Your Guide To Sustainability Thought Leadership
Do you want your brand to be seen as a leading authority in your space?
Do you want your audience to look to you for relevant insights and bigger-picture developments happening in your industry?
Do you want your competitors to read your content and say, “Why didn’t we write that?”
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may want to consider thought leadership.
What Is Thought Leadership?
I define thought leadership as an attraction-based approach to content marketing that taps into the talent, experience, and passion inside your business to consistently answer the biggest questions on the minds of your target audience—and to pose new questions that no one ever thought to ask.
At its core, thought leadership is original and forward-thinking. It requires authenticity, deep expertise, and ideas that challenge the status quo. To communicate all of this clearly and effectively, it needs to take the form of high-quality content on topics that are relevant and deeply important to your audience.
People tend to connect with people, not corporations. A good thought leader can humanize your brand and make it more relatable by putting a name and face on it.
Why Is Thought Leadership Important?
Truly sustainable sustainability begins with transformation on an individual level. Thought leadership has the power to amplify this effect until a critical mass internalizes new and better ways of thinking and being and uses it to instigate organizational and societal change.
Thought leaders can create a movement, reinvent an industry, and play an instrumental role in solving the world’s most pressing challenges. And though it’s good practice to deliver value without being self-promotional, they often find themselves rewarded with the following:
Increased brand awareness
Thought leadership gives you a higher chance of meeting your customers early in their buyer’s journey, which means you’ll remain top of mind throughout their entire journey. Providing them with valuable and helpful content upfront positions your brand as a good option to invest in. The more high-value information you put out, the more people will associate you and your brand with a particular pain point or market.
Increased brand affinity
Producing thought leadership content allows your customers to get to know you, your voice, and your personality. And since you’re a representative of your company, they’ll associate your qualities with your business. This gives you the chance to build brand affinity, the most enduring and valuable relationship between a business and its consumers based on the mutual belief that they share the same values.
Improved social proof
When done well, thought leadership activates the powerful sales element of social proof. When a company demonstrates that it understands the industry—its strengths, weaknesses, problems, and opportunities—and the content is liked, shared, referenced, and endorsed by others, buyers stand to reason their products must be pretty good too.
More online engagement
Online engagement is driven in part by a herd mentality. The more high-value content you produce, the more you boost your profile. The more you boost your profile, the more people want to interact and connect with you and participate in the conversations you’re leading. This leads to an uptick in activity on your and your brand’s social media profiles.
More industry engagement
From an industry standpoint, it doesn’t hurt to have your peers and competitors see you as a thought leader or resource. When other companies in your space see that you’re knowledgeable and capable, you earn their attention and respect. This can lead to partnerships, referrals, and even greater exposure and authority. It also increases the likelihood of people wanting to link to your content, which strengthens your SEO profile as a result.
Higher conversion rates
Trust is the ultimate brand asset. LinkedIn reports that 83 percent of consumers say thought leadership inspires confidence in brands. By being recognized and strongly appreciated as one of the leading experts in your field, you engage in a form of attraction marketing where already motivated buyers of your products seek you out. Being a thought leader makes your audience perceive you as the go-to source for their needs, which means they’re well-primed to purchase from you again and again.
Premium pricing
Thought leadership enables you to charge handsomely for your products. It positions you as one of the best at what you do, and successfully differentiates your brand from those of competitors, so the customers you connect with are willing to pay a premium for the exceptional quality and expertise which only you can provide.
Five Distinct Personas Of Sustainability Thought Leaders
First, you must choose a champion. It can be yourself or a spokesperson for your business. But they must be influential and articulate with a distinctive point of view, an academic’s thirst for knowledge, and a flair for strategic storytelling. Once you’ve identified your company’s thought leader, you need to cultivate their public-facing persona.
Sustainability thought leaders usually fall into one of the following five categories:
1. Luminary
The Luminary is a natural leader who leverages their influence to inspire change both on a micro and macro level. They continually introduce new ideas that others emulate which pushes the sustainability agenda forward within their company, their industry, and (ideally) wider society.
2. Activist
The Activist takes a strong stance on important issues and backs it up with action. They take a political approach to sustainability by leveraging their voice to push for positive change on an institutional and legislative level.
3. Disruptor
The Disruptor is a consummate problem-solver who uses their knack for innovation as a force for good in the world. Their ideas are future-focused and solution-oriented, often challenging entire industries and business models to embrace more sustainable practices.
4. Trailblazer
The Trailblazer forges their own unique path by doing things their way and taking risks to bring about sustainable change. They’re ambitious and visionary. They know what their ideal world looks like, and the steps required to get there.
5. Maverick
The Maverick is an iconoclast, a nonconformist who uses their unconventional thinking to push the conversation in new and unexpected directions. They’re not afraid to spark a little controversy as long as it’s productive and drives their mission forward.
Your persona is essentially your personal brand as a thought leader. It’s best to choose the one that feels the most natural to you so that you can present a consistent and authentic image that evolves organically as you grow.
How To Source High-Quality Thought Leadership Content
Thought leadership content should be valuable, educational, accurate, and targeted. And believe it or not, you already have thoughts you can lead with. Mine your past experiences, challenges, and accomplishments for the following:
Counter-narrative opinions
If you have strong opinions that diverge from the conventional viewpoints within your space, you’re a prime candidate for some counter-narrative thought leadership content. Just don’t fall into the trap of being a rebel without a cause. Make sure your ideas are aligned with your brand, target audience, and long-term objectives.
Personal narrative
Everybody loves a good story. The human brain is hardwired to identify with people, places, and things and respond to stories that have a clear beginning, middle, and end. The story of who you are, what you’ve learned, and how you arrived where you are today can be an amazing source of thought leadership content that resonates and builds trust and familiarity.
Industry insights
Great thought leadership content often comes from engaging with the trends and developments taking prominence in the space around you. If you can pay attention to what’s happening, recognize what is and isn’t working, and understand and articulate the reasons behind it, you can do analysis-based thought leadership content.
Data worth sharing
Data is a powerful engine for generating high-level thought leadership content. In particular, proprietary data produced or collected by your business gives you the opportunity to share a unique and first-hand perspective with your audience. And you don’t need a massive or overly complicated bank of data to do it. You can find relevant insights in a survey or recent product test. If you can gather data about your audience, your industry, and the way people interact with your products, you have the ability to turn that data into thought leadership content.
The Ten Most Common Types Of Thought Leadership Content
The types of thought leadership content you produce should be determined by who you’re trying to impress, and what you’re trying to impress them with. The ten most common types of thought leadership content are:
1. Opinion articles
2. Case studies
3. White papers
4. Ebooks
5. Conference talks
6. Newsletters
7. Interviews
8. Podcasts
9. Webinars
10. Original research reports
If you need a copywriter to help you with your thought leadership content, click here to get in touch.