Your content can lead an audience to a fountain of knowledge, but what are you really asking them to swallow?
Jonathan Crossfield explains why “thought leader” is not just a badge any marketer can claim for their content – it’s a distinction that needs to be built on proven expertise and validated by your audience.
By Jonathan Crossfield
I’ve never been comfortable with our industry’s obsession with thought leadership.
The aspiration itself isn’t a bad thing. Thought leadership is about building authority and trust – quite useful when your job is to persuade people to buy your products.
I get why content marketing briefs or strategies might list “thought leadership” as a goal. However, I question the methods brands often use when pursuing it, as well as how they go about proving they’ve achieved it.
Thought leadership is in the eye of the beholder
Who doesn’t want to be seen by their audience as worthy of trust and leading in thought? For example, after more than (eek) 10 years, writing this column still gives me a warm tingle inside.
It’s validation that my ideas aren’t entirely worthless; that I’m not just shouting at clouds; that my advice and way of thinking may occasionally even be worth following.
But does that make me a thought leader? Don’t ask me.
Bill Gates is a thought leader. John Cleese is a thought leader. Ariana Huffington is a thought leader. But they didn’t set out to be thought leaders.
People want to hear what they have to say because of what they achieved in their chosen fields. Thought leadership was bestowed upon them by an audience eager to learn how they did what they did, understand their thinking, and be inspired by their stories.
Whenever I see brands claim thought leadership, or Twitter or LinkedIn bios that describe the account owner as a thought leader, I want to reach through the screen, shake them by the shoulders, and shout, “You don’t get to say that! It’s not up to you!”
Only the audience gets to choose whose ideas are worth following. If you have to tell people you’re a thought leader, I’m betting you ain’t one. That’s not how it works.
When thought leadership is claimed as something you do — an activity or goal — instead of a natural by-product of what you actually do, the value proposition it represents becomes distorted.
When you claim to 'do' thought leadership, instead of it organically resulting from what you actually do, its value becomes distorted.
How have you earned the authority to lead?
Aristotle was definitely a thought leader. Though he wasn’t the first to unpick, analyze, and write down the rhetorical techniques used by the greatest orators in Athens, his writings (arguably) provide the best framework to understand the art of persuasion.
I still find Aristotle’s three appeals (or pillars) of rhetoric useful when planning content:
That last one's relevant here.
Roughly translated from Ancient Greek, ethos is akin to “character,” either of a person or of an entire culture, community, or group. While it was the latter sense of the word that entered the English language, it is the former — the character or reputation of the individual — that Aristotle wanted to highlight.
In short, ethos is the building block of thought leadership. How you represent yourself, your reputation, and your authority on a given topic contributes to whether it persuades your audience to follow your advice. The greater your authority, the more weight your words will carry.
Or, rather, your perceived authority.
Is there a con game afoot?
If a snake-oil salesman can convince people that he knows things the audience doesn’t, then whether the product he's hawking does what he claims may be a moot point. Those people will believe him and buy it anyway.
Yup, you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room; you only have to convince other people you are. Ethos gives your claims, as Stephen Colbert once put it, that whiff of “truthiness.”
The parallels to marketing are obvious. We are in the persuasion industry. We want our target audience to believe our claims and trust our expertise.
And that’s why pursuing thought leadership as a content goal or tactic makes me feel uneasy. It’s seeking power for power's sake, to bolster trust in your claims, which “kinda sorta” suggests those claims might not be as trustworthy otherwise.
Pursuing thought leadership as a content goal is seeking the power to claim you have the power to make trustworthy claims.
I doubt most marketers would view their own thought leadership tactics quite so cynically. But our industry is certainly capable of going after a goal or KPI in such a single-minded way that tactics can become detached from what should always be the primary goal – providing value to the audience. Anyone who has ever seen content quality routinely sacrificed on the altar of SEO knows what I’m talking about.
Here’s where that becomes a problem: When brands approach thought leadership as a commodity, they’re inevitably tempted to rely heavily on shortcuts and templatized processes:
Our industry publishes content like this every day believing it to be thought leadership. It’s not. It’s reheated leftovers.
