Hold up a second! Take a deep breath and give this a read before you lay down your expertise!

In our last posts, we broke down the components of a press release, exploring the timelines available with regards to the type of announcement that needs to be made.

Thought leadership pieces on the other hand are a different beast, and though many businesses would want to roll up their sleeves to share their insights with their audience, it can be an arduous process even if you’re familiar with it. Understanding the basic framework of what creating a thought leadership piece entails would help you enjoy the process, give you a deeper understanding of what you already know, and maybe give you new perspectives.

Thought leadership is more than a blogpost (owned media) 

The beauty about having a company blog, your own SNS, or content channels falls under the owned media category, and anything goes. There are no limits to the promotional angles, the word count, vocabulary, and the way that the content can be presented, which explains the gifs and memes you come across in my posts here. The readerships that you’ll get are fans or existing clients that already know the brand. Kind of like preaching to the choir.

Thought leadership is more than an advertorial (paid media)

If the content is clearly promotional, and you’ve got to pay for it to be published, it falls into the category of an advertorial. Sometimes you’ll see “sponsored post” attached to a piece and you know you’re in for it. Granted, some advertorials can be entertaining, but if you wished the “skip ad” button on YouTube could come up 6 seconds ago, how would it feel for an audience that’s not interested to go read an ad for 5 minutes?

Match the audience to the content

Knowing who the thought leadership piece is one of the first steps. Are the audience clients or investors? What is their level of understanding of the topic you’re covering, is it generalised or technical? Identifying the audience profile is an exercise on its own, a good balance of having enough breadth to include a wide enough yet relevant pool of readers, and enough depth to show expertise.

TLDR - what will reading your thought leadership piece do for your audience

This is a good place to start. Think of it from the point of view of your audience, and condense what you want them to learn from your piece. Make it a short sentence or two, and ask if you would want to read it. Share the sentence or two with others to get a feel of it if you’re not too certain. If the TLDR doesn’t work, good chance that it won’t get better with more words in it.

Is what you want to share new or different

Have others in your industry already covered what you want to write about? Getting a feel for what is already out there will give you a gauge to decide to pursue the same thought leadership piece. If what you have to say has been covered extensively, is there anything special or different in your piece? Is there anything new that you can add about your take on the topic? Knowing your content and the context it serves will give you the answer. Dig deeper till you have more to add, or do a different piece.

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This checklist lays the foundation and validates the effort and work that comes after. What other tips or parts of your process do you have in place before you start?