This is a guest post by Tim Parker of the Bloom Group.
There’s a lot of talk about thought leadership marketing these days, and not a lot of agreement on exactly what it is. At the Bloom Group we define it as “Publishing informative material on a complex issue to position a company as an expert in its field.” Not because it’s catchy, obviously, but because research shows that’s what business readers want. A 2007 survey for instance, found that nearly three quarters of readers search for white papers to help them solve a current problem and they most value those with educational content that helps them do that.
There is a lot of advice on how to write white papers, but it rarely addresses the creation of the core idea, which is generally presumed to exist. But advice like “Break up the gray space with diagrams” isn’t going to help much if the recommendations are unconvincing, or have already been made elsewhere.
The available advice for developing thought leadership concepts rarely addresses the business reader’s need for a solution to an immediate, complex problem. A typical suggestion is “Begin by creating a big picture idea with relevance to many. Look outward, not inward.” Curious, when there isn’t any research to indicate that business readers particularly value an idea about a big picture. If you look at the most popular IT white paper downloads, for instance, you’ll see that they are almost invariably practical, and not necessarily expansive. A white paper on the application of Business Intelligence in Financial Services is an example. The topic is specialized and the audience isn’t broad, but it explains to executives a complex and relevant issue and how to profit from it. It still gets many downloads 18 months after it was published and it positions the author as an expert, which–from the marketers’ perspective–is the point.
Anyone capable of creating a “big picture idea with relevance to many” out of thin air should seriously consider giving up real work and sell rarified concepts for high prices instead. The rest of us need a process. The one we use has five steps for creating compelling content, all of which go before writing a report or article.
- Develop the initial argument: Start with a draft of the problem and the solution. The story will change as you develop it, but a draft provides a good basis for refining it as you go.
- Gather the evidence: Readers need proof that other companies have solved the problem in the manner you prescribe. A company with significant preexisting experience or research on an issue will already have content that its marketers can tap for thought leadership material. Often, especially if it is pushing into a new area, it won’t. In that case you will need to conduct original research (case studies, lab research or surveys, for instance) to substantiate and adjust the prescriptions.
- Analyze and synthesize: New insights only emerge through a process of analysis and synthesis. Analysis involves studying and mining the data, looking for patterns and important findings. Synthesis refines and combines them into new insights.
- Create frameworks: At the heart of any compelling point of view lie one or more frameworks that capture the issue and describe how to address it. The white paper above has several, including a high-level technical architecture for Business Intelligence. Good frameworks make a point of view memorable and help it last; the SWOT analysis framework and Kotler’s 4Ps of Marketing are two that have endured for decades.
- Craft and refine the outline: Draft and collaboratively refine a detailed outline of the report.
- Write the report: Finally with the finished outline in hand, create a full report, articles, a slide presentation and/or series of blog posts, from the core material.
The power in thought leadership marketing comes from the point of view, not the pen. Unfortunately, too many companies regard thought leadership initiatives as writing assignments, producing well-written, but lightweight copy.
Does your company’s thought leadership fall into this category? If so, can you fix it?
Tim Parker of the Bloom Group has more than 20 years experience in the sales, marketing and delivery of professional services. Tim leads and contributes to programs to develop the firm’s own points of view in areas of thought leadership marketing and writes and presents on these topics. He also helps clients develop their intellectual capital and take it to market. In the course of this work, he designs and analyses surveys, conducts client case studies, leads and performs the analysis and synthesis of findings, and writes final reports and op-eds for publication. Tim earned his undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University in England and an MBA from London Business School and MIT Sloan School.
Related posts:
- Why Thought Leadership Marketing is NOT Just Giving Information Away
- Thought Leadership Remains Important for B2B in 2009
- Thought Leadership Alone Is Not Enough
- More Thoughts on Thought Leadership
- Using Thought Leadership to Position Motorola: A Podcast with Eduardo Conrado
Tags: Marketing, Thought Leadership, white papers
Unfortunately, “Publishing informative material on a complex issue to position a company as an expert in its field” doesn’t include any requirements that the material be:
* Original
* Coherent
* Actionable
* Useful
This is what leads people to believe that Internet Marketing is the process of telling everyone you’re an industry leader and then hoping they won’t see through you. Not that Bloom Group does that, but these kinds of people do:
http://www.justinkownacki.com/2009/11/18/pre-branding-how-to-become-an-expert-when-you-dont-know-anything/
I’m all for expertise. I just need to qualify it as “expertise that’s not all smoke and mirrors.”
