How Thought Leadership Can Help Businesses To Thrive

What do well-known names like Ginny Rometty, Sheryl Sandberg, and Satya Nadella have in common? Much of their success (and definitely their name recognition) comes from their thought leadership. Gary Vaynerchuk, who now teaches thought leadership, breathed life back into his family wine business by filming a weekly video talking about the wine they were stocking. You can achieve similar results for your business just by sharing the knowledge in your head.

What is a Thought Leader?

A thought leader is someone who is knowledgeable in a particular topic who generously shares their expertise with others, usually online. Someone will usually become a thought leader as a way to advise people, attract their people, and build a following for their business. Someone will follow a thought leader because they want to stay up to date with a topic that is important to them and want to get their information from a source they trust.

-Social media, including LinkedIn and YouTube

-Their own blog or website

-Guest posts on a website or publication

-Books

-Speaking engagements

-Conferences, webinars, and training

Thought leadership is about more than just posting for visibility on social media. The goal of thought leadership is to build a following that knows, likes, and trusts you.

The Value of Thought Leadership for Businesses

3 prominent thought leaders in their respective fields see the following value in thought leadership for businesses.

Thought Leadership Builds Relationships

“Thought leadership is a way to build a relationship with prospects based on knowledge—not on products and services.” – Chris Koch.

Thought leadership gives businesses a competitive advantage in the market by allowing business owners and key people in the company to build trust and relationships with their clients. Your business gains regular touchpoints with your followers, more than you’d otherwise get in a business-client relationship. Plus, you get to demonstrate your expertise in each touchpoint.  

It is not just clients who will consume thought leadership. Thought leaders often attract and develop relationships with all sorts of people – including vendors, key industry contacts, and public figures. Your thought leadership can lead to a wide range of unique opportunities because of your track record and the audience you have built.

Thought Leadership Earns Trust

“Thought leaders are the informed opinion leaders and the go-to people in their field of expertise. They are trusted sources who move and inspire people with innovative ideas.” – Denise Brosseau, CEO of Thought Leadership Lab. 

Thought leadership will often expand a business’s reach. As you become a more prominent thought leader, your work will be quoted and shared by other people in your industry or even the media. This is because your established expertise makes you a trusted source of information. People will look to you to weigh in on issues impacting your industry.

Thought Leadership Inspires Others

“The most significant barrier to female leadership is the actual lack of females in leadership. The best advice I can give to women is to go out and start something, ideally their own businesses. If you can’t see a path for leadership within your own company, go blaze a trail of your own.” – Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle.

An often underestimated benefit of thought leadership is it improves the visibility of often underrepresented voices. It is inspiring to find and follow trailblazers with backgrounds similar to yours, especially if that representation is not visible in your day-to-day work. As a thought leader, you get to inspire others to blaze their own path. As a thought leadership consumer, you get to watch others as they chart new territory.

6 Reasons Why Thought Leadership Can Help Your Business Thrive

The benefits of thought leadership for businesses are endless because it puts your business (and key members of your business) out there in the best light. Thought leaders are viewed by the public as experts in their field and people who care enough to ensure the public has access to correct, nuanced information.

The following 6 reasons to become a thought leader are the most impactful ways that thought leadership can help your business thrive.

1. Insight into Consumer Trends

Thought leadership puts your business in closer contact with consumers. When your thought leaders attend speaking events, they’ll meet your ideal clients and will hear their insights and questions. When you post thought leadership content online, you’ll invite comments and questions from the people reading. This will provide your business with valuable data into:

-Problems your consumers face

-Areas for improvement

-Concerns or worries holding consumers back from purchasing

-The results they have achieved with your product or service

-What they like about your thought leadership and your products or services

-How your product or service fits into their related ecosystem

2. Greater Exposure for Your Business

Becoming a thought leader is a low-cost method of increasing the reach of your business. Thought leadership content is designed to provide value to a particular type of person about a particular topic. You will start to attract more people who are interested and aligned with what you do.

Thought leadership content is extremely shareable and quotable. As more people share your content or quote your content, you’ll gain additional exposure for your business.

