Tag Archives: thought leadership

What is thought leadership content and how it helps you grow your business?

Why should you publish thought leadership content?

It earns you respect among the peers.

It makes people trust you.

People pay more attention to what you have to say.

They take your words seriously.

When it comes to doing business, people prefer to work with leaders rather than someone they don’t know.

Thought leadership content is good for your SEO.

In most of the cases, thought leadership content is written in long form – that is, you may write anywhere between 3000-5000 words.

Google prefers long form content because it provides comprehensive information at a single spot, to its visitors.

More people link to thought leadership content than average content.

This further improves your search engine rankings.

Thought leadership content improves your domain authority and your overall ranking potential.

It gets shared more on social media, further improving your visibility.

It can be repurposed into smaller content pieces.

How to develop a thought leadership content strategy?

Developing your thought leadership content requires planning and strategy.

You need to clearly identify your area of expertise.

What original research have you done?

How is your solution different from the solutions being provided by other businesses or thought leaders?

Why is your take different?

How have you overtaken challenges and tackled problems within your business?

What have you learned from your mistakes?

How will you publish your thought leadership content?

You may like to read the entire blog post in the above-mentioned link.

13 tips for writing thought leadership content

Benefits of thought leadership

Your potential customers and clients trust you more when you establish yourself as an expert in your industry.

One of the biggest benefits of being a thought leader is that you become recognizable.

Isn’t it easier to do business with people whom you know what people who are recognizable, compared to people who are totally unknown?

People are more receptive to your thoughts. Bloggers and news reporters more eagerly cover what you want to communicate. People respect you. They listen to you attentively. Your content is shared more on other blogs and social networking platforms. You are quoted more often. Your visibility increases. You seem more credible and trustworthy compared to people who haven’t worked on their thought leadership.

All these collectively help you grow your business.

How to build thought leadership through writing content?

The Rolling Stone magazine https://credible-content.com has compiled suggestions from 13 thought leaders on how to write content to build your thought leadership. Although the advice is not out of the ordinary, it is always better to revisit the age-old concepts so that you don’t forget them. Some of the advice include

Understand what your audience wants

Publish content that satisfies some pressing need of your audience. Everyone is looking for a solution. When people find the needed solutions through your writing, they respect you and trust you. They begin to believe in your thought leadership.

Write for human beings

When you are writing on the Internet there is often a tendency to write for search engine algorithms and robots. Although it is important to improve your search engine rankings even to build your thought leadership, don’t obsess. Remember that your primary target are human beings. Do whatever it takes to improve your SEO but ultimately, keep the primary focus on your human readers.

Keep an eye on the future

Everyone is worried about the future. Thought leaders don’t worry, but they are constantly thinking about the future of their field. For example, in the field of content writing, what is going to change five years down the line? Understanding the future helps people prepare for it.

Use personal anecdotes and examples

Being a thought leader is all about you. How you are achieving great feats. How you are discovering new things. How you form opinions. How you are discovering new insights. Share your experiences. Tell your unique stories from within the industry. How you are constantly solving problems for people who work with you.

Always be relevant

Well, this goes without saying. If your content is not relevant, it is not going to be valued, and if it is not valued, you cannot build your thought leadership.

Deliver a clear value

Always be aware of what you are delivering and what impact your content is making. There must always be a purpose. Your readers must be able to experience tangible results when they access your thought leadership content. For that, you will need to understand what drives your audience, what makes an impact on them, and what they truly value.

Have a unique perspective

Express original thoughts. Have the courage to say something that is right and valid, but the others don’t have the courage to say it. Take risks. Make predictions even if there is a risk of being proven wrong in future. As a leader you must lead. Things that people haven’t yet thought of, you should be able to think.

Improve your specialization

One of the best aspects of building a thought leadership is that it motivates you to constantly improve yourself. If you don’t increase your treasure of knowledge, how are you going to share that knowledge? If you don’t gain experience by taking risks and doing things that others don’t do, how are you going to share that experience?

Act on your own advice

Words are easier, action is difficult. People are not looking for a preacher, they are looking for a leader who acts. Come up with new ideas, implement those ideas, face the results, and then share those ideas, whether they succeed or fail, with your readers through your thought leadership content writing.

Have a consistent set of values

Values are ideas and ways of thinking you believe are important and you must adhere to them. They render a sense of clarity to your thought and purpose. They define your identity. People begin to recognize you by the values that you have on display. Therefore, as a thought leader, you must be consistent with your values. Of course, in the beginning it will take some time to define your values, but once you are clear about them, stick to them.

From Me, make a shift to You

A leader is always thinking of the others. A leader is selfless. When you are writing content, no matter how much effort you need to make, no matter how much pain you need to go through, always have in mind how your content can help your readers. You need to be at the forefront of action and leadership.

