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Establishing your brand as a leader in your industry is more crucial than ever. Around two-thirds of marketers — about 66% — recognize thought leadership as a “top priority” for their marketing organizations, but only some know what steps they need to take to become a thought leader. This is where a well-researched thought leadership program comes in, as it increases your brand’s credibility, engages your audience and increases your business opportunities.
But what exactly is a thought leadership program, and how can entrepreneurs prioritize it in their marketing strategy to grow their business?
This article reveals what you need to develop a thought leadership program, how you can leverage social media listening and data science for content relevance and the role of writers in communicating core insights. It offers a roadmap for businesses to position themselves as industry leaders through effective thought leadership.
Related: How to Enhance Your Brand Through Thought Leadership
What is a thought leadership program?
To establish a thought leadership program, you require research and insights to create impactful content that engages audiences and builds brand authority. A thought leadership program is a strategic initiative that involves sharing insightful and thought-provoking perspectives with your audience. One of the critical ingredients of a thought leadership program is “insights,” which you can use to write stories through various forms of content, such as reports, whitepapers, blog posts, videos, webinars, podcasts and speaking engagements. The main goal is to establish your brand as an authority in your industry by showcasing your unique viewpoint. Your brand can benefit from an improved reputation and credibility, higher brand engagement rates, and, ultimately, more business opportunities.
Why are insights crucial for a thought leadership program?
According to Google, an insight creates a whole new way of thinking. Insights supported by research are essential for thought leadership. These can be obtained through primary research, social media listening, peer review, data analytics and AI. Insights can provide new perspectives, solve problems and uncover opportunities while avoiding potential issues.
Understanding the needs of consumers is crucial for any business to succeed. Conducting research and utilizing the insights gained from it can help you better understand the consumer’s pulse. Using these insights to craft a compelling story in your thought leadership program can establish your position as a thought leader in your industry.
The impact of your thought leadership program relies significantly on its ability to challenge the status quo or offer a unique perspective. When your content confronts prevailing industry norms or introduces novel viewpoints, it captures attention and stimulates thought, creating a stronger brand reputation with your audience. This approach demonstrates deep industry understanding and positions you as a forward-thinking leader.
How can insights help you identify topics for thought leadership?
Identifying the right topic for your thought leadership program can be a game-changer. Analyzing the insights from your research can help you spot the trends that are more relevant to your audience and align with your brand’s vision. This information can serve as a guide for selecting the most suitable topics and perspectives to develop a more effective thought leadership program for your brand.
How can you strengthen your thought leadership program with primary research and insights?
Primary research and data science insights can help shape the thought leadership study’s narrative by looking into what people respond to and are actively engaging with and also by extracting the most helpful information to use in marketing efforts.
Apart from primary research, brands should also consider using social media listening to gain a deeper understanding of their target customers’ trends, preferences and sentiments. This can help them tailor their thought leadership programs to better resonate with their audience and establish themselves as authorities in their industry. That could mean creating content about a certain current event, a trend or a social cause that many people care about.
Customer insights can help with data dissemination because you’ll know which insights customers care most about. That’s why it’s worth gathering all of this data. Without it, you’re marketing blind, which is a big no-no. You need to know what your target customers are saying online and where they’re doing it if you want to join the conversation naturally.
Competitor insights can help find and fill gaps to help you reach your target audience with the right messages at the right times (because they’ve already done the work). Some entrepreneurs even recommend following the competition on social media and seeing what they’re doing that works. You can also join their email lists and see what content they deliver to their subscribers/customers.
By knowing what your customers want (and what your competitors are doing), you can sift through the data you already have and make better sense of it to authentically connect and engage with your audience. You can also learn to collect data more intelligently (and know what kind of data will be most beneficial to you moving forward).
But insights can reach much further into social listening. Talking to industry experts, company experts and CXO people can offer even more insights on the topics or themes you’ve chosen for your thought leadership program. By getting inside information straight from the source, you can be sure it’s real, accurate and valuable.
So, use every resource available to get the most accurate, up-to-date information out there.
Related: 5 Effective Ways to Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader
Piecing it all together
Once you have the necessary data, you can hire expert writers, who could also be within your company, to write insightful reports. While hiring skilled writers can help effectively communicate your insights, the essence of thought leadership lies in your organization’s original ideas and expertise. Subject matter experts who are writers are instrumental in shaping these ideas into compelling content that resonates with your audience, using the data obtained from these listening tools and research and creating different content formats, such as blog posts, eBooks, case studies, etc.
By using all of the tools mentioned above and resources, you’ll be able to create a more robust thought leadership program that does what it’s supposed to do — help you bring awareness to your brand, boost engagement, and drive sales.
Ready to create your own thought leadership program?
Creating a thought leadership program can help amplify your current efforts when it comes to sales and marketing. By leveraging digital, mobile, and social media channels to engage potential buyers, you can increase online engagement with your brand and, in turn, boost sales. That’s why so many companies are beginning to use thought leadership to help them reach their goals.
This story originally appeared on Entrepreneur
