How to build and scale a Thought Leadership strategy - PR E-Book from PRLab
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How to build and scale a Thought Leadership strategy PR E-Book from PRLab
Content 1 INTRODUCTION 2 WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO PRACTICE THOUGHT LEADERSHIP AS A STARTUP OR A SCALE-UP 4 THE VALUE IN CREATING INDUSTRY REPORTS FOR PR AND THOUGHT LEADERSHIP 8 WHICH THOUGHT LEADERSHIP TRENDS ARE EXPECTED IN 2020? 11 HOW TO SET UP A THOUGHT LEADERSHIP STRATEGY 15 5 WAYS TO MEASURE YOUR THOUGHT LEADERSHIP STRATEGY 18 HOW THOUGHT LEADERSHIP CAN HELP YOU GET FUNDING 20 CONCLUSION
Introduction
Thought leadership has resurfaced again as a popular buzz word in the business world and for rather
good reason. Thought leadership is a useful way of sharing your deep understanding of the field and
the expertise which can bring validation from your peers and audience. As a thought leader, you
position yourself as someone who profoundly understands the industry, business, the needs of its
audience and the broader marketplace. In this Ebook we’ll be guiding you through the key tools for a
successful thought leadership strategy and what it implies in terms of new opportunities thought
leadership can bring.
Diving deeper in the concept of thought leadership, two different approaches to the concept are
being recognised:
• Strategic-driven thought leadership Common among traditional consulting firms such as McKinsey
and Boston Consulting Group, this form of leadership implies a strong business rationale. To position
themselves as trusted voices on complex issues that matter to them, advocates of this approach
share their intellectual ideas and new insights in white-papers or through other media. As a
knowledgeable authority, their focus is on strong positioning and competitive advantage.
• Transformation-driven thought leadership Advocates of this form of leadership focus on shifting
paradigms and contributing to societal transitions. They believe in novel, unconventional ideas that
will change the future and are highly-driven in leading this change. A good example of a
transformation-driven thought leader is the electric car manufacturer Tesla. Despite petrol being
the primary fuel, the company seeks to establish a future where everyone can drive low-cost
electric automobiles.
With this in mind, you should look for a balance between strategic and transformation objectives in
your thought leadership as it will ideally blend your authority with today’s transformative landscape.
We’ll talk about why it is important to practice thought leadership, the value in creating industry
reports, the latest trends in thought leadership as of 2020, how to set up a successful thought
strategy, different ways to measure a thought leadership strategy, and how to get funding through
thought leadership.
1Why is it important to practice thought
leadership as a startup or a scale-up
Establishing yourself as a thought leader can be of great help for any startup or scale-up that wants to
differentiate themselves from competitors. Considering so many startups and scale-ups are notably
investing in their content strategies, positioning yourself as the thought leader can help grow visibility
and lead to a revenue increase.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP FOSTERS TRUSTWORTHINESS
When building your reputation as an expert in your field, consider leveraging your opinion as an
individual/representative of a company to carry greater weight and boost your influence across the
industry. With more than 83% of actual buyers believing thought leadership builds trust in the
organization, using this strategy can be very valuable for your startup or scale-up.
Besides making an impact on your audience and making them more likely to choose you over your
competitor, being a thought leader also helps earn respect from other experts in the field. According to
Edelman, 90% of C-Suite executives referred to strong leadership as an element that increases their
respect and admiration for an organisation.
Just take a look at one of the most influential thought leaders, the co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates.
Although he is world-wide famous, he still regularly posts content on his LinkedIn feed, sharing quality
content that inspires not only tech enthusiasts, but people worldwide.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP IMPROVES YOUR PR & VISIBILITY
Today, we often see many companies resharing a third party’s content, with no personal input. As a
thought leader, you have better chances to build a larger portfolio that can help you differentiate
yourself from competitors and present you as the industry influencer. Your varied portfolio, in this case,
portrays your unique perspective and position you as a leader, rather than a follower.
Being a thought leader can greatly increase the number of PR opportunities you receive. As an
established influencer, your visibility and authority grow organically as more reporters and media
contacts reach out to seek your opinion. With the right endorsement, not only can you receive more
news coverage, but it will also be easier to reach out to reporters for speaking/writing opportunities, as
you will become their go-to resource.
