The Process of Thought Leadership

Here’s what has to happen for someone to create thought leadership (note usage of the noun – this is how we extract value from a specific piece of media). I’ve dialed it down to five steps/phases/stages.

Experience

Something notable needs to happen, either a specific…thing (acute), or some observation or realization someone has had from their body of work (aggregate). Someone has to do the work.

Discovery

Someone needs to realize that whatever #1 was, it’s a thing that should be shared. In more commercial terms, someone needs to know what things can be “packaged” or “productized” into thought leadership artifacts.

Content Creation

Someone needs to take the experience from #2 and they need to craft a story/angle around it. Who is the target audience? What type of story is this? How in-depth should it be? Are we asking anything of the consumer?

…

Those first three steps have to do with the “content.” This is the story or the idea that we want to get across. The later steps have to do with the “artifact.” This is a consumable piece of media that you can publish and get in front of people.

Why separate these? Because ideally, you publish more than one artifact from each piece of content.

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Artifact Creation and Publication

The author of #3 needs to have the skill (or engage with people who have the skill) to turn that experience into one or more artifacts that effectively and enjoyably (?) communicates the experience from #1.

I say “enjoyably,” because some content is just more interesting to read – and more likely to be shared – than other content. There an “entertainent” aspect to thought leadership that we don’t talk about much, but which absolutely matters

Distribution and Promotion

The content asset from #4 needs to be effectively promoted and distributed so that other people see it

I’ve often wondered where the unique value is here. All of these steps are fairly straightforward, so does some particular piece of content rise above the rest. At what step does the “magic” happen?

I’ve talked about #1 elsewhere. You need to do the work to have work to talk about.

#2 is something that’s just inherent to certain people – there’s some native sense that tells someone when an experience would make for interesting content. (There’s clearly some intersection with narcissism here.)

#3 is easier for some people than others. Some people know how to explain things; they know how to tell a story. Others… don’t, and that’s a little heartbreaking in some ways. There are so many great experiences that don’t get told because the source isn’t skilled at communicating them (or they have the skill, but not the confidence.)

How #4 plays out depends on if this is personal or organization. The lowest-friction situation is someone just publishing something to their own blog. But if you’re adding something to a organization presence, then you likely have to involve teams that manage the individual channels.

#5 is probably out of the person’s hands. It’s really a function of their organization’s marketing skill or their pre-existing networks.

That examination leads me to believe that the process really turns on #2 and #3 –

Back to #2: how do we identify thought leadership opportunities? Is THAT the difference between a good TL program and a not-good one? Are companies and individuals who are “good” at TL really just better at sensing (#2) what situations (#1) should be shared? Is it a gatekeeping thing?

Should an organization have a Chief Thought Leadership Officer that just manages the flow of TL coming out of the organization? This person would be responsible for finding (#2) situations (#1), guiding them through the publication process (#3), and making sure they get exposure (#4)?

Does that position exist in the average organization? Who should own this?

And for #3, we need to create good, engaging content. We need to understand what people want to know, what will resonate with them, and design content around fulfilling those needs. I’ve started to read countless things that promised amazing insight, but either failed to deliver, or did so in such an unengaging way that I didn’t finish them.

As hinted at above, good thought leadership entertains people. It encourages them to learn. It tickles parts of their brain that they don’t expect. It clears the fog, and breaks through with a new way of looking at information which they haven’t seen before.

Creating content that does this is not accidental. It takes work, feedback, and a willingness to experiment and empathize with the (unknown) person who is going to consume it.