Justin: you are quite right. We have written much about the criteria that qualify material as “thought leadership” and it includes your 4 above. For example, in this eBook here:
http://www.bloomgroup.com/content/generating-revenue-thought-leadership
In this short article I didn’t explicitly make that point, though I hope it’s implicit in the process of original research and thinking that I outline – if you do this properly, you’ll get original, actionable and useful recommendations. Whether it’s coherent or not, lies partly of course, in the writing.
I like what you are saying here Ann, however, I think that Justin makes some great points as well. Originality is a big factor of writing and marketing in my book. As a consumer, I like to see marketing campaigns that are unique and innovative. As a marketer I always strive to be original and concise when getting my point across.
Yes I also think that white papers help us to solve a current problem.
Justin, I enjoyed your post about “How to become an expert when you don’t know anything.” It’s humorous and incisive.
Tim, your 6 steps above are handy, but they apply to any type of writing assignment–and as you say yourself, thought leadership is more than a writing assignment.
Justin’s post is an example of what we believe separates thought leadership from an everyday case study: it’s generous and it takes risks. Thought leadership sets itself apart by revealing the genuine passion of the thought leader.
We blogged on it here:
http://www.contentfactor.com/blog/2009/11/thought-leadership-spirit-of-generosity.html
Thought Leadership: A Spirit of Generosity.
Thanks for leading this discussion.
Paul,
The main point of this post and the article it refers to is that useful originality does not come, for instance, out of being passionate, taking risks or being generous. These things may be helpful, even necessary, but they aren’t sufficient.
The key point is this: Unless you do original research you cannot have anything original to say and therefore you can’t be a thought leader.
These 6 steps are about how to do original research. They do not BTW apply to all writing assignments; less than 1 in 10 white papers have anything original to say and/or real examples and/or demonstrated benefits. They could if they followed this process.
I said in the post “There is a lot of advice on how to write white papers, but it rarely addresses the creation of the core idea.” The Content Factor white paper you link to in your blog post is an example;
http://contentfactor.com/sites/default/files/thought_leadership_white_paper_october_22_2009.pdf.
I agree with just about everything it says, but something is missing. Where does the intellectual capital come from; the structuring of the problem, the prescription of a solution and the demonstration by real examples that it works (and that you didn’t just make it all up one morning?)
We wrote this article because this is the biggest black hole in the reams of advice about how to write a white paper; how to generate the intellectual capital that business readers value. The process we have outlined above does it. It’s not a writing process, it’s not easy, and it’s often skipped. But it’s essential to thought leadership.
Nice post & nice blog. I love both.
I enjoyed reading Tim’s points. There’s an undeniable and often missed stringency to original thinking and good writing that I sorely miss experiencing delight from, these days. It’s so startling, now that I think that just about everything I read online seems to have been penned by a self-described expert. Just because a thousand people read your blog, it doesn’t mean you’ve got something original to say. It might mean you have managed to pull a thousand people of your level of intellectual heft to your page. I understand the need to stand out in a crowd, but when the crowd that reads you can’t tell a shoe horn from an ice cream scoop, how far are you really getting in building your ‘expertise’?
Ambrish
Thanks for the comment. It’s a good point and one we have thought about a lot.
We think a blog post and a substantive point of view are different things. In many ways a blog is a place to comment on and discuss a point of view (or a topical event or whatever). It’s not the place to present one complete with all its evidence and logic. People read a blog for a “POV light”; most posts aren’t original, but if it’s a good blog, they might present an original angle or observation on something already known. No need for a blog post therefore, to spend weeks researching your topic.
But business people read white papers to get answers to complex problems – there’s lots of data shows it. For that medium therefore, you need to do your homework if you are to make an impression. And once you have done it, you can chunk it up into little bites and blog on it!
Tim
P.S. I’d just note too that the Marketing Profs Daily Blog is a peculiar type of blog – it doesn’t have the character of one person. It’s more a series of 700 word feature articles. And so you can post here an article like this one which is a bit weightier than I’d want to put on my own blog.
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Lucy
http://dataentryjob-s.com