2THOUGHT LEADERSHIP INCREASES SALES AND OPPORTUNITIES
As a startup or scale-up, it may be challenging to share your views on a specific topic as your visibility
may be smaller compared to the industry’s biggest players. As 81.5 percent of firms receive referrals
from people they have not worked directly, this helps understand how important it is to get your
content out there.
If you’re in this position and decide for thought leadership, it could greatly increase opportunities for
creating content that will help build a good reputation and make you a desirable partner. The use of
thought leadership can also help startups and scale-ups increase their sales. According to research
done by the Hinge Research Institute, C-suite executives are willing to pay the highest-profile leaders
over 14 times more than a standard professional, further emphasising benefits of such a strategy.
Moreover, almost 60% of business decision makers said thought leadership can directly lead to closed-
won deals and that it convinced them to buy a product or service they were not thinking about before.
But what activities are thought leaders involved in? Opportunities vary, but many of them include
invitations to speak at events, interviews, podcasts, guest blogs and more. Besides these, as a
renowned thought leader, you have access to a broader network of people and events that may
otherwise be out of your reach.
As a new player in the field, by participating in the conversation, you can build a platform of
connections that will facilitate the formation of collaborations and partnerships, a common challenge
many new companies face.
Besides the aforementioned pieces of content, a useful format that efficiently reflects thought
leadership is an industry report. Forecasting developments within a specific industry, the report can
offer extra value for your customers, help back up your product statements, and be used as a unique
sale asset. Its purpose is to view your business idea in a greater scheme, allowing you to understand
the position of your business relative to other participants, aiming to give you an advantage over the
others.
To help you get a better understanding of the value of creating such reports, we’e brought together its
key assets.
3The value in creating industry reports
for PR and thought leadership
Industry reports are a marketing assessment tool and an important form of analysis. They include
everything that’s happening in the industry, whether that be the demand-supply statistics, the degree
of competition within the industry, future prospects, credit systems, and any external factors that may
affect the business. There’s no one way to complete an industry report; the most popular forms of
conducting industry reports are by SWOT analysis, Porter’s 5 Forces, and the Broad Factors Analysis
(PEST).
SWOT ANALYSIS
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Strengths and weaknesses are to
assess internal factors of your business, the ways in which you are succeeding and ways in which you
could be better. Opportunities and threats, on the other hand, are ways of taking into consideration
external factors, such as analysing what your competitors are doing better than you. An outline is
provided below:
• STRENGTHS: Internal factors of a business which give it an advantage over others.
• WEAKNESSES: Internal factors of a business that make it disadvantageous among competitors.
• OPPORTUNITIES: External factors of a business that may allow it to formulate and integrate strategies
to become more profitable.
• THREATS: External factors of a business that have the potential to endanger the integrity and
profitability of the business.
COMPETITIVE FORCES MODEL (PORTER’S 5 FORCES)
This industry report style was first introduced by American academic, Michael Porter, in his book from
the 1980s, “Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors”. The strategy is
to analyse the following: the intensity of rivalry, the threat of potential entrants, the bargaining power of
suppliers, the bargaining power of buyers, and the potential threat of substitute goods or services.
According to Porter, these five forces will help you get a better impression of the industry that you are
analysing. His formula is very popular and a lot of people implement it as the skeleton of their industry
reports.
4BROAD FACTORS ANALYSIS (PEST)
PEST stands for Political, Economic, Social and Technological. These four components help as a useful
framework for analysing the external environment exclusively. To start off, the political component is
good for researching policies and regulations such as tariffs, trade policies, labor laws, and more. The
economic component, on the other hand, is more for analysing forces that can potentially impact the
economy of your business. This includes researching factors such as inflation, exchange rates, interest
rates, GPD growth rates, ability to access capital, and more. The social aspect refers to industry trends
such as population growth, demographics, and behaviours (i.e. fashion, health, or social movements).
Lastly is the technological component of this equation that incorporates factors such as developments
in technology that can impact the way that a business operates and more importantly, the way that
people live their lives. A good example of a technological component of this magnitude is the invention
of the internet.
Thinking of creating your own industry report? This is how PRLab does it.
1) Brainstorming
The first step in creating a well-rounded industry report should always include a brainstorming session.
The types of questions you should ask yourself include: What value does your industry report bring to
your business? Is it about reporting trends? Will your industry report be used for PR or as a sales asset?
Or are you making efforts to talk about the state of a new term in an industry? In other words, it's about
deciding what angle you want to take with the report and positioning yourself accordingly. We value
this step a lot as it provides a skeleton to the research that we will be conducting.
