Elevate Thought Leadership to New Levels

A brand’s path to thought leadership is a simple one: Demonstrate mastery of a technology, discipline or business issue through insightful, easy-to-digest and consistent content.

Do that well, leveraging a variety of distribution channels (i.e., web sites, webinars, social, speaking sessions, media mentions), and it won’t be long before your brand is viewed as a trusted source of relevant information and an authority on one or more subjects.

The payoff, of course, is that the trust and confidence your industry knowledge generates will propel your products and services into a new and positive light.

Even though the recipe for thought-leadership success is a simple one, few technology companies these days seem to be focused on cooking up a portfolio of collateral that separates them from the competition. Even fewer are willing to take the next step: a Michelin-star-worthy thought-leadership initiative that will engender world-class customer loyalty.

Here are two ways to push your thought-leadership profile to the next level that I’ve had success with.

The Knowledge Hub

What if you had a single source, one URL to visit, for exploring all things relevant to your hobbies, passions or livelihood? That’s essentially the mission of a knowledge hub, a collection of collateral and interactions dedicated to being the definitive source of information and authority on a single topic.

If hiking is your thing, imagine a web site where you could not only find trail maps and inside information about terrain, inclines, accessibility and skill level, but also tap into related knowledge, like breakthroughs in hiking equipment, the latest apparel and what-to-do when encountering wildlife.

That’s a bookmark no-brainer, especially if you don’t need to navigate a flurry of product pitches to get to the content.

A knowledge hub is akin to a special-interest magazine with an editorial mandate to provide like-minded enthusiasts with relevant information. The big difference being the absence of ads and sponsorships from businesses offering services or products targeted at the magazine’s readership.

And we’re not just talking digital, here. One of the first and still-thriving knowledge hubs actually predates the Internet by about a hundred years. In 1895, John Deere began distributing The Furrow, a print publication dedicated to farmers and others whose livelihoods were tied closely to agriculture. 

Rather than fill The Furrow’s pages with images of tractors, plows and other John Deere products, the magazine offers practical advice and insight into everything related to growing and nurturing crops.

Millions of farmers were dedicated The Furrow readers as early as the 1910s, establishing John Deere as the most trusted name in farm equipment in the United States. Need a new tractor? Why look any further than the brand that’s been helping you increase yields and maximize your profitability for years — asking essentially nothing in return.

Harvesting the loyalty of businesses more narrowly focused than farming can be a bit more challenging, but the concept and practices are the same. A knowledge hub can be aimed at a specific role, like human resources, marketing, cybersecurity or sustainability, that is common to nearly all businesses of an appreciable size. They can also be dedicated to a specific business sector, such as aviation, fashion or telecommunications.

The knock on knowledge hubs? The investment they require. Bankrolling the resources to continuously create, curate and distribute content that doesn’t directly promote a brand’s products is not exactly an easy sell to stakeholders who are unaware of the strategic and financial benefits of being a recognized industry thought leader. 

Industry Survey

One way to ratchet up your thought-leadership ranking with limited resources is an annual industry survey. Unlike the knowledge hub, surveys can often be managed by in-house marketing personnel and incorporated into an existing editorial calendar. If done well, an audience-participation survey and the resulting report can be tackled similarly to other long-form content — think a meticulously researched and written eBook or webinar.

But the benefits, reputation-wise, can be dramatic.

Everybody loves data-driven content. Industry surveys, if done the right way, i.e., without bias and in compliance with acceptable industry standards, can yield a treasure trove of data points that can be spotlighted to anchor or introduce other thought-leadership collateral.

The survey’s major appeal, though, is the positive association it brings to the brand. Most companies appreciate knowing what their peers are up to and which way the industry is leaning in terms of innovation adoption and other trends. Get media and analysts to cite your findings and the survey’s credibility advances to a new level.

Like any type of thought-leadership content, an industry survey must be executed with precision to accomplish its goals. Subject matter expertise, capturing relevant data, screening for qualified participants and analyzing results with impartiality are just a few of the critical requirements of a meaningful and successful industry survey.

(A complete list of survey best practices and procedures requires a dedicated article, which I will deliver soon.)

Building up your thought leadership pedigree through knowledge hubs or annual industry surveys is nothing new or radical. They are instruments of positive disruption that B2B and B2C brands have been leveraging for decades.

If you’re got the right personnel, backed by sufficient resources, your brand is just a knowledge hub or industry survey away from soaring into the rarified air of thought-leadership greatness.