One of the key goals that many online marketing campaigns have is to establish your executives or your company as a thought leader within the industry space. The media and prospective partners may approach you for interviews and deals. Improving your reputation – especially as someone who is knowledgeable about your work – can open up opportunities for you without you having to actively market and sell. But how does a company demonstrate thought leadership? Here are some ideas to get you started.
Connecting Thought Leadership and Content Marketing
Content marketing is an approach to generating leads and revenue that uses information to attract attention. This kind of marketing is often referred to as an inbound strategy. Through content marketing, a company might develop blogs, white papers, podcasts, or infographics. That content would be strategically disseminated to get in front of the people that the business is targeting as its ideal customers. By creating a variety of online pieces of content, individuals searching for information about topics related to your business are drawn in.
Thought leadership can come in many forms, from offering content that clients love to taking a distinctive stand on industry issues. In a sense, thought leadership is content marketing that’s elevated to the next level. It’s about making contributions that can change or impact the way someone things or even how doing business is approached. A thought leadership program helps establish you as an authority. It’s not just about reaching leads, although that’s part of it. It helps distinguish you from the competition and makes a lasting reputational impact on your business.
Finding Your Voice as a Thought Leader
One of the core differences between thought leadership and content marketing is having a distinct voice. A thought leader has something unique to say, or at least a distinctive spin to put on the important issues in his or her space. Finding your voice as a thought leader is an essential part of an essential campaign. Here are some questions that can help you find your voice:
When you’re committed to thought leadership, you’re ready to do the work to stake out territory that you own. Over time, it can gain you recognition from your colleagues as well as from your customers and help lay the foundation to make your more generic content marketing efforts more successful.
Are you ready to explore how content marketing and thought leadership can impact your business growth? Contact Be Locally SEO today to arrange for a personalized consultation to learn more about how our expert team can improve your digital marketing efforts.