“Thought leadership is when a leader’s thoughts are being used by leaders to lead others.”

                                                   – Onyi Anyado, Author

Figure 1: Courtesy: Pixabay.com

It goes without saying; content marketing is a huge domain that ranges from videos to keywords. From selling garments to academic assignments, every initiative requires stellar marketing strategies. If we are to talk about keywords, for example, the moment when a student types “do my assignment” and look for a solution, the keyword immediately gets counted as a search query. This, as a result, calls for a keyword content implementation to successfully market your products.

If you manage using popular keywords in your content or any other popularly used search query, you are increasing the scope for your content to be more visible, trending and relevant. This is also where the concept of thought leadership comes in. For instance, if you visit the online academic help portal MyAssignmenthelp, you will be able to discover a platform containing saleable contents, promotional paragraphs and blogs promoting ideas and insights for students.

content marketing

These are nothing but an accumulation of thoughts and a wider perspective of what this particular website aims to promote and sell at the end of the day. Similar instances can be seen on other e-commerce websites like Amazon, Ali Baba or Walmart.com for the matter of fact.

Neither of the websites asks you to “come buy our products” by keeping a direct approach. Rather they sell ideas, instil thoughts among their target audience and gradually convince a buyer to shop with them. Now, in order to get the hang of it, you need to follow a few golden rules of thought leadership and content marketing. Here are the 12 most notable suggestions and industry norms for you to read, learn and adapt. Take a look.

Rule #1 – Understand the difference, embrace the similarity

Thought leadership is slightly different from a regular piece of marketing write-up. In a thought leadership writing you are actually selling an idea, and in a content marketing write-up, you need to come up with catchy details and persuasive content so that you could close a deal and grab a new clientele at the end of the day.

While dealing with thought leadership marketing, you need to be quite aware of the fact that you are acting here as a flag-bearer of all thoughts and perspectives that you have in your mind. So, make sure you are maintaining clarity. While on the other hand, for a great content marketing, an exemplary thought behind the entire idea plays a pivotal role.

Rule #2 – Make sure you have a unique perspective to share

This is perhaps the second-most important thing which is to be considered as a significant rule for great thought leadership and content marketing. It’s good that you have finally managed to come up with a thought you think is saleable. But is it unique in nature? Or is it the same old wine in a new bottle? You gotta understand this before making a move.

Until and unless you are coming up with a unique perspective, attracting your target audience, convincing new clients and retaining the old ones might just appear to be an intricate task. The idea is to come up with something relevant that calls for action and attracts all prospective investors to count on your firm’s expertise.

Rule #3 – Simplicity is the new quirky

You might be of the opinion that coming up with something extravagant and large would work great for your business, but you’re wrong. Some of the most extraordinary messages are often hidden in simple languages, less decorated with minimum use of flowery words.

Now the idea is to come up with simple thoughts with a great message behind it. If you are marketing a content, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the campaign has to be something so vast and intricate that your target audience ends up missing out on the actual idea you tried to emphasize upon.

Rule #4 – Always come up with something new

The very basic of thought leadership and content marketing is based on experiment, innovation and improvisation. You got to come up with something new and catchy every single time. It is crucial for you to understand that no idea or thought for long, without bringing any changes to it.

You got to refresh it from time to time. Otherwise, things would simply turn out to be monotonous for your target audience in the long run. Try coming up with new content or make moderate changes in your marketing campaigns, ideas and perspectives after every 4-5 months. This, as a result, will help you in the matter of breaking the monotony of a particular content.

Rule #5 – Stay active and available on popular channels of Social Media

It’s undeniably true that social media is one of the most effective platforms for communication. Now in case you are looking for a perfect avenue to communicate with people, consider various social media platforms in order to project ideas, interpret thoughts and market contents at a wider scale.

The Global Social Media User Rate in 2018 is 3.196 Billion. And Facebook alone is reaching out to some 2.2 Billion active users each month. Thus, this clearly indicates the impact and efficiency of social media platforms in today’s world. And it also goes without saying that exploring such avenues and utilizing the functionality of social media in the matter of reaching out to your target audience in order to build thought leadership is undeniably an idea to count on.

Rule #6 – Follow your contemporaries – there’s no harm in it

You may think why a person should follow contemporaries while he/she can come up with thought leadership skills, ideas and content marketing strategies. Well, I am not asking you to imitate your competitors merely. There’s no harm in drawing a bit of inspiration.

Following successful competitors will help you in the matter of coming across popular topics to write on, discuss and promote. Moreover, keeping track of the activities of your contemporaries will allow you to stay at the forefront of innovation with in-depth knowledge of all latest content marketing trends.

Rule #7 – Work on the headline of your content – make it catchy and thought-provoking

It is also quite important for you to work on the headlines of your content. A headline is perhaps the first and foremost thing that would grab the attention of your readers. The entire message behind a thought leadership strategy and content marketing idea could be nicely interpreted if you have a strong and indicative headline.

The idea is to provoke thoughts, instil ideas and send a message to your target audience that will allow them to think over the matter and to engage in constructive discussions over it. Remember, no thought leadership and content marketing strategy are good enough unless the effort made is serving the purpose of persuading your target group of users in the long run.

Rule #8 – Use inspirational quotes and cite examples in your write-ups

Come up with something that you readers want to buy. And in order to do the same, you got to back your content marketing efforts with famous and relevant quotes, factual data, examples and the likes. The thing about using inspirational quotes in your write-ups is that it helps you to create a recall value among the audience.

They could immediately refer back to what other leaders of the world once said something relevant to the topic being discussed. This might just make it much easier for you to convince your audience with thought leadership write-ups.

Rule #9 – Highlight the challenge and solve it with a solution

Every thought leadership idea and content marketing strategy must highlight the challenge and come up with the solutions accordingly.

So, the idea is to start with a note that talks about the challenge your target audience would face, and what solutions your company would provide in order to solve the dilemma.

Rule #10 – Include key takeaways in your content

In addition to highlighting challenges and providing a solution to it, it is also important for you to come up with key takeaways for your readers.

It would allow your target audience to take home actionable solutions and advice at the end of the day.

Rule #11 – Never claim anything in your content without research and background details

If you are trying to establish a point, highlighting perspectives and claiming a few things to back your statement, make sure that you have conducted a thorough qualitative and quantitative research.

Only factual details and proven facts would be entertained and believed by your target audience in the long run.

Rule #12 – Make your content more interactive and engaging for the readers

Last but not the least; it is always a great idea to make marketing contents interactive and engaging by implementing interesting thought leadership strategies.

You may consider adding relevant images, graphic representations and comment box below the content for your readers to share feedbacks and the likes.

In today’s world of integrated content marketing, thought leadership strategies are selling like hot cakes. So, go grab one today, see what suits best for you business and implement the appropriate thought leadership strategy for content marketing by complying with the rules and suggestions as discussed above.