Becoming THE Expert

Enhancing Your Business Reputation through Thought Leadership Marketing

John W. Hayes

• Publisher: Harriman House
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781908003614
• eBook ISBN: 9781908003355
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

Thought Leadership is one of the most valuable marketing tools available to today's entrepreneur. Not only is it highly affordable (largely free), it is also available to anyone with an opinion - and who doesn't have one of those?Becoming THE Expert explains how business owners, entrepreneurs, marketers and sales professionals can better position themselves as experts in their own particular industry and help to build brand awareness, generate leads and ultimately drive sales through the sharing of their detailed knowledge and insight.Written in plain English and using real world examples, the book explains how to find your voice and then plan, create and distribute Thought Leadership Marketing campaigns using a wide range of channels including blogs, white papers, videos, podcasts, webinars, PR, the media, books, eBooks, public speaking opportunities and social media.This book is for any business professional who values the idea of sharing knowledge, empowering the people they work with and building their reputation on the back of holding an open and honest dialogue with the communities they serve.

Chapter 1: Becoming THE Expert: An Introduction to Thought Leadership Marketing

“A penny for your thoughts” is a well-known English idiom that grossly underestimates the value of your opinion. The fact is, your thoughts could be worth quite a lot more than that.

Thought Leadership is one of the most valuable marketing tools available to today’s entrepreneur. Not only is it affordable to all (it is largely free), it is also available to anyone with an opinion – and who doesn’t have one of them?

Long favoured by the IT community, who were early adopters of many of the technologies used to distribute Thought Leadership, it is equally appropriate for any industry where expertise is valued.

So what is Thought Leadership Marketing?

Thought Leaders position themselves as experts in a particular industry or discipline and share their insight with a wider community. Thought Leadership Marketing takes this insight and uses it to build brand, generate leads and ultimately drive sales. When you see a reputed expert on a subject quoted in a news article, or a video on YouTube instructing you how to do a task, or a blog post offering insight into the latest trends or advances in a particular industry, this is very often part of a wider Thought Leadership Marketing strategy. They are positioning themselves as experts and hopefully setting themselves up as a potential business partner for interested parties.

A good Thought Leadership programme will help you to maximise results from your marketing budget. It should also go some way to reducing your reliance on dated business techniques, such as cold calling, while helping your business to shorten its sales cycle. By carefully positioning content, you will not only attract attention to your business but also help qualify leads (i.e. sort the wheat from the chaff) and even solicit enquiries and orders. Some businesses are built on very little more than great Thought Leadership and a good transactional website – although most of us will still have to pick up the phone and speak to the occasional prospect or client from time to time.

In this respect, you can think of Thought Leadership Marketing as your hardest working employee. You could hire someone to sit on the phone and call between 30 and 40 prospects every day, perhaps generating one or two warmish leads to follow up on. Alternatively, you could spend half a day writing an 800-word article, publish it to a blog or trade publication, where it can potentially be read by many thousands of readers, and have the leads come directly to you. Thought Leadership Marketing empowers individuals within corporations to evangelise outside of the normal constraints of marketing. It is agile, adds personality to a brand and is perfectly suited to the socially enabled (networked) world in which we live.

Undoubtedly, social media will play a huge part of your Thought Leadership strategy, but be warned, it is neither the foundation nor structural makeup of your programme. Many people are socially connected; few are Thought Leaders.

Openness as a great asset

It is the openness of Thought Leadership Marketing that truly sets it apart from traditional marketing.

Great Thought Leaders do not play at business with their cards close to their chest. They are happy to share detailed insight across a wide expanse of knowledge, offering tips, tactics and strategies, which they will then back up with data from within their own organisations. They are also not afraid to express an educated opinion based on their previous experience.

