What distinguishes a good company from a great company? The answer, as I’ll reveal in this article, is thought leadership.
Today, it is not simply enough for your company to have great products and services in order to distinguish itself as a leader in its market. Your company must strive to exceed expectations and surprise your customers with free, useful and easily-sharable content that they can’t get anywhere else.
People invest their money in organizations they trust. Thought leadership is the concept of earning and managing people’s trust via forward thinking – not just following the industry trends, but by shaping them. The content you produce via your thought leadership program conveys that your company is smart, understands the market very well, and is a valuable organization with which to do business.
To further understand thought leadership, we must also define what it is NOT. Thought leadership content never directly promotes products or services. Instead, it promotes ideas and new thinking.
In order to earn a thought leadership position in the market, your company must begin thinking along the lines of a magazine publisher and develop an editorial plan to reach customers and prospects with focused content delivered in the media formats they prefer. This content includes news releases, blog articles, e-books, videos, etc.
Great thought leadership helps turn customers into a potential army of sales people, all promoting their company to family, friends and networks, because they are inspired to do so by its content.
In future blog articles, I will discuss several programs which can help your company evaluate the information needs of its customers and prospects, as well as deliver targeted content designed to satisfy those needs and inspire content sharing that drives the word-of-mouth marketing effort.
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