Select Smart Thought Leadership Topics to Get Your Company Noticed

If there were a single, cardinal rule of communication, it would be this: show, don’t tell. Trite, perhaps, but nonetheless true. No amount of self-praise that a marketer can conjure up will ever hold a candle to merely saying, “Here, look for yourself.” That is precisely why thought leadership is such an effective marketing strategy. 

Known also as expertise marketing, thought leadership refers to putting a company’s knowledge and experience on display by giving their audience a free sample. Thought leaders market with solutions, not promises.

The idea is that a prospect who finds genuine value in the content that a company puts out will be inclined to pay for more; they already know it’s worth their dime. Two things must be true for this to work. First, the business must address the kind of complex issues that need sophisticated and insightful solutions. Second, the company must speak to the right topic at the right time. Below is a brief guide to doing the latter.

What Makes a Good Topic?

The basic components of a good thought leadership topic are timeliness and relevance. Without timeliness—that is, topics that are either currently trending among the target audience or consistently of interest—no respectable publication will be willing to publish the company’s content. Without relevance—that is, topics that align with the company’s expertise—even placed content will do the company little good beyond search engine optimization (SEO).

Trends are what drive media coverage, and riding the waves of popular interest are the surest way to land content on platforms that prospects are reading, listening to, and watching. In-demand topics are favored by journalists and have the advantage of potential buyers seeking out the content, rather than the other way around. Companies must keep an eye on breaking news, market shifts, and oft-searched keywords within their industry to inform the topics they consider.

To make the content worthwhile, however, the topic must also fit within the company's broader growth strategy. Choosing topics that fall within the company’s expertise and, more specifically, the area of expertise in which they see their greatest opportunities for growth, will make the content authoritative, noticeable, and uniquely valuable to decision makers. Peripheral topics are far less likely to attract readers who are interested in the company’s core offerings, even if they are useful and well-conveyed.

Weighing Viable Options

There is usually more than one topic that falls on the intersection of timeliness and relevance for a given company. The next step, then, is to strategically prioritize the list of viable options. This is a simple process: the focus of each topic is compared to the direction of growth that the company is currently prioritizing. If a topic is perfectly aligned with the overarching strategy, it is high-priority. The further it deviates, the less urgent it is.

Practically, this means identifying—if the company has not done so already—which area of its expertise has the most potential to increase market share. Topics that do not fall within that area of expertise can still be valuable, but they should never be pursued at the expense of a topic that does. Even if a marketing firm is knowledgeable about advertising, for instance, they may see greater returns on investment from writing about reputation management if that is their competitive advantage.

Vendor Neutrality

Companies must bear in mind that all earned-media—as opposed to paid media—must be vendor neutral in order to be accepted by an editor. This means that the company must be very careful to avoid self-referencing in any way, including mentions of its name and any brand-specific products or benefits. The goal of a thought leadership campaign is not covert advertising. Rather, thought leadership content should represent a genuine effort to solve the prospect’s problems as though they were already a client. The value will speak for itself, and there will always be a boilerplate paragraph at the end of the piece with more information for the interested reader.

Bottom Line

Thought leadership is one of the most compelling tools in the public relations arsenal. In a business landscape where everyone sings their own praises, a company that is willing to put its expertise forward and let the audience decide for themselves will earn credibility with their readers and build long-lasting relationships. A prospect with firsthand experience of the company’s value comes to the table with gratitude, respect, and a mind made up on their own terms.