It might seem a little reckless to be so open with your organisation’s insight and intellectual property, and it is true that while much of what you share will go on to help form wider opinion, some will occasionally come back to haunt the originator. Nobody said that Thought Leadership Marketing was risk free. This might raise some red flags with more cautious marketers. You might be afraid that by sharing detailed inside knowledge you will not only open your company up to increased competition, but also empower your clients to go ahead and do the job themselves. Don’t let this put you off. By and large, the rewards of Thought Leadership Marketing will nearly always outweigh the risks.

Let’s think about the following scenario:

Undoubtedly, your competitors will be able to glean professional knowledge from your insight. But by simply hanging on to your coattails they risk being perceived as second-rate imitators. Imitation is fine but it doesn’t earn the premium rewards enjoyed by the originator. Rather than fearing your imitators, you should be more wary of your competitors who are putting themselves forward and delivering their own Thought Leadership programmes. How are they positioning themselves? How good is their insight? What kind of personality do they portray? What is their timing like? Do they trump you? If so, there is a real risk that you could look like the imitator; it’s time to step up to the mark and strive to do a better job yourself.

As for customers taking your insight and doing the job themselves, picture this:

You’re a painter and decorator. You’ve written a blog post, which I’ve stumbled across, telling me how to hang wallpaper. You’ve told me what paper to buy, what paste to use, how to prepare my walls and all the professional tips I need to know to ensure the paper looks perfect when hung. You’ve even included videos demonstrating the more difficult aspects of the task and high resolution photographs of the finished job.

After reading this, do you think I’m going to hang my own wallpaper?

No way! I’m going to pick up the phone and ask you to do it for me. Why? Because you have shown me that you know what you are talking about and are not afraid to put your work under public scrutiny. In short, you are a Thought Leader and I trust you to get the job done right.

OK, this is perhaps a very simple example – but the complexity could be scaled to cover any industry. In the same way I might not be able to hang wallpaper, I might not have the time to file my own tax returns, have the resources to manage a portfolio of property investments, or the technical knowledge to install a new computer system.

It is the maverick nature of Thought Leadership Marketing that makes it so accessible to the target audience. By placing an individual at the forefront of an organisation, you can humanise even the most seemingly dreary industries and turn business leaders into household names.

While most of us will never see international fame, it is entirely possible to become a star in your own niche. Think about it, no matter what industry you are in, there will always be a familiar go-to person who the media (either bloggers, trade press, local or national media) always seem to turn to for a quote, piece of analysis or interview. These people are Thought Leaders and there is no reason why you cannot steal a bit of their thunder with some careful positioning.

Who are the Thought Leaders?

Thought Leadership is a diverse and multi-facetted discipline. It offers a number of strategies that can be adopted, regardless of the industry you work in. The best way to demonstrate this is to list ten prominent Thought Leaders who I believe have mastered the practice and who I regularly look to for inspiration (both inside and outside of business). Some of the names in this list will be instantly recognisable, others may be more difficult to place.

If you want to see how the pros do it, I suggest you seek these people out, learn how they use Thought Leadership to promote their business or celebrity status (remember celebrity is more often than not a front for business activity) and effectively position themselves at the top of their game.

• Jamie Oliver (celebrity chef and campaigner) – uses Thought Leadership via his regular TV appearances and magazine articles to promote the sale of his books and fill his ever expanding empire of restaurants.
• Micheal O’Leary (Ryanair CEO and raconteur) – never afraid of using a sound bite to fill seats on his budget airline.
• Steve Jobs (founder of Apple) – the man who made the computer and mobile telephone industry sexy.
• Marc Benioff (chairman and CEO of cloud computing company Salesforce.com) – the software man who hates software and wants us all to live in the cloud.
• Seth Godin (author and marketer) – probably the world’s most inspirational and popular marketing guru.
• Martin Lewis (broadcaster and editor of Money Saving Expert) – started www.moneysavingexpert.com to help people save money and it made him millions.
• Simon Calder (travel writer and broadcaster) – the go-to person for people on the go.
• Marc Coker (founder of Smashwords.com) – behind the company that is shaking up the publishing industry one book at a time.
• Jeff Bezos (founder and CEO of Amazon) – the man who shaped the way we buy books, CDs, DVDs and virtually everything else online.
• Martha Swift and Lisa Thomas (founders of The Primrose Bakery) – the original UK cupcake entrepreneurs and bestselling authors.