2) Planning
This is where we think of every little detail that we want to include in our report and also where we
identify who we are researching. Are you reporting to like-minded industry professionals, clients, or
other companies? This kind of question helps deduct our targeted audience and in turn, tailor what kind
of information we want to be providing. It’s important to organise research questions right away
because it’ll make the research part of the process much easier. This is also where you will be deciding
whether the information provided in the industry report will be internal data. If so, in what way will it be
internal? How many people will have access to this information? Decide the level of confidentiality. If
you are deciding for the opposite approach, a more global one, how do you plan on distributing this
content? Maybe a local platform? An example of this is the industry report that we wrote for Paazl that
we decided to distribute on a local platform, de Volkskrant.
53) Researching
The third step is where the actual research begins to happen and where PRLab allocates the time to
get started on it together. The reason why it’s important to have several people doing the analysis is
that research takes longer than you think. It’s not always easy to reach people and information on
websites are not always accurate, making both of these factors a certain degree of unreliable.
Integrating more people and conducting industry reports as a team allows for more hands-on deck to
deal with unreliable factors such as those mentioned previously. For those doing international industry
reports, we highly recommend having translators at your disposal. But be careful when going
international, it is easy to lose the intended focus decided when planning the research questions in step
#2. Don’t think too wide because you put yourself, and your industry report, at risk of losing momentum.
Target, target, target!
4) Analysing
This is the step where you begin to breakdown all of the information that you’ve been collecting. It’s a
crucial step because it adds meaning to your research, research that is not accompanied with
conclusions will lose value. Go into detail, what do all of the numbers mean together? Are there any
similarities or differences between them? Don’t be discouraged if you find out that some of the
information that you collected is redundant or simply unuseful. This is also the step where you figure
out what worked and what didn’t; perhaps you will find out that some new research will have to be
conducted for better results. Or, that your approach has to change entirely, meaning that you might
have to revisit the first two steps. Again, don’t be discouraged.
5) Writing & Design
How you lay out the information of an industry report is also extremely important because it establishes
how it will be consumed. The format in which you are displaying the information has everything to do
with the kind of information you are communicating. First, think about if it will be printed. Should it be in
a brochure format? Should it be in a landscape format? What page size is most appropriate, A4? These
are all important questions to consider while thinking about how you’re going to lay out your text. Be
smart with quotes, perhaps you want to emphasise some more than others? Think of graphics and
pullouts, maybe you want to highlight an interview quote with big bold letters. A fun PRLab fact, given
to us by one of our graphic designers, is that it’s necessary to allow for page “breathers” by allocating a
page every so often with a lot of negative space. The negative space can be interrupted by colours,
illustrations, or pullouts, but it’s important to allow the reader a minute of reflection.
66) Presentation
The way an industry report is presented is extremely important and it’s a step that we value a lot here at
PRLab. It’s about thinking of the report’s distribution, launch, and release. Make a landing page! Do you
want the industry report to be gated or open? If you want it accessible to the community, perhaps
consider including it in an article or blog post. This is a common choice but something that should enter
consideration at the beginning of this whole process so that the marketing and sales end of it is already
in the works. For PR purposes, it’s important that the industry report is linkable, easily accessible, and
shareable - having it live on the website is a good idea but not before pitching it as a story to
publications. Sometimes publications will appreciate the exclusivity of receiving an unpublished report
that can give serious insight to specific industries. Provoking conversations about your report is ideal, let
people have opinions about it and write their own story about it.
WHY IT'S IMPORTANT
Industry reports play an important role as an intersection of public relations (PR), content, sales,
marketing, and overall business-wise. Every sub-section of a business can benefit from one. The PR
team will have a story to pitch, the content team will have a story to write, the sales team will have
profitable information to sell, and the marketing team will have newsworthy data to distribute. It
definitely gives a business an upper hand.
Businesses that conduct industry reports can later use that analysis as a way to market themselves
favourably, as one of a kind, as well as a profitable venture for those who are interested in their services.
In other words, it’s a good way of presenting marketing and sales with deliverables- and if there aren’t
as many deliverables as hoped for, the industry report will point the business in the right direction for
growth and monetisation.
