When you’re looking to impress readers with your thought leadership, it’s hard to find writers who can engage an intelligent audience.
There are countless copywriters about – but not many have the journalistic skills needed to write focused articles of 800–1,000 words or more, based on thorough research and an understanding of the market.
When you need high-value articles of this kind, it pays to use a copywriter with proven journalistic experience.
I have experience writing for magazines, websites and newspapers. I’ve covered subjects from cyber-security to online business to carbon emissions.
What is thought leadership?
The term “thought leadership” applies to any content that leads a conversation. Often, it’s an opinion piece on your website, but in fact it can include a wide range of content styles. These include:
The classic blog post
A classic thought leadership article would appear on your blog. Usually, it’s a first-person opinion column by a named expert within your organisation.
This needn’t be a member of the board – your techies or your experts can be thought leaders too.
The foreword to a report
Reports of all kinds can be home to thought leadership. In annual reports, a CEO or chairman can steer the conversation about the company.
In research reports, senior execs can add their name and weight to the (hopefully new) insights that a report provides.
Interviews with third parties
Set-piece interviews with creative minds can be a great source of content ideas, and they don’t even have to be part of your organisation.
This piece, for example, features an interview with a business author. The thought leader is a third party, but the brand will have benefited by association.
Write-ups of panel discussions
If your organisation hosts discussions at a podcast, webcast or event, this is thought leadership in action – but make sure it doesn’t get forgotten afterwards.
Commission a copywriter to write it up as a blog post or article based on the original discussion (though of course, you’ll usually need the panellists’ permission to do this.)
What is thought leadership to you?
What “thought leadership” means to you can depend on your content strategy – and your willingness to try out content ideas.
Get in touch to find out more about how I can help.
