PR’s Top Pros Talk… The Value of Thought Leadership

Annie Dunleavy, Senior VP & U.S. Head of Content Strategy for Edelman Business Marketing, and Tusar Barik, Senior Director of Marketing for LinkedIn, discuss the essentials of thought leadership. Tusar emphasizes leveraging LinkedIn for posting and sharing insightful content. Annie shares how to elevate a thought leadership strategy to make the most impact. They also explain the role of thought leadership in adapting to shrinking newsrooms.

Download the 2024 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report.

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TRANSCRIPT:

DOUG: When you’re talking about thought leadership, it’s probably better to have two thought leaders instead of just one. And that’s what we’ve pulled together today. Annie, let’s start with you. How can thought leadership impact trust?

ANNIE: Thought leadership is a really powerful tool for driving trust in your organization and really driving credibility with stakeholders. We have found in this year’s study and in past years that we’ve run the survey, that executives actually trust thought leadership over product