Not only that, but the distribution of an industry report can also become very profitable if done correctly
and if done with those intentions. Publications, in some cases, will pay for an exclusive look at an
industry report, giving them the opportunity to publish completely original content and insights. This is
also a really good way to provoke conversations, an aspect that is very favourable for PR purposes as
well because you’ll get people talking about you and your business. Encouraging opinions about the
research you gathered for your industry report is a positive thing.
Lastly, industry reports are extremely valuable because they are timeless if you keep building on them.
Industry reports aren’t only conducted at the birth of a business, they are also conducted during as well.
This is because they are a good way to evaluate and wage business changes such as new product
integrations. In order to allow for continuity in industry reports, they have to stem off of each other. For
this reason, you will find that many industry reports reference past ones, further highlighting successes
or failures that need to be continued or discontinued.
Now that the value of industry reports and thought leadership have been introduced to help evaluate
business and bring in opportunities let’s dig deeper into the current thought leadership trends to take
into account when devising your content strategy and then how to actually set up a strategy based on
these trends.
7Which thought leadership trends
are expected in 2020?
With an increasing number of companies implementing thought leadership in their content strategies,
to stay afloat, one must always be a step ahead of the game by staying on top of new trends.
BRANDS WILL TAKE A GENUINE APPROACH TO CONTENT CREATION
Before, many B2B and B2C companies believed that creating rational, showcasing content was the way
to go. We still see many companies applying the ‘inside-out’ approach to their content strategy with
many internal stakeholders sharing content based on what they think their audiences want to hear.
Now, what really matters in terms of content are company clients and prospects.
Faced with a huge load of fresh content daily, customers are progressively looking for identifiable
brands that are willing to show their perks and flaws openly. Thought leadership is on the rise and will
increasingly shift content creation to a more genuine approach.
Addressing human aspirations, fears, and struggles will not only be used to differentiate you from
competitors but will also foster trustworthiness with your customers, who won’t see you purely as a
rational decision-maker.
While both B2B and B2C companies adopt more elaborate ways of listening to the needs of their
audiences, many marketers will turn to the implementation of a variety of tools, ranging from social
media sentiment to market research, to find the right content fit. Without shying away from emotions,
the human touch will inherently set the ground for building a deeper relationship with your customers
and a brand with long-term success.
MARKETERS WILL ADOPT A MORE INTEGRATED APPROACH TO
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Before, many marketers considered that thought leadership should be restricted mainly to the top of
the funnel. With content creation in silos, this would easily culminate in misaligned content difficult to
connect with. As we become more aware of these issues, we will witness marketers applying a more
integrated approach to thought leadership content, aiming to implement the strategy throughout the
top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU). By making
connections between the content and building links across different assets, marketers will use thought
leadership as a way to guide their customers through content.
8MARKETERS WILL TURN TO TECHNOLOGY TO IMPROVE THEIR
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP CONTENT
Contrary to the ‘inside-out’ approach to content strategies, marketers will progressively start using data
to create the right type of content. Besides analysing the KPIs of the previously published content, we
will also see the implementation of AI and machine learning to reveal content preferences as the latter
can gather large volumes of data at a fast-pace. From using techniques to analyse open text responses
to AI algorithms that generate follow-up questions, possibilities of data analysis are growing.
Being a thought leader does not only require creating high-quality content but also distributing it to the
right audience. With this in mind, many companies will turn to new tools to analyse their audience, and
share the right content, at the right time. Technology will further help marketers find the right topic that
will resonate with their target, and helps them differentiate from competitors.
MARKETERS WILL TURN TO NEW FORMATS OF CONTENT
With an attention span of only eight seconds, customers are becoming more open to experimenting
with different formats of content. With audio on the rise, podcasts have become the new trend among
audiences, with 40% of the population in the US regularly listening to them. Although only 17% of B2B
marketers have been using it in their strategies so far, this will open doors to many new opportunities.
Living in a fast-paced world, most consumers live for the ‘now’ and want to have the latest, most
relevant content. With this in mind, live streaming as a way of sharing content will become even more
present, giving the audience the chance to participate and get real-time updates on significant matters.
Besides live streaming, adopting a more agile approach to content creation, a trend which has been
present in the last year, is here to stay. Sharing an up-to-date view will resonate more with your
audience and will also encourage engagement on relevant topics, positioning you as a knowledgeable
thought leader. In the past, thought leaders have been avoiding bringing politics in thought leadership,
but in the last year, this has changed as well. Hence, mentioning Brexit, Trump, and trade wars will also
be common references popping out on our LinkedIn feed in 2020.
