What's your process for identifying the best topics for thought leadership?

1 Know your goals

Before you start brainstorming topics, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your thought leadership. What are your objectives, your target audience, and your key messages? How do you want to position yourself or your brand in the market? How do you want to influence or inspire your audience? Having a clear vision of your goals will help you narrow down your topic options and align them with your strategy.

2 Research your audience

The next step is to understand your audience and their needs, challenges, interests, and preferences. You can use various sources of data, such as surveys, interviews, social media, analytics, reviews, or feedback, to learn more about your audience. What are their pain points, questions, or goals? What are they looking for, reading, or engaging with? What are their opinions, beliefs, or values? By researching your audience, you can find topics that are relevant, useful, and appealing to them.

3 Scan the environment

Another way to find potential topics is to scan the environment and see what's happening in your industry, niche, or domain. You can use tools like Google Trends, BuzzSumo, or Feedly to monitor the latest trends, news, or conversations in your field. You can also look at what your competitors, peers, or influencers are talking about, and how they are positioning themselves. By scanning the environment, you can find topics that are timely, fresh, and distinctive.

4 Validate your topics

Once you have a list of possible topics, you need to validate them and see if they are worth pursuing. You can use criteria like relevance, value, uniqueness, and feasibility to evaluate your topics. Relevance means that your topic matches your goals, your audience, and your environment. Value means that your topic offers something new, useful, or insightful to your audience. Uniqueness means that your topic stands out from the crowd and showcases your expertise or perspective. Feasibility means that you have enough resources, data, or authority to create and deliver your content.

5 Measure your impact

The final step is to measure and evaluate the impact of your thought leadership content. You can use metrics like reach, engagement, leads, conversions, or reputation to track the performance of your content. You can also use feedback, testimonials, or referrals to measure the influence or trust that you have built with your audience. By measuring your impact, you can see what works and what doesn't, and improve your future content.