Make your advice practical

As a thought leader you may apply many unconventional methods to your field of profession, but for your readers, keep things practical. Before sharing your thoughts, think how you would like to implement your own advice to your own work. People should be able to implement your advice, if not easily, then at least, in terms of manageability.

Be authentic

When you are authentic and unique, people can easily recognize you. You stand out for your opinions and for your voice. You can be authentic in the manner you write your content, you can be authentic about your ideas, and you can be authentic about how you help people who follow you. Don’t tread the already beaten

How to build thought leadership with authoritative content writing

What exactly is thought leadership?

Thought leadership is your ability to use your expertise, perspective and experience in an industry to inspire, innovate and influence a positive change.

When you are a thought leader, people pay close attention to what you say. They want to implement your suggestions because they are sure that your suggestions are powerful and effective. Even if they don’t directly work with you, just because you are sharing your wisdom and expertise, they want to implement your ideas hoping that just as you and your business partners have benefited from them, they will benefit from them too.

Beyond a certain level, every business wants to work with the leader because the leader comes with assured results.

Thought leadership is different from being a teacher. If you are a teacher in an MBA college where you are regularly teaching students to become business leaders, you may not be considered as a thought leader because you are not actually working in the trenches. You are simply sharing your knowledge, which is of course, important.

A thought leader doesn’t just share his experience and knowledge in a clear, understandable manner, he also uses his experience and knowledge to help his or other businesses grow.

Why becoming a thought leader with authoritative content writing is important?

If you want businesses to work with you, you need to let it be known to them that you’re not just available to them, you’re also the most capable person to do their job.

We live and work in a noisy environment these days. Whether you use a computer or a mobile phone, distractions are constantly vying for your attention.

Everyone these days has something to say. It’s a good thing. It democratizes our ability to communicate. There was a time when only people with resources could disseminate their ideas and opinions. No longer is the case.

The downside is, there is too much content on the Internet. It becomes difficult to wade through the clutter and reach, or even notice something worth paying attention to.

Authoritative content writing is the solution.

What is authoritative content writing?

When you publish blog posts and articles you want to showcase your expertise and your ability to communicate.

You want people to know that you have solved complex problems. You want to tell them that it is profitable to work with you. Unless you tell them, they’re not going to know.

How do you tell them?

By constantly sharing your knowledge and wisdom with them.

Why constantly?

Millions of pieces of content are published every day. New content is constantly being pushed down or pushed away by newer content. Search engines and social media websites are ever hungry for fresh content.

Even if this fresh content is total junk, just because it is fresh compared to your quality content, your quality content is going to be relegated to oblivion sooner than later. This is a sad reality, but it is a reality you cannot escape from.

Being a thought leader, you cannot write and publish mediocre content. This is because, then you will become a part of the herd and it will be difficult for your prospective clients and customers to distinguish you from the others. You need to stand out.

This is where authority content writing comes into picture.

Authoritative content writing has the following attributes:

It contains research data from authoritative sources that are difficult to dispute.
The writing is confident, fluent and masterly.
It contains lots of unique perspective.
It makes strong claims that can be underpinned by indisputable data.
It forces people to change their thinking.
It is full of hope and promise.
It is shared and disseminated using appropriate broadcasting channels.

Unless people feel positive about you, they’re not going to decide to work with you. So, one of the most important attributes of authoritative content writing is that it should be full of hope and promise.

Along with the attributes mentioned above, to establish your thought leadership, you need to write and publish content regularly. As mentioned above, millions of content pieces are being published every day. You need to remain visible.

So, it’s not that one day you wake up, write a great blog post full of knowledge and wisdom, publish it, share it on LinkedIn and Twitter, and then you’re going to reap its benefits for months to come.

It doesn’t work this way. 99.99% people won’t even take notice of what you have written and published. People pay attention to you when you regularly appear on their timelines. And even there, you need to be impressive. You need to provide something compelling so that they take note of what you have to say.

In which type of business does thought leadership matter?

In whichever business people need to trust you. In fact, if you’re using content marketing to draw prospective customers and clients, you can use thought leadership through authoritative content writing.

In content marketing, you will notice that experts and professionals who have been able to establish themselves as thought leaders in their fields get more exposure. Their blog posts, articles and social media updates are shared more. People want to follow them. Businesses want to work with them.

Unless you are a big brand like IBM, Apple or Microsoft, thought leadership works better through personal brands. To get businesses and people attracted to you, you need to be influential in your field. Everybody wants to work with people who are known to get results. As a thought leader, you are in a better position to deliver results than a person who is lesser-known.

I’m not saying that a lesser-known person is less capable of delivering results, but if you build your thought leadership through authoritative content writing (or through videos, or whatever format suits you), it becomes easier for people to find you. Einstein and Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have been what they were had they been working in their laboratories all their lives without building a brand for themselves through sharing their ideas among people.

So, if personal branding matters in your business, then building your thought leadership can significantly increase your presence.