Are you a Thought Leader?

To find out whether you have the potential to be a Thought Leader ask yourself the following questions. If you answer yes to them all, you are halfway to Thought Leadership.

• Do I possess a detailed knowledge of the industry I work in?
• Do I have an opinion about various topics within my industry?
• Do I have the ability to communicate my opinion effectively (either written or verbally, although preferably both)?
• Am I able to demonstrate my opinion is worth listening to, using case studies or references?

It is important you answer these questions honestly. Many people try and position themselves as Thought Leaders without the right credentials. Some even get away with it and make a name for themselves, often at the expense of people seeking quick wins and get rich quick schemes – the internet is full of these. Don’t be tempted to do this yourself – your reputation cannot stand the risk.

Experience is the only thing that makes Thought Leadership credible. If you’ve got it, then you should go for it. If you haven’t, put this book down for now and pick it up again in a couple of years when you have built up more experience.

Typical reservations about Thought Leadership

I speak to a lot of people who tell me they believe Thought Leadership Marketing would benefit their business significantly. They buy into the concept that it could not only help position their business as a significant player in their vertical, but also help to reduce (or at the very least maximise potential from) traditional marketing and sales budgets. But when push comes to shove they fail to engage, normally hanging on to one of the following four excuses:

1. No time: Time is in short supply and you just cannot find enough of it to invest in building a solid Thought Leadership programme. There is a good chance you identify with this and believe it to be a valid excuse. But before you make this assumption, take a look at your day and ask yourself what you are doing that adds value to your business and what you are doing simply out of habit. How often do you check sales figures or other business related statistics? Similarly, how much dead time do you spend staring out of train windows or drinking coffee in airport lounges? How often do you find yourself updating Twitter or LinkedIn with other peoples’ Thought Leadership? Are you really busy all the time or are you victim of procrastination? It’s a hard habit to break – I know I can be guilty of this at times. Could you find an extra 30 minutes a day to dedicate to Thought Leadership? If you are struggling to find the time, set your alarm clock half-an-hour earlier in the morning and check yourself when you consider hitting the snooze button.
2. Fear: Like many others, you may be worried that your opinion isn’t valid or your customers and competitors will find holes in your arguments. All Thought Leaders have these moments of self-doubt from time to time. Don’t let this unfounded fear put you off. Instead, you should concentrate on the one thing that validates your position – your experience. Remember, it is highly unlikely that anyone of any importance or influence will single you out for attack or question your opinion. The worst case scenario is that you’ll be ignored. In this case, it’s time to look at your Thought Leadership strategy, re-evaluate what you think is important and reconsider what you believe your target audience is looking for.
3. No ideas/lack of imagination: This is quite frankly a lazy excuse. Think about it for a minute – where do other Thought Leaders in your industry look for inspiration? The answer is staring you right in the face. Their customers. You speak to these people every single day. You know what makes their lives difficult and how your business can help solve their problems. If you find yourself short of ideas, try speaking to the people who pay your wages.
4. Lack of presentation skills: Thought Leadership need not be a solo effort. Ideally it will focus on one or two individuals within your organisation but that doesn’t mean you cannot enrol other people to help you out. Perhaps someone in your company has a flair for writing and can help you to polish your copy. Perhaps another individual is more comfort...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Publishing details
• About the Author
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Becoming THE Expert: An Introduction to Thought Leadership Marketing
• Chapter 2: Finding Your Voice
• Chapter 3: Thought Leadership Channels
• Chapter 4 – Using Social Media to Position Yourself as a Thought Leader
• Chapter 5 – Building A Community Around Your Thought Leadership
• Conclusion – Your First Steps Towards Thought Leadership
• About Brightword Publishing