3. Networking Opportunities

Your thought leadership will provide you with more opportunities to network with prospects, industry professionals, and other thought leaders. At first, this will be mainly through your thought leadership content. You’ll see more people interacting with you and your content. Then, when you become a trusted thought leader, you will get opportunities to network on a much grander scale. Your following and expertise will get you invites to events and collaboration opportunities.

4. Aligned Employees

While the primary objective of thought leadership is to communicate your expertise, you will inadvertently show your personality and values. These are vital ingredients of thought leadership because they allow you to attract your tribe, which includes your employees.

Your future employees may be amongst your followers, learning from you and becoming invested in your mission as they consume your thought leadership content. That is why many thought leaders will share job openings with their followers.

When candidates apply for a job at your company, their first port of call to research the company culture will be your thought leadership content. They’ll gain insight into what your business is doing, what is planned for the future, and the values demonstrated at the top of the company. In this way, your thought leadership content will allow you to attract employees who have shared values and passions.

5. Credibility

Thought leadership content is great to boost a business’s credibility – especially if you are a new business, looking for your foothold in the market. Being published in trusted publications or websites or speaking at industry events will give your business additional credibility. This is why so many businesses will display badges on their website of the publications in which their business has been featured.

This credibility often doesn’t cost anything. The media is always looking for content, so if you can pitch them a good enough story, you will be invited to either interview or write content for them. Having a following and examples of your content to send will improve your chances of getting these opportunities.

6. Growth

A good thought leadership strategy grows your business across many different metrics.

Shorter sales cycles – It can shorten your sales cycle because your clients and prospects already trust you. Prospects who are already familiar with you have been slowly building trust and warming over time. Prospects who aren’t already familiar with you have plenty of material to look at when conducting research. Not only do leads warm quicker, but often, the cost of acquiring those leads is less because you will attract new leads through your thought leadership.

Brand growth – Your thought leadership strategy will also grow your brand through greater visibility. Your customers will see you as the go-to source of information for your chosen thought leadership topics. You’ll have full control over how you want to show your brand.

Better supplier relationships – Your thought leadership content will help you to attract suppliers and partners. As you become known as a top expert in your industry, people will be lining up to partner with you to do new and exciting things. This can help you to expand your offerings or negotiate more favourable deals.

Thought Leadership Strategy

Having a thought leadership strategy will help you to see the results you desire with more efficiency. Like any other kind of strategy, it focuses your effort and resources on what will achieve a good ROI (return on investment) rather than blindly creating content.

Working with an expert can help you to develop an effective, data-backed strategy for your thought leadership. Their experience will help you to avoid common pitfalls and understand what kind of thought leadership will be most effective for your goals. You’ll also be able to take advantage of their contacts to gain access to opportunities that will skyrocket your results.

The basis of a thought leadership strategy will identify your goals in order of priority. From there, you will work backwards to decide what your thought leadership content will be about, what vehicle will work best for your message, and who you are creating your content for.  

Remember to include reviews and testing in your thought leadership strategy. Your thought leadership should never stagnate; it should grow alongside you, your business, and your followers.

How to Become a Thought Leader in Your Industry

The most important thing is to create a thought leadership strategy you can stick to. Thought leadership doesn’t achieve results overnight; it requires consistency. When choosing a topic, it is important that the topic be related to your business and a topic that your ideal clients are interested in. However, more importantly, it should be something you could talk about for days. As Matt Sweetwood so aptly says:

“If you don’t love and believe in the topic you are talking about, you will surely not last long enough to become a thought leader.” 
– Matt Sweetwood, former CEO and business consultant. 

You need to be able to commit to putting considerable and regular effort into becoming a thought leader for at least two years. That includes creating regular content, networking at industry events, and putting yourself forward for opportunities that will expand the reach of your thought leadership. With a good thought leadership strategy, you will likely see results long before the two years are up, but thinking of your thought leadership as a two-year commitment helps you to create a realistic strategy.

Conclusion

A thought leader is someone who is seen as the go-to expert about a particular topic in their field. They grow a following through generously sharing information, insights, and predictions related to their topic. Thought leadership benefits businesses because it allows clients, prospects, partners, industry professionals, and future employees to develop relationships with key members of staff within the business. It also expands the reach of a business for considerably less spending than most other marketing activities.