And how you can use it to benefit your business

Thought leadership is often mistaken for being exclusively long form articles with depth, detail, and crucially, content that takes lots of research to curate, but it doesn’t have to be the case. Thought leadership can take any form that allows you to demonstrate your credibility, knowledge and expertise.

Comments on existing content, responding to opportunities to contribute and providing data, advice and information all falls under the thought leadership umbrella. By making thought leadership an active part of your communications plan, you can position your brand as more knowledgeable, active and trusted than your competitors.

Forbes.com says: “Thought leadership helps businesses build a trusting relationship with potential customers they don’t even know are considering their brand.

“It is all about becoming an expert in your field, becoming the brand that people turn to when they need answers about the sort of products and services you sell.”

The great thing about thought leadership is that from the outside, your content will read as specialist and in-depth, but you often don’t need to dedicate additional research to this as you already have the necessary expertise to curate worthwhile content. Your company reports and intelligence otherwise used to inform your business decisions is what the basis of thought leadership often consists of. Years of experience in knowing your audience and sector provides valuable opinion to back up statistics.

Once you have your data to hand, your understanding of what led to it and what it means for your industry and audience is what elevates your position to talk about it.

A great example of this is the The Halifax House Price Index – a resource often used by the media as a reliable source for comment again and again. This provides the media with the core information it needs to fulfil its own content aims, while showcasing Halifax as the leader in its industry. This kind of thought leadership is exactly what brands should be aiming for – content that is so useful by nature that the media can’t help but use it.

We created something similar for Westfield Health, The Wellbeing Index, and conducted research on a quarterly basis to produce in-depth, quarterly reports on the state of the nation’s wellbeing, at home and in the workplace. This drove a consistent drumbeat of coverage for the healthcare provider, maintained its commercial momentum and built brand fame.

What could thought leadership look like for your brand?

• Research and data owned by you, published as a go-to for the media

• Opinion pieces – this could be a controversial, new or affirming opinion on a set topic

• Comment – either on existing content or in response to the media’s needs for expertise

• Long form feature – a chance for a more in-depth content piece for target platforms or publications

• Interview – a chance to profile your brand specifically to a chosen audience

Of course, while thought leadership content is easier to curate for you than someone outside of your corporate circle, dedicating the time to doing it well and on a regular basis is often more than what most brands can commit to.

When you consider thought leadership as part of your PR, it becomes a natural extension of the work already being done to profile your brand, and visibly strengthens it too.

So really, the question is not whether to use thought leadership as part of your content strategy or not, but whether your comms is being let down if it doesn’t include it.

If you’re not sure whether your PR currently includes thought leadership, ask your PR manager or agency contact today. If that’s a role you don’t have occupied yet, but this article has made you wonder how you could benefit from thought leadership or other forms of PR, get in touch for an initial chat. We’ll be happy to give you a run-down of how it could fit into your business.

Find us here.