How to get more from your thought leadership

Thought leadership is all about delivering content that is authentic and genuine. Content that demonstrates your market expertise and knowledge. It is a way of being human, and helpful. And used well, it can be a great way to build trust in your brand. So how do you go about doing this? Key Takeaways

• Strategic thought leadership is the holy grail

• Tactical thought leadership is more widely used and is about positioning you/your brand as an expert in your field

• You need to have clear and measurable goals in place

• Use diverse thinking by getting thoughts from across your business

• Look for gaps in the market

Strategic vs Tactical Thought Leadership

Strategic thought leadership is thinking something no one else has thought.

This is where companies use thought leadership for strategic gains, by offering new, innovative ideas, market insights and perspectives that influence their target audience. This is about trend setting. Shaping opinions. It is a way of pushing forward new ways of thinking or doing things within the mortgage market.

True thought leadership at a strategic level is easy to discuss, much harder to do. That is why most companies use thought leadership tactically, to support their key goals.

Tactical thought leadership s about positioning the brand as an expert in a particular field - be it a market segment like bridging or buy to let, or an expert in affordability for example.

The goal is to build credibility which is a key component of building brand trust. To become the thought leader, brands will create and share educational content that is nothing but helpful, and to build an active voice in the industry by sharing these thoughts.

How To Create Thought Leadership

Set Your Goals

You must have a reason for creating thought leadership. Therefore you need clear, measurable goals. You will need to understand that it takes time to be seen as an expert, so your goals must be realistic and achievable. And they will need to be measurable, as much as possible, as discussed later.

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Example Goals

Goal: Be Seen As An Authoritative Brand

Success measures: Increase unprompted and promoted brand mentions of market expertise. Contribute to industry discussions and increase the number or press mentions in articles. Reach a wider audience with your market view. Provide more commentary to more people more often on your area of expertise.

Goal: Shift brand perception by increase credibility

Success measures: increase in trust (yes this can be measured) and NPS.

Goal: Increase visibility of brand. I

Success Measures: Increase share of voice and get cut through.

Goal: Increase Brand Memorability

Success measures: Increase brand recall and brand salience.

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Think About Your Audience

You must create the content that will help your audience. Get to understand their challenges and the problems that need solving. Understand how and where they consume content to ensure your thought leadership does not fall on deaf ears.

Check Out The Competition

Take a look at what your competitors and others are doing, as you would ideally want to deliver thought leadership on your terms, not others. Find some market gaps, of which you will surprised how many there are.

Get Some Diverse Input

Get creative and develop fresh ideas but include people from around your business and outside it, to get a diverse set of ideas.

Remember, creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else has ever thought.

Go Do It

Now go and create memorable thought leading content. Remember to tell stories. And repurpose all this to save you time. Use video, podcasts, articles, talks, email, social and PR.

Measure

If your goals will have measurable outcomes, but you must have lead and lag metrics.

Here are a few thoughts:

• Use research to measure brand sentiment

• Sales growth

• Measure brand salience

• Look at unprompted brand recall

• Look at engagement of your content - not just number or readers or viewers, but time reading for example.

• Look at social engagement

Closing Thought

If you can come up with some strategic thought leadership, brilliant. If not, use it tactically well and be goal led and outcome focused. Put yourself in the shoes of the audience and be human and helpful.