Comments on: Thought Leadership: It’s Not About The Writing

By: Lucy

Lucy — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:29:17 +0000

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

By: Tim Parker

Tim Parker — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:37:20 +0000

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.

By: Ambrish K

Ambrish K — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:05:49 +0000

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’?

By: forex robot

forex robot — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:15:41 +0000

Nice post & nice blog. I love both.

By: Tim Parker

Tim Parker — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:29:41 +0000

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.

By: Paul McKeon

Paul McKeon — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:09:57 +0000

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.

By: jasmine

jasmine — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:48:33 +0000

Yes I also think that white papers help us to solve a current problem.

By: Promotional Products

Promotional Products — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:01:38 +0000

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.

By: Tim Parker

Tim Parker — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:11:33 +0000

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.

By: Justin Kownacki

Justin Kownacki — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:46:56 +0000

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.”