The last piece of an integrated PESO Model program, before you get to measurement, is authority—or thought leadership. If you do all of this work as outlined, it will be inevitable that you’ll build authority for your organization and its executives. But you also have to create some of it on your own.
If you’ve missed the previous posts, you can find them here:
- What Is the PESO Model?
- The PESO Model: Start with Owned Media
- The PESO Model: Where and How Earned Media Fits In
- The PESO Model: Bringing Shared Media Into the Mix
- The PESO Model: Does Paid Media Belong With Communicators?
By the end of the series, you’ll also have learned: all about metrics, complete with a dashboard, and how to provide results to the executive team.
Three Steps to Build Thought Leadership Content
There isn’t a single piece of content out there about marketing that doesn’t extol the virtues of thought leadership. In fact, it’s so prevalent, thought leadership, itself, has become a word most marketers hate to hear.
Test it out. Tell a marketing friend that you want to be a thought leader and watch his or her eyes roll back into her head.
Even though most hate it, thought leadership is a very important part of a content strategy in today’s business world. But what does that mean? How can it be effective?
The external goal of most business leaders is to make a crap ton of money, but the drumbeat consensus for the internal goal is to change the world. Communicators who understand how to get client buy-in for both the external and internal goals are leading the charge.
The goal is to dazzle them with your smarts, then give them the behind-the-curtain view.
Thought leadership is relatively easy to understand if you follow these three steps:
- Have a clear point-of-view and present a unique perspective on your industry. While it’s good to be objective and present both sides of a story, human beings prefer to “side” with people they agree with and who have similar interests.
- Reach your key audience. Of course, you can’t gain traction if no one knows where to find you. A clear thought leadership approach starts small—it crawls, then walks, then runs, and then flies. When you do that, you’re able to reach your key audience(s).
- Understand what you want the audience to do with the information. When we start work with a new client, we review all of their marketing assets, including websites, newsletters, downloadable content, and social media accounts. From there, we pull out examples of things done really well and things done not so well. You know what is missing from 99.9 percent of those we review? Calls-to-action. This means their audiences have no idea what to do with the information they are given. That’s not good. Your job is to change that.
These are simple enough to understand but, as always, the magic is in the execution.
The Basics of a Thought Leadership Strategy
There are a few basics you need to master to help someone garner respect and recognition with a thought leadership strategy.
- A firm commitment to the long game. Thought leadership isn’t established with one well-written position paper or the presentation at a single industry conference. (And wishful thinking won’t make it so.) As you well know, managing impatience is a big part of what we do and it’s not easy to work with executives who want it all right now. For some reason, they look at what we do as though they don’t ultimately know that overnight success takes 10 years to achieve. You have to be very clear—and continue to communicate—that nothing will change short-term.
- The willingness to share ideas and concepts in a meaningful way. True thought leadership means a level or openness so the audience can see how it might affect them and what kinds of results they’ll have if they work through what the expert is offering. I am reminded of Monica Lewinsky’s TED talk. In it, she says, “The shift begins with something simple, but it’s not easy. We need to return to a long-held value of compassion—compassion and empathy. Online, we have a compassion deficit, an empathy crisis.” Even though she’s not a thought leader for business, you can see how her ideas are shared in a meaningful way that shows people how and what they can do to change the world. Clarity wins. Every time.
- Ability to apply focus to a singular concept. World-changing ideas don’t have to be complicated; rather the best are simply communicated over and over again until mass recognition is achieved. Think about Steve Jobs when considering this: he always got on stage and repeated his key message over and over again until you knew exactly what he wanted you to think.
- Be the go-to resource for others looking to expand ideas in your space. I have a rule: we don’t turn down a single interview opportunity. Ever. For some, that means we are helping out a new podcaster by bringing them a ready-made audience and, for others, it means we’re continuing to build our brand and live the vision of changing the way communicators are perceived. It always makes me shake my head when a client says they don’t want to talk to such-and-such publication because they don’t have a big readership. That is so short-sighted.
