovative ideas

Thought leaders are recognised as an authority whose expertise is sought and rewarded

Thought leaders intrigue, challenge, and inspire; starting conversations and enhancing existing relationships

Thought leaders stand apart from the competition because they are informed, trusted, experts who inspire

With thought and commitment you can be a leader.

Establishing yourself as a thought leader is cumulative.

It is achieved over time, by growing an audience that value the content you publish on your web site and elsewhere.

If you already publish regularly it may simply be a matter of adapting the content you produce, to observe some rules:

• Build themes
• Don’t sell anything
• Always give it away
• Disagree with other ideas
• Be relevant to your audience
• Get involved and promote issues

If you’re new to developing content. You will find the following plan a useful framework to follow.

1. REVIEW – Where are you now

• If you are not starting from scratch; what content generation are you currently doing well (or not so well).
• What more could you do to establish you as thought leaders (see notes on subjects below)
• Check out your competitors, to see what they are doing. Don’t be afraid to take good ideas and adapt them for your use.

2. OBJECTIVE – What do you want to achieve

• Typically this would be things like increasing web site traffic, leads and rate requests.
• Set a specific target, so you can measure success.
• Don’t expect overnight success. You may need to tweak activity, before you start seeing any movement.
• This activity is as much about repositioning you as THE experts. You can’t easily measure attitude. But the effect is very positive.

3. STRATEGY – Plan for success

• You’ve got to consider how the audience can interact with, or act on your content.
• Give them opportunity to comment and open a dialogue.
• Think about an editorial plan that’s going to put relevant content for your audience at the heart of your activity.
• Prepare a series of ‘knowledge’ pieces, that you can share, if news is short.
• Don’t be afraid to give out valuable information.

Personalise as much as possible and avoid the sell.

Resource will be your most significant issue. Particularly for content creation and a centralised repository for content and background material.

4. ACTIVITY – Diarise regular activity

• Reach your audience at key moments.
• Attract – Increase your brand awareness with new prospect audiences. Link you content with Google, LinkedIn and Twitter. Use social ad campaigns, to boost reach and add new audiences.
• Engage – Focus on retaining interest over the long-term to keep existing and prospective customers engaged.
• Act – React to content that has commercial impact, using it to encourage enquiries.
• Convert – Converting prospects to customers is your ultimate goal.

5. WEB PLATFORM –  Your primary channel will be through your web site.

• Ideally your site will incorporate a content management system (CMS), otherwise you may rely on the web developers to post items. This is not ideal and does incur additional cost.
• We recommend WordPress for new site development. WP is open source software that has a very powerful CMS, that is simple to use and is extremely flexible.
• Try and write a short piece every day – commenting on something topical is always simple – with a longer post once or twice a week.
• The longer content length should be 300+ words, which is the optimal length for google.
• SEO each post for maximum effect. You may need advice form your web designers on how to do this.
• Post each new story as a new page. Google gives more weight to sites that contain 100+ pages.

6. ADDITIONAL ACTIVITY – Add more value

• When you’re comfortable producing new content, or have a provider that you’re happy with, consider developing longer, well-crafted content, like a white paper or case study.
• These are extremely powerful Thought Leadership tools that can be adapted for multiple use and impact across a range of channels including:

Articles
Blog
Case studies
Competitions
eBooks
eBulletins
Forums
Guides
Infographics
Press releases
Product features
Publicity
SlideShares
Social
Video
Web
White papers

7. DEVELOPING CONTENT – You can do it

• Write about what you know
• You are experts in your field.
• If you articulate your own experience, views or opinions you are a thought leader.
• Your subject doesn’t just need to be technical it could be:

Useful 
Generous 
Entertaining 
Timely 
Human 
Promotional 
Controversial 
Engaging

Match your activity with the resource available. Little and often is better than nothing at all.

Start today and be tomorrow’s leader.