Being up-to-date as a thought leader will give you a competitive advantage and will help maintain
positive relationships with your audience. Thought leadership can bring your scale-up or startup great
benefits and leverage your presence onto the next level. When developing your content for thought
leadership though, make sure to keep the aforementioned trends in mind as well as your customers.
9Is your content aligned with what you stand for?
Could you lose clients for a particular stance or statement you make, or will this further bolster your
reputation?
Asking yourself these questions can help pick the right communication style that will positively
influence your audience, and avoid any backlashes.
If you’re successful with your thought leadership strategy, many will be interested in hearing your
opinion, and will enthusiastically follow the content you share. Whether it is blogs, guest articles or
podcasts, such pieces of content can provide you with a pool of potential business leads, raise
awareness about your brand, but also create a positive brand image. Such consistency can moreover
increase your exposure and help reach out to new and existing audiences.
To reiterate, thought leadership is a content marketing approach where you or your business use
expertise, passion, and experience to start conversations that are both educational and nurturing to
your audience. Thought leadership is not, and should never be taken as, an opportunity to brag or
insistently push for a product or service of yours or your company’s.
With this in mind, how to set up a successful thought leadership strategy is outlined in 8 key steps
below.
10How to set up a
thought leadership strategy
1) Identify your target’s persona
Oftentimes people forget that being a true leader of thought entails being customer-centric and
requires an exclusive focus on what your target persona is.
Thought leadership should be accessible to all but should not be written for all; specify and identify
your target’s persona first.
Each piece of thought leadership should speak to your audience with as much specificity as possible,
therefore, allowing for clear and concise messaging. This has a lot to do with your thought leader’s own
knowledge of the industry and audience as well. If done correctly, you will be positioning your
organisation as a trusted partner in the world’s tomorrow.
Identifying your target audience or persona is only step one of the whole process, it takes a whole
strategy to successfully adopt the role of a leader of thought.
2) Confidence & Honesty
Confidence matters- it’s important to find ways to have your targeted audience recognise you, or your
company, as a credible leader of thought. Sure, you can boast about your credentials and all that you
have that suggests that people should be listening to you. However, it is better to show, not tell. Show
them reasons to listen to you and to come back to you. Give them reasons to let you start conversations
that matter to them and to decide for themselves to genuinely listen to you.
Confidence plays a big role in this groundwork, in fact, a study done by the American Psychological
Association studied a status-enhancement account of overconfidence and found that simply being
confident can indeed boost your credibility among a targeted audience. This means that if you truly
believe in your potential as a leader of thought, this can translate into a tangible difference.
Employ confidence but don’t fake it until you make it. Honesty is a very important trait that every leader
of thought should honour and respect for the best result and reciprocity from targeted audiences. It ties
in to the trend of brands taking a more genuine approach in their content. For example, do not use
click-bait headlines. Efforts like those are oftentimes perceived as mischievous efforts and will result in
unfavourable opinions and comments about your business- as much as it may drive people to your
products or services, it’s just simply not worth a bad reputation. Think in terms of the long run! Your
content and headlines should always be honest.
113) Determine the thought leaders
Be strategic about who will be the voice -leader of thought- of your brand. The following are good
factors to question or keep in mind when selecting your thought leadership vehicle.
• What is their area of expertise?
• Any “special" credentials?
• Are they members of any particular associations?
• What content or publications do they have to their name?
• What is their social media activity like? (Including video)
• What is their level of public speaking / presenting?
• What is their level of writing?
• Do they have anything in their background that might make them extra appealing or interesting to the
press?
"Thought leaders are people who fully immerse themselves in everything about their industries; they not
only understand the inner workings of their businesses, but they also know their audiences and competitors
to a T.”
-Kelsey Raymond, CEO & Co-Founder of Influence & Co.
4) Don’t be afraid to go against the current
Don’t fear controversy. As mentioned earlier, it is extremely important to remain an honest leader of
thought for the best possible outcomes, and if it means going against the current, do it. In doing so, you
will be solidifying your brand as well as providing a fresh perspective.
5) Design & Editorial Agendas
Create an editorial and design agenda, each consumer experience should be designed accordingly.
White paper designs are most common in the field of thought leadership but aren’t the only types of
material that require design. Don't forget to consider design for infographics, E-Books, case studies,
industry reports, and more. A truly good thought leadership strategy gives importance to the design of
the content before publishing. An even better strategy will have design templates prepared well ahead
of the content.