That commoditized mindset also leads brands to outsource the creation of some — or all — of their thought leadership content. But can you really outsource ethos?
How are your leading thoughts sourced?
Imagine the headlining keynote speaker at Content Marketing World walks onto the stage, accepts the applause, and then introduces someone you’ve never heard of to deliver the address for them. You’d feel cheated, right?
That’s why you should always be clear about your thought leadership content strategy. Will it showcase the genuine expertise that exists within your organization, or provide a platform where commissioned third parties do the thinking for you?
Sponsoring others’ expertise is a popular approach that often succeeds. And I’ve been involved with many such content projects and hubs that rely on external writers or creators. However, I’ve also turned down requests to write this kind of content in cases where the brand wanted to take all the credit.
Ghostwriting for CEOs and the like is fine – if the client tells me what they want to say. But it is definitely not fine if the client wants to pass off my ideas and insights as belonging to the brand – or worse, run them under someone else’s byline.
It’s a bit like a baker putting a store-bought cake in their shop window; either because they were too busy to create their own display or lacked the skills to match its quality.
Thought leadership content needs thought leaders to produce it. Unfortunately, while the agencies and external writers you might contract with are experts in their field (content creation), it’s unlikely that they will be leading experts in your field.
Finding a strong, affordable writer who is also an expert on a niche or highly technical industry topic – and is available to write regularly for your brand – can be like hunting the proverbial unicorn.
And, if you are lucky enough to find a unicorn to hire, be prepared to pay extra. You’re not just paying for their skill with words but also their years of experience, specialized insight, and perhaps even their IP.
That’s what your content needs for the audience to recognize it as truly thought-leading.
If you can’t find (or afford) a unicorn, don’t panic. With the right approach, you can create your own – and I don’t mean by taping a paper cone to a horse.
Building a unicorn
By now, it should be obvious that I believe thought leadership should come from within the business. Here’s why:
Ten years ago, I was in charge of content and social media marketing for a cloud hosting business. While I understood the general concepts and some of the technical details involved in cloud computing, I was far from an expert.
Our customers, on the other hand, were software developers, sysadmins, and CIOs – highly technical, typically distrustful of marketing, and certainly more knowledgeable about their industry than I would ever be.
This presented a problem: How could I offer genuine thought leadership on the topics that mattered most to these customers? Why should they trust a technical white paper written by the least technical person in the building?
I was surrounded by internal subject matter experts, but they weren’t writers – nor were they paid to be. Therefore, I needed to find ways to identify, extract, polish, and showcase the talent and insights sitting just a few desks away.
Our solution was to adopt a collaborative process that made content creation an organization-wide activity. It enabled us to give voice to the cleverest people in our business without placing the burden of content creation on their shoulders.
The monthly staff meeting included a call for ideas from everyone, in every department. We followed up on the best ideas with a chat or short interview, where I’d gather as much detail, context, and perspective from the subject matter expert as possible.
I might have chosen the words and crafted them into stories; but the data, insights, and advice were all theirs. The bylines were theirs too, with the brand benefiting from the kudos of having these highly talented experts on the payroll.
Here's where all these thoughts have led me
Yes, thought leadership is hard, which is why it’s tempting to find shortcuts, hacks, and outsourced talent to do all the original thinking and research for you.
Stop doing thought leadership. Genuine thought leadership comes from within, not without. It draws attention to what you do, not what you say. Above all, thought leadership is earned, not churned.
Anyway, that’s what I think. What about you?CCO
Jonathan Crossfield describes himself as a storyteller because writer, editor, content strategist, digital marketer, journalist, copywriter, consultant, trainer, speaker and blogger wouldn’t fit neatly on a business card. Jonathan has won awards for his magazine articles and blog posts on digital marketing, but that was so long ago now it seems boastful to keep mentioning it in bios. Jonathan lives in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, Australia, still trying to perfect the art of writing about himself in the third person. Follow Jonathan on Twitter @Kimota.
