Becoming THE Expert. John W. Hayes

world this is not always so apparent.

      I then joined iContact in the spring of 2011, where I used my experience to help evangelise about the company’s technology and corporate ethos, helping to develop the brand for the European market.

      Building on the strength of my relationships and in-depth knowledge, I have written for a wide range of industry publications and websites including Internet Retailing, The Marketer, Direct Marketing News, Fourth Source, uTalkMarketing, Tamebay, Figaro Digital, Business2Community and Fresh Business Thinking, as well as regularly producing content for the iContact Official Email Blog.

      Who is this book for?

      This book is for any entrepreneur, business owner or marketer who wishes to position themselves as a key influencer within their own particular field of expertise. It has been written to help you develop both basic and advanced Thought Leadership Marketing strategies. These strategies will help you raise your profile, build your reputation, generate leads and ultimately drive profits through the sharing of detailed knowledge and by engaging with the communities which you serve. It will be particularly useful to individuals and organisations that can prove themselves to be both agile and proactive.

      We start this book by explaining what Thought Leadership Marketing is and who it is best suited to. We then move on to demonstrate how you can find and develop your voice before showcasing the various channels for distributing your Thought Leadership content.

      A great many of the practices discussed in this guide are based on web-based technologies, but this doesn’t mean it is only relevant to tech businesses or those who already have a well-developed web presence. The technologies examined here are accessible and in areas where there may be complexities, a full list of useful resources and tips has been provided.

      Thought Leadership Marketing is inclusive and with a little thought, I believe, can prove to add value to any type of business. I have personally worked with a diverse range of companies, from fresh fish merchants on Grimsby Docks to global vendors of highly complex software solutions, and the majority of these companies have benefited from Thought Leadership Marketing. It’s all about understanding your customers, knowing what makes their lives difficult and responding accordingly.

      In the first of the aforementioned examples, the fresh fish merchant taught a journalist how to dispatch and cook a live lobster. Similarly, the vendor of highly complex software solutions demonstrated how complex systems could in fact make life easier for their business clients by using video testimonials featuring customers speaking in the plainest English (occasionally in fairly inaccessible regional accents).

      I’ve yet to find a single business that could not benefit from Thought Leadership. However, if you believe you fall into this category, send me a message on Twitter (@john_w_hayes); I’ll be happy to prove you wrong and send you a couple of Thought Leadership ideas.

      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