126) Develop the content marketing plan
Make sure to implement a multi-channel distribution plan, thought leadership content can help brand
awareness if done correctly. Firstly, identify your targeted audience’s watering holes, also known as the
places they go to to find information. Once you’ve identified the watering holes, you can begin to assess
how it is that they prefer to receive information. Is it a video? Or is it a podcast? Entrepreneurs such as
Gary Vee decide on the topic and then re-produce their content to be adapted into other mediums--
such as videos and podcasts or even LinkedIn articles.
Another important element to marketing your content is making sure that you’re attracting organic
traffic with the use of SEO-friendly strategies. Your efforts to implement a thought leadership can
quickly become unsuccessful if your website (or any other digital platform) isn’t generating enough
traffic. Find a balance between the two, that way you can drive organic traffic toward your thought
leadership content and together they can complement each other’s growth.
7) Market Internally, not just externally
To truly communicate a thought leadership persona, your company needs to practice it both externally
but also internally as well. This will solidify the strategy and make sure that it is aligned; thought
leadership is often times the best way to communicate an organisation’s position. Employees that are
clear about the company’s intention will have a clear articulation of the mission and in a way act as a
target audience as well. Reinforce your message in order to confirm your organisation’s commitment to
the underlying ideas not only to your targeted audience but also to your team.
Common internal marketing strategies include the following:
• Educate your team on your company values and goals
• Practice open dialogue and accept any criticism: encourage your team to contribute input into
corporate policies and leadership
• Maintain communication and collaboration amongst your team
• Make sure that your team feels valued and that they are essential to the company’s success
• Open up the company’s products or services to your team to become more involved
138) Measure your impact
This is the most difficult step in the whole strategy because it's essentially about measuring your target
audience’s attention spam. However, do not measure your content’s views as a way to measure your
content’s success, this is erroneous and simply will not give you valid data. It's all about being
perception-centric rather than just content-centric; this kind of measurement can lead to good metrics.
The best kind of measurement for thought leadership is employing the shift from push to pull.
Often times, companies try to push for market webinars, PR announcements about research, social
media buzz, speech requests for conferences, sponsorships, and more, as thought leadership
incentives. If those thought leadership efforts work, then companies will quickly begin receiving
requests for talks, quotes, articles in journals/websites, and more. Consider these requests as an
excellent turnout, your voice-- or your company’s voice-- is being requested and involved into the
conversation.
Another form of push and pull will come from your followers and fans. If your conversations, services, or
products reach your audience enough, you will generate loyalty from your audience. The real
measurement of success is when those followers and fans advocate for you as an organisation, not just
as a product or service, but as an experience that they want friends and family, to be a part of. In that
case, the thought leadership strategy that you have employed can be considered a success.
The truth is that it is notoriously difficult to measure the impact of thought leadership strategies. We
urgently need thought leadership as a way to add value to our content, products, and services all over
the world. However, the longer we fail in tracking these strategies’ outcomes, the harder it’s becoming
to prove the validity of thought leadership to companies. Without being able to prove the validity of a
thought leadership strategy, companies will begin to experience a deficit in innovation and this adds an
even greater importance to establishing ways to measure outcomes.
For this reason, we’ve provided you with five of the best ways we’ve found to measure a thought
leadership strategy:
145 ways to measure your
thought leadership strategy
1) Monitor Website Traffic
This is the most classic approach to measuring your thought leadership strategy. What’s the first thing
you do when you’ve found interest in a company? You check their website.
Then, the more you grow your voice and reputation both online and offline, the higher the influx of
people you will see approaching your website
Monitor the website traffic monthly and create reports based on that timeline. If your company hosts
any special events or does networking, make sure to take a look at your website for any spikes in online
traffic during those periods. This will help you evaluate your outside efforts as an organisation and can
also result in time and money efficiency.
As you are monitoring the users accessing your website, make sure to pay attention to where they are
coming from. What are the traffic sources and why are they coming to you? As a leader of thought, it’s
also extremely beneficial to keep up a strong social media presence - individually or as a company. If
this is the case for you, take notice of the amount of traffic coming to the website from your social
media platforms.
On top of monitoring website traffic monthly and keeping up with the sources, it’s essential to see
where users are going to on your website. For example, if the website traffic is mostly directed to your
blog, make sure to compliment this traffic by increasing blog posts and sharing them on social media
platforms in order to furthermore increase their visibility.
