What is a thought leader?
An inspiring CEO can be a huge asset for the organisations that they lead. A leader considered a recognised ‘thought leader‘ can be a highly attractive proposition to potential investors, customers and talent. A CEO’s positive public image creates benefits for the individual – but can also directly linked to the stability and value of a business and it’s power to lead a market.
Drawing on our experience working with CEOs and senior leaders from a range of scaling and well-established global businesses, here are our top tips on how to create a thought leadership strategy.
Our top tips on how to create a thought leadership strategy
Review the landscape and identify where your leadership needs to be
Before embarking on any thought leadership campaigns, it’s critical to first review the industry landscape across earned, owned, social and paid channels. Where are the key conversations about your industry taking place, and who is driving the conversation? Benchmark your – and competitors’ – current performance and conduct a holistic audit of the channels that will genuinely drive influence with your stakeholders. Reviewing competitor activity is a good place to start, but bear in mind your specific stakeholder groups: focus on which channels will be most effective for engaging your reaching influencers, investors, partners, employees or potential clients.
Establish your key talking points
Once you have analysed the best channels to reach your audience, you need to confidently establish which messages and talking points that you want to promote within your strategic communications. You won’t grab people’s interest or carve out a place in the landscape if you’re just repeating what others are saying: get some expert, unbiased guidance from outside of your business to get into the detail of your opinions, your expertise, your thoughts – personal and professional – and help shape your message.
There are certain topics that CEOs will be more confident talking on than others. There should be a blend here between big-picture industry topics through to more granular, detail-oriented analysis. You can then map these topics against the audiences they are most relevant for and therefore, the channels that they will be best distributed through.
Deploy social media strategically
Social media can be a highly effective tool for CEOs to establish themselves as trusted thought leaders. LinkedIn’s algorithm prioritises individual rather than company pages so sharing content from your CEOs channel can be an effective tactic to generate engagement with your brand. Engaging with other thought leaders’ posts in the form of comments or shares can be a simple way to grow your network and in turn, broaden your reach.
While it can be a challenge to find the time to write long-form content, consistency is the key to generating sustained engagement from a growing audience. Trusted agency partners or communications teams can often support with this content development and will also have the skills required to develop posts and articles that are suitable for driving engagement on the platform.
Expert commentary and op-eds
Commenting on relevant, breaking news stories relating to their expertise can be an effective way for CEOs to secure a prominent position in the media. While it might start as just one quote in a wider article, becoming a trusted source of insight for journalists may open the door to longer form opinion and contributed article opportunities.
Agility, speed and existing media relationships are usually the key to securing these reactive opportunities. Your thought leadership media strategy should cover a range of media outlets that are relevant for each of your audience demographics as a business.
Capitalising on podcasts as a content format
Alternative media is growing in influence for CEOs. While mainstream media brings with it credibility and trust, content formats like podcasts give CEOs the opportunity for deeper, longer-form and more organic conversations. Podcasts are increasingly popular and should not be neglected within a thought leadership strategy.
Securing speaking opportunities
In addition to a strategy focused on the media (social, mainstream and alternative), CEOs should also consider the role of events within their marketing mix. Every industry has a full-to-bursting schedule of events ranging from expert round tables through to trade shows and networking conferences. They are increasingly commercially driven but provide a perfect platform.
To ensure efficient use of resources it is important to assess which events will be most effective; where are your clients, where are media, where are your peers, where is the best talent? Assess all these things to get into the right event context. Speaking at certain events can help you reach a targeted industry audience, build your credibility and potentially also enable you to build relationships with other industry leaders.
If you’d like to discuss how we could support a thought leadership strategy why not get in touch today and speak to one of our Corporate specialists.