The client or executive wins (which means you do, too) when they realize they’re not just in whatever business they are in, but that they’re in the business of defining what their industry will look like 20 years from now.
Six Ways to Create a Thought Leader
There are six ways to think about how to create thought leadership right now.
- Social Media. The “fad” isn’t over yet and every organization—consumer, business-to-business, non-profit—needs to have a social media presence. It doesn’t need to be on every platform— hang out where your customers and prospects do—but to get any earned media coverage, journalists want to see that you have social networks people respond to so you can help them increase their pageviews. Unless you have a product or service that no one else has if the story is between you or your competitor and they have robust social networks, and you do not, the story is going to them.
- Content Creation. It is my belief that every organization should create content for lead generation, thought leadership, and brand awareness. You don’t have to blog multiple times a week to have success. In fact, you don’t have to blog about all. The point is to create consistent content and, in the words of Andy Crestodina, “create the best page on the internet for your topic.” If your executive (or client) has an interview, write about that experience. If things end up on the cutting room floor, create a video about it. Publish an excerpt from the piece and link to the rest of the story. Interview the journalist and run a Q&A. There are lots of ways you can extend a story and get content from your CEO, without having to create something new.
- Thoughtful Commentary. One of our favorite things to do is have Talkwalker Alerts set for a client’s topic(s) of interest. When we see an article they will like (typically a few times a week), we send it over to get their thoughts. Every executive on earth will read the story and send back some thoughts—though they may be disjointed. That’s OK! Now you have something to work with and you are, after all, a communicator so this is your bailiwick.
- Comments. This is an oldie, but a goodie. Back in the day (like 2007), we would send articles to clients to comment on. They would leave these very professional comments, complete with their name, email address, and phone number. It was very cute. That won’t work today, of course, We have to be much more engaging and thoughtful about our approach. If your executives have an interesting take on a story or blog post that’s been published, ask them to comment on it.
- Voice Recordings. The argument I always hear at this point is, “But my executive doesn’t have time.” I know! It’s the hardest part of our jobs. But there are lots of ways you can get content from them without a lot of time or effort. Go back to the second idea here—content creation. Record excerpts from town hall meetings or team meetings or speaking engagements and create content from that. Take the emails they send and create content from those. And my favorite tip is to schedule a monthly, 30-minute conversation and ask a bunch of questions. You have to go to the meeting prepared with lots of questions you can fire off in rapid succession. Then record the conversation. Those 30 minutes will give you a month’s worth of content.
- Contributed Content. Publications want to publish thought leaders. Most of the big publications today all accept bylined articles and blog posts from industry leaders. Get your executives set up with their own columns, ghostwrite the content, and get it placed. You’ll have to work closely with them and get their approvals, but you can do the legwork. A thought leader is intimately involved in the communications of his or her organization (a la Sheryl Sandberg, Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, and Mark Cuban).
When you can help get an organization noticed through your content, the thought leadership comes much more easily.
The PESO Model Certification
The PESO Model Certificate is for communicators who want to evolve their careers, learn new skills, and measure results.
At the end of the PESO Model Certification you will be able to:
- Apply your knowledge and contribute to your organization’s business strategy with a PESO Model framework that garners measurable business results.
- Design an integrated strategy and connect your tactics to business goals.
- Create an integrated lead generation program that demonstrates ROI.
- Develop measurable objectives and correlate results with organizational goals.
The PESO Model Certificate is for communicators who want to gain advanced skills and a comprehensive understanding of how to build and scale an integrated program within any sized organization.
It includes eight modules, with step-by-step instruction, case studies, downloadable templates, and actionable strategies.
Upon successful completion of the modules and online evaluation, you’ll earn your academically-recognized certification, one that designates you are a strategic digital communicator.
Your PESO Model Certificate is active for life. Every two years, recipients must complete a short continuing education module and retest to ensure you have the most up-to-date skills and resources. There will be a small fee associated with that.
Do you want to learn how to build and scale an integrated communications program? One which drives real business results and shows the PR value clients care about? Become PESO Model Certified today.
