29 Apr This one common mistake kills good thought leadership
I’ve seen the following happen a few times and it’s something that kills the value our clients get out of their thought leadership.
Here’s the scenario, we work with a client to help them develop a unique thought leadership platform that aligns with what they’re trying to do as a company, is aimed at the audiences they want to reach, and doesn’t overlap with the competition, so they can say something unique.
But how those insights are shared is often where we see the thought leadership lemon not get properly squeezed.
All too often I see a thought leadership report get shared on the website, once on social media, and via a press release. Then the client moves on, the thought leadership doesn’t get as much engagement as they hoped it would. Despite creating a piece of thought leadership that is informative and valuable the ROI just isn’t there.
Here are my two tricks to fix the one and done thought leadership that is killing your ROI,
Are you ready?
-Atomization
-Integration
Let’s break it down.
Atomization:
A typical thought leadership report will have between 10-50 bite-sized insights. Atomization is about realizing you don’t have 1 piece of thought leadership you have 30, and of that 30 about 10 are, “Oh wow, I wish I knew that sooner!” insights for your audiences. A great dissemination strategy can look like developing short social media posts around each insight and using it as a hook to generate interest to read your longer form content. With research showing that you have 3 seconds to hook your viewers attention, short form insights with great hooks are more important than ever.
Integration:
By pairing those atomized insights with the right teams, other departments can extract more value from the research. Maybe marketing takes one insight and incorporates it into their messaging, sales take another two and incorporate them into their pitch and the CEO takes another and uses it to substantiate the company vision in an interview.
The purpose of the research we do is not to create thought leadership, but to create thought leaders. By sharing the most valuable parts of thought leadership with the right teams it positions everyone in the company as thought leaders.
If you would like help developing or getting more value out of your thought leadership, please reach out via the contact form.