2) Count Social Media Followers
Social media followers are a good measurement of influence, especially in our modern-day media
landscape.
Be realistic about your social media following; it is uncommon to experience a spike in followers
overnight but regardless it’s important to monitor any kind of growth. Why? Because it can provide
insight into the kinds of posts that need either more or less attention.
Most social media platforms or third-party apps offer ways to track reach and growth. Taking a look at
these statistics can help you understand your following and allows you to know which groups are better
to target based on their gender, age, and whereabouts.
15If you notice a platform taking off more than others, make sure to put additional time and energy into its
growth because those followers will most likely trickle into your other platforms.
It’s also good to see what kind of social media posts do better. Let’s say that you obtain more views on
your stories on Instagram than you do likes on your feed posts. In that case, perhaps the more
important content should be disseminated across your stories. Listen to what your followers are trying
to tell you and plan or act accordingly. Key your eye out for incremental growth.
3) Make Note of Branded Queries
Branded queries are when people look for something with your brand’s name through a search engine
such as Google. Basically, it is any search result specific to your brand.
They are among the most important keywords to optimise because they represent a brand-aware
audience that is more likely to continue searching for your product and tip-off the point of conversion
and become a potential customer. In fact, most of the time they are already customers searching to
repurchase your product.
Thought leadership and branded queries are intimately linked. Indeed, the Edelman-LinkedIn survey
found that 60% of decision-makers said thought leadership convinced them to buy a product or service
they were not previously considering and that almost 60% of business decision-makers believe thought
leadership directly led to their awarding of business to an organisation.
By conducting a branded search audit, you can better track your thought leadership strategy. The more
searches you receive, the higher you rank in the search results, thus more people are talking about
you/your brand, ultimately meaning that your thought leadership influences more people.
One way you can make note of your branded queries is through Google Search Console who measures
your site's Search traffic and performance, fix issues, and improve your site’s visibility in Google Search
results. By taking note of this data you can easily track your branded queries.
4) Track Backlinks
Backlinks are links on other company’s websites that reference your site, and therefore redirect people
to your website.
Sit with your team and decide upon a monthly or quarterly goal in terms of how many backlinks you
collectively want to gain. Backlinks help SEO efforts and help build your brand’s credibility; it helps with
credibility because it shows approval and a sort of alliance with other companies. In other words,
backlinks are like a vouching system that help establish authority and affiliations amongst
complementary companies.
16Keep in mind that some sites might have mentioned your company but have not necessarily linked it.
What do you do in this case? Sometimes the best thing you can do is just ask.
There are tools out there that help track who has mentioned your site but hasn’t linked it back to you. A
highly recommendable tool to provide you with this kind of service is SEMrush. Once you’ve identified
who has mentioned your brand but hasn’t linked it, contact that company with a link to a page that
you’d like them to attach to their mention of you. This way you earn another backlink for your monthly or
quarterly goal.
5) Creating Google Alerts
Google alerts is a great resource that allows you to track specific keywords.
Google Alerts’ biggest asset is reputation management. Just by installing, you are now on top of every
mention your business gets right away. It also lets you check how many events you’re invited to speak
at.
It is also a useful way to keep tabs on your industry. Indeed, by monitoring the web for terms that are
theme-specific, you can discover new competitors, potential clients, and keep up to date with
everything happening in your field.
While it’s great to know what is being said about you, it is also important to know who is saying
something similar to you as well. Google trends can help you find media outlets that are utilising
specific terms that are related to your thought leadership, therefore giving you the opportunity to make
connections and perhaps get published.
By using google alerts to keep track of all this data, you can easily measure your thought leadership.
While it is often overlooked, thought leadership is a key component in marketing. It is indeed hard to
measure your influence, it is important to set goals and frequently check in on your statistics in order to
know where to focus your resources.
So by now we’ve introduced the importance of thought leadership, dug deeper into the value of
creating industry reports, outlined the top trends in thought leadership for 2020, taught you how to set
up your own thought leadership strategy, and how to measure that strategy. Amongst all this, the last
topic is still the most daunting: finding funding.
Even in 2020, the odds really are stacked against being a startup. Creating a new innovative product,
building a team, and competing with the current market make success difficult. Odds are at some point
a startup will need someone to float some cash in order for them to keep the doors open.
17How thought leadership can
help you get funding
The struggles that go along with funding contribute to why 90% of startups fail. That is why it is more
important than ever for startups or scale-ups to establish themselves as thought leaders in their
industry. Here is how thought leadership can be utilised in helping you get funding.
SHOW YOUR EXPERTISE
VCs (venture capital) are not unfamiliar to an elevator pitch. They regularly have some product pushed
in their face claiming to be the next “thing”. That is why it is important for startups and scale-ups to
stand out and show that they are not just one company with a product in a competitive industry, they
are THE authoritative voice.
A study on 885 VC’s showed that they are attracted to experts in an industry and will be determined to
figure out whether your startup is just that. They want to make sure that a startup knows more about
their subject than the rest of the market to avoid competition failure. A question they should be asking
themselves to ensure this is: How is my company taking charge in the industry?
One way to accomplish this is by making content and conducting research that shows your expertise in
your industry. What are some innovative approaches in your industry? What are the problems that your
industry is facing? What are the societal problems your industry is looking to solve? Doing this shows
your audience, your competitors, and current/potential VC’s that this industry is not just something you
stumbled upon. It is something you know the ins and outs of.
Aside from showing your expertise, you are also immersing yourself in the industry and connecting with
your competitors.This can be extremely useful in making contact, and finding the right investors who
might be interested in your business. Before being able to show VC's what makes you stand out, you
have to actually get them to sit down and listen to you first.
SPREAD YOUR INFLUENCE
A world without trust is a one that does not function. Imagine going into a restaurant and not trusting
anything on the menu. Why would we even go out at all? Trust is also one of the most coveted traits of
any leader and any business.
Take the world's largest toy brand, Lego. Since it began making the interlocking building bricks,
everyone has loved and trusted their brand. That is why energy tycoon Shell sought out a deal with
them in the 1960’s to boost their own credibility. So when Greenpeace targeted their relationship in
2011, Lego dropped their deal with Shell and no one batted an eye. Had they been a company with a
lesser reputation, it’s possible they would have fallen victim to immense criticism.
18This type of trust is something a startup should aim for. VC’s understand that as a thought leader, your
influence has far reach. What you say matters and people take notice. What is one way to improve your
startups trust? Well almost 90% percent of business decision makers believe that thought leadership
increases the brands reputation and buyers trust in the brand.
Take notes and learn from social media and Mark Zuckerberg’s mistakes. When the data crisis struck
Facebook, the boss in charge failed to be honest and tried to cover up the company's wrong doing.
While Facebook was large enough to withstand the serious backlash they faced, this is not always the
case. A lack of trust can be the undoing of a company, from a green washing campaign to data breach.
That is why it is important to build it quick and maintain it.
When VC’s find that your brand is trusted, it alleviates concerns about your startup's resilience to
withstand controversy and avoidance to a potential crisis. They understand that a trusted company is
one that succeeds. So create content that is transparent, open, and authentic. Be consistent with what
you say and do not be deceptive.
19Conclusion
With these tools to set up a successful thought leadership strategy, the only step left is
implementation. Transformation-driven thought leaders are vehicles of desired societal changes and
help shape these views into new realities. These are the kinds of leaders we want to be empowering
and educating into today’s top thought leaders. They are known for articulating visions that unlock
conventional ways of thinking, like Steve Jobs from Apple or Elon Musk from Tesla. Elon Musk made an
unimaginable concept, like affordable electric cars among many other things, into a reality.
It’s a good move to have a balance between a strategic logic and a transformative one- communication
executives need to make note of this.
A balanced approach would be to simulate leaders to, “articulate and live up to their novel viewpoints,
contribute to a culture that encourages unorthodox thinking and progressive action, and develop
accountability measures that merge both types of logic.” - Mignon Van Halderen
Funding is such one of the many possible outcomes through practicing thought leadership. New
speaking opportunities, engagement workshops, and increased sales are also positive side effects of
practicing thought leadership. There are so many reasons as to why it is important. We’ve discussed
some of the key tools you’ll need to set up and be successful in creating your thought leadership
strategy such as industry report resources, the latest trends in thought leadership, and different
measurement methods.
Are you ready to take your
thought leadership strategy to the
next level?
Curious about what to do to bring your content strategy to the next level? Or how
to get started in setting up your thought leadership?
Get in touch with the PRLab team
and let’s make it happen!
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