10 Takeaways from Competing on Thought Leadership by Robert Buday
First in a series of articles highlighting key takeaways from recent business books. If it sounds interesting, you can click here (Amazon affiliate link) or on the link at the bottom of this post and purchase it (or you can go to your favorite independent bookstore).
Thought leadership, says author Bob Buday, is “slapped on blog posts, white papers, research reports, sections of websites, and many other things that turn out to be (upon inspection) not highly thoughtful. He defines thought leadership as “the acclaim that an organization or individual achieves by becoming known for providing superior expertise that solves a complex problem.”
In a previous life, I received op-ed submissions that companies believed were “thought leadership,” but turned out to be an ad for the company (which they sometimes decided to turn into “sponsored content”). Editors largely despise sponsored content because some publishers like to put these paid ads above real news on the website, but often tolerate it in hopes it will generate enough revenue to preserve jobs.
Buday closes his book by predicting that one of the greatest casualties from effective thought leadership will be the “brand journalism” and “advertorials” we see today in major publications that are seeking new sources of revenue by offering pay-for-play. Special advertising sections with glowing articles about companies, written in a journalistic style, will become far less credible, he says.
Here are 10 takeaways from the book, but I will tell you that there is so, so much more that you’ll get out of this book if you buy it. You’ll take notes all over it (or in your electronic device) and keep returning to them.
The four pillars of thought leadership are:
Which client problems to focus content on, and how to allocate content resources.
How content will be developed (analyzing best practices in primary research; codifying the firm’s client work; and secondary research.
How to bring content to market and create demand.
How to scale up services that draw upon content IP.
Thought leadership marketing promises prospective clients that your firm has superior services for solving certain problems of theirs. The client problems that a firm decides to own should be persistent problems. If a company publishes content on a problem no one knows about, why would anyone care?
The holy grail of thought leadership is having a new and better way of solving a complex and critical business problem in the marketplace. The goal of thought-leadership research should be to identify the most successful approaches to solving a client problem.
The best way to break your overarching research questions into subcomponents is through a problem-solution framework:
What is the specific problem of the target audience?
How do we believe most of them have been trying to solve it, and why are they falling short?
How do we believe the most successful companies are solving the problem?
What are the key barriers to adopting the superior solution, and how did the best companies overcome them?
“Godfather” movie director Francis Ford Coppola drove the numerous daily decisions he had to make on movie sets from a unifying theme. “A director is asked a thousand questions a day,” he told a trade publication, “so if you have a single theme unifying your movie, you can deal with all the details.” For Coppola, the theme of “The Godfather” series was succession. For “Apocalypse Now,” it was morality.
True thought leadership has the solid foundation of a bulletproof argument, supported by strong walls of experience, data, and logic. Too often though, companies focus instead on the writing. They talk to a few subject experts, do some desk research, ghostwrite a first draft, get input, finalize, and publish. And more often than not — and we’ve all experienced it — the publication tells us the writing is strong, it was clear enough and an easy read, but the ideas were not entirely new.
The “right” audience doesn’t necessarily mean an audience in the millions. It just means reaching enough of the people who might need your services.
Buday talks about the “ripples in the pond” approach to marketing, arguing that the people whom you’ve hired to get your content in front of your target audience need to fundamentally rethink how ideas travel, on their own and with the help of marketing. His basic advice follows #GiniDietrich’s PESO model that requires you to focus on Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned Media (my personal favorite is Owned, because you should never build your house on rented land per #JoePulizzi).
The focus of thought leadership content is on how to solve the problem, showing examples of organizations, people, countries, etc. that have solved it for the better. Journalists don’t have that obligation. Their crucial role in society is to shine light on issues.
Nothing will be more persuasive in making the case for thought leadership than having your CEO watch it work for himself or herself. Getting them recognized as an expert on some topic by getting published in prestigious places or being invited to speak at high-profile conferences is powerful (as is seeing your article show up on Page 1 of Google search results for a critical keyword.
Buday’s book came out in January 2022 and is a terrific read — dare I say a thought-leadership document — for corporate executives and communicators (including freelancers).
Amazon Affiliate Link: To buy this book you can go here. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
