Thought Leadership, Blogs, Ed Ops and Opinion Pieces
This came back to me again recently as I met a colleague in another industry and after explaining we spend a lot of time drafting thought leadership for clients, she asked me ‘What exactly is a thought leadership piece?’. Thought leadership, editorial opportunities (if you are journalist side), opinion pieces whatever you call them, they are a key to your brand’s arsenal of communications.
More than ever ensuring that clients understand your brand’s point of difference, the depth of your experience and expertise of your team is essential, especially in recessionary times when budgets are limited and value for money becomes even more a priority.
So, what is thought leadership? It is actual what it says on the tin - thoughts from leaders. However, simple that sounds, there is a skill to making thought leadership engaging, interesting to peers and something that people want to read.
1. Make it your own: if there is a one rule to follow when it comes to copy, it is to make it your own opinion. Leaders don’t normally have a problem with having an opinion, but often when they write they tend to feel more comfortable backing someone else’s thoughts or just repeating them. Having your own opinion, saying something different, is what makes you stand out, what makes people want to work with you.
2. Make it stand up: Having an opinion is great. But substantiating it is even better. This could be done though examples, great way of weaving in a project you might be working on, or through statistics, or just running the opinion through to a likely conclusion.
3. Make it short, but not too short: remember that thought leadership is not a thesis or your final year University dissertation. It is good to be thorough in your opinion but making it a 5,000 read will limit your audience and only really attract those probably already invested in the subject. Up to 650-800 words is normally a good length to get your views across.
4. Make it accessible: back to my first ever job, using industry language if you are looking for a broader audience will mean expecting readers to google words or industry phrases along the way, losing the thread of your argument. Make it clear and simple.
5. Make it interesting: with some estimating that the average person sees up to 5,000 messages across their day, you need to grab attention and hold it. Giving your copy a title that will entice readers in, using storytelling techniques to help them relate to examples and having headers or breaking the copy into bullet points will all help the reader. All these things can be learnt and good communication consultants – like us!
Far from a nice to do, thought leadership signposts people, whether that is potential clients or potential members of staff – and brings an understanding about who you are and what you stand for as well as promoting your services and brand. Which of course is the first step on a relationship – whether that is a client/supplier/consultant or employee/er.
Pix with thanks to Yannick Pulver