The Art of Authentic Influence: Creating Thought Leadership That Doesn't Suck

I had the pleasure of heading back to Content Marketing World this year in San Diego, and because they don't know what's good for them, they invited me to do this talk on The Art of Authentic Influence: Creating Thought Leadership That Doesn't Suck.

If you're finding this newsletter from there: HELLO! And thank you for heading over here.

If you're already a subscriber, HELLO AGAIN and I hope you'll find some of the details in here useful.

What we talked about

I'm convinced that most of the reason "thought leadership" gets a bad rap in the B2B marketing world is because most of it is just plain...dull.

In fact, just 15% of decision makers who regularly consume thought leadership content would characterize it as "very good" or "excellent".

Yikes on bikes, friends.

So why is that, exactly?

In short, most thought leadership being created today is little more than a thinly-veiled sales pitch masquerading as a whitepaper or a podcast or a video of some kind. The more lengthy answer is that there are generally three things missing:

1. Any sense of creativity whatsoever. Content that actually engages peoples minds or hearts or both needs to have something interesting, appealing, entertaining, thought provoking...but man, we've made everything that comes out of our marketing departments soulless and bland in the name of landing talking points and value propositions. We're awash in an ocean of content at all times. Yours better have an "it" factor that helps it stand out.
2. Credibility or a centered sense of expertise, authority, or knowledge that the creators are generously willing to share because they want to make everyone else better, which lends itself to...
3. Community. So much of the thought leadership content that gets published and produced is only concerned with being a means to an end. In the B2B world, that often translates to "gimme a lead!". The problem is most of the people wanting to learn about an interesting topic aren't immediately in the market for whatever you're selling. If you want people to be interested in what you have to say, you need to be part of the communities you want to know and trust you. That means participating, sharing generously...and doing so sometimes without the expectation of anything in return (yes, even an email address).

You thought I was going to say "authenticity" didn't you? I mean, it's in the title.

Well, truth be told, you can be authentically...a lot of things. If you're a total jerk and act accordingly, that's technically authentic. But when people say that, what they really mean is they want genuine interaction that doesn't always have a commercial purpose.

I know. That's hard for marketers to get their heads around. But what about the ROI, Amber? I'd argue that "return" is relative to a timeline. If your sales cycle is 12 months long but you're expecting every marketing tactic to have a 30 day payoff, you're in for a rude awakening (and even before we could ostensibly "attribute" a click, that payoff timeline was still not immediate).

Thought leadership is an investment we make in our audience and community. THAT is the art of "authentic" influence. Audiences deserve to be met where they are and provided with value as a signal of our intent to build relevance and trust over time. They're not slot machines that just churn out contracts in exchange for an infographic, and no amount of us treating them that way makes it less true.

And in an era of AI, we have to tread even more carefully and show definitively that we're not just relying on the robots to churn out regurgitated "best practices" that you can find on any virtual street corner. AI can be really great for helping us refine and automate the drudgery and processes behind our work, but it's a really lousy substitute for the most important last mile of truly "leading in thought" which is the human, interpersonal interactions, knowledge, context and conversations that come as a result of the thought provocation we hope to create.

So I shared two tools to help us re-center our thought leadership through a human lens, whether you're creating it as an individual or as part of your brand and company marketing strategy.

Thought Leadership Archetypes

When I work with people or brands on thought leadership, often they don't know where to start, what their voice should be, or how they want to show up. A great way to narrow that down is by thinking in archetypes, or general models of a persona that can help guide the role you're hoping to play for your audience. Here are the ones I shared with the audience at CMW:

These are just a few ideas, and they're far from exhaustive. Maybe you want to be The Contrarian and center your work on challenging the status quo. Maybe you want to be more of a therapist or a cheerleader or a brainiac...you get the idea.

Point is that building an archetype to anchor your thought leadership can help you ask yourself whether the content you're creating fits that mold, stays true to those goals and values, and is something that your audience has come to expect from you. (All these examples are worth a look here on LinkedIn, btw). And yep, your company brand can embody a thought leader archetype, too.

The Thought Leadership Canvas

Ok so you've got your archetype...what now? How do you create a framework that allows you to create really good, useful, helpful content in a sustainable way? How can you stay on track with the important intersection of what you know, who could benefit from knowing it, and how you want to participate in the communities you're contributing to?

Loosely inspired by the Business Model Canvas by Alex Osterwalder, I came up with what I call the Thought Leadership Canvas. I've used a version of this with lots of executive clients and brand teams while they're trying to zero in on their thought leadership platform and pillars. It looks like this (you can download a PDF version HERE if you want to fill out your own).

Here's the quick rundown of each box:

• Your Archetype (we covered that above)
• Your Current Audience: Who knows about you already? What communities are you part of, or what groups of people already trust what you have to say? If you have an audience already, who makes up that audience (think things like demographics, psychographics, firmographics, etc)
• Your Aspirational Audience: If the audiences you want to reach are different from the above or if you don't really have much of a platform yet, who would you like to be reaching? What do they look like, what do they value, how do they behave, what problems are they trying to solve?
• Your Zone of Genius: This takes some digging, but what do you know well and deeply enough that you can share it generously and consistently with those audiences? It could be an area of subject matter expertise (like AI or Marketing), or a set of behaviors (trauma recovery, health and wellness), or a set of values (compassionate leadership, DEI). Top trick: don't just rely on your own assessment, ask people you know and trust what you do better than anyone else.
• Your Impact Factor: What do you want people to think, feel, do or believe when they've been impacted by your content, thinking or ideas? What's the emotional or intellectual aftertaste you want to leave behind? How are you planning to leave people and audiences better than you found them? If someone were to write a review of your content or an article about your contributions, what would it say?
• Your Creative Modes: Are you a writer? A podcaster? Is video your thing? Are you a little of all of the above? What sort of creative tidbits do you want to put out into the universe? How often are you going to do that in a repeatable, sustainable way as a promise to your audience? What do you have at your disposal to help you do that?
• Your Digital Citizenship: How are you committing to show up for, among and with your community as a part of it? What are the guiding principles that will shape your participation? What will you give to the community? What will you not tolerate in yours? How will you demonstrate your "give to get" approach?
• Your Barometers: As you go along, things will change. You'll learn, grow, shape new perspectives, get new ideas. How will you know when it's time to change something? What will you do if something isn't working? What will you do if it is? What voices and opinions will you allow to shape your direction...and what voices will you not allow a vote to?

The idea in all of this is that when you're creating content, you can ask yourself whether or not it fits within your canvas, whether you're coloring outside the lines (which is totally fine, just may signal that your direction for thought leadership needs refinement), and whether you feel like what you're building is in line with your goals.

And it probably goes without saying, but if you're doing this as part of a brand strategy, you'll want to develop this with your stakeholders to align on the answers that fit your brand and further goals of any of the teams that are part of your overall thought leadership strategy. But it still works! I use it with my clients all the time.

Go forth and make thought leadership that doesn't suck.

Truth is...the bar is kind of low. But we're not the types to settle for that, are we?

That means there is ample space for people and brands to really step up and create the stuff people want to see. There's still voracious appetite for great, useful, valuable and thought-provoking content out there. Decision makers spend hours and hours per week digesting thought leadership content despite how much we may think it's tired and overdone (hint: we're too close to the problem).

People want to be sharper. More informed. Smarter. More innovative. They want to learn more and do better and advance their careers, their brands, and their businesses. You might just have one of the keys to help them do it.

So what are you waiting for?

Thanks again to all of my CMW friends and colleagues who I got to say hello to this week. I appreciate each and every one of you! Does this help? Have questions? Send me a message or hit me up in the comments.