Thought Leadership: Choosing Topics That Get The Job Done

One of our goals at Mojenta is to help our clients achieve authority positioning in their market segments. This essential step in today’s digital world garners the broadest following and greatest visibility for your brand. An important part of attaining that goal is utilizing effective thought leadership.

The Power of Effective Thought Leadership

With the rapidly changing environment in the IT, cloud, and telecom industries, it is vital to monitor news, trends, and important issues. Everyone from C-level executives to factory floor managers looks to influencers and leaders for insights and information to help them keep up with their peers and remain competitive.

With a well-conceived program of thought leadership, you have the opportunity to be an influencer. When you publish new information in a timely and understandable manner, you are gaining thought leadership. But if you publish that same information even two months after everyone has already read about it, or if you present the information poorly or incorrectly, it can have a significant negative impact. This makes the careful selection of your thought leadership topics a top priority, especially in the B2B market space.

Searching for Inspiration

When it comes time to establish a plan for developing and publishing your thought leadership topics, there are four basic sources you can turn to for solid ideas:

1. Your Market Space. Every industry has timely issues and concerns that are shaping the future. Your ability to address these in a thoughtful and insightful manner will gain you followers and engagement. Select one or two primary topics and develop deep knowledge, then consistently demonstrate your brand’s expertise on those topics.
2. Competitors. There is a great opportunity to creatively address topics your competitors are missing or handling poorly. The more unique or even appropriately challenging your position, the more following and engagement you will earn. Remember, a little disagreement is not necessarily a bad thing, so long as you avoid truly controversial positions.
3. Clients. Your clients and customers are also operating in a hyper-competitive and rapidly changing environment. For example, if you are offering cloud services, you can be sure your clients are concerned about security. If that is your market, thought leadership topics that address those concerns will be welcomed, read, and shared with others – all part of achieving greater awareness for your brand and market leadership.
4. Distinctives. Ideally, you have positioned your products and services to address specific market needs. A thoughtful process of publishing thought leadership articles on those needs that is totally absent of self-serving promotional content will show your brand’s commitment to serving the industry and the customer, not just generating sales.

Truly effective thought leadership does not happen by intuition or accident. We show our clients empirical examples of how success in thought leadership initiatives will enhance your authority positioning, build trust, create added awareness, and generate quality leads. If you’re looking update your approach to thought leadership initiatives and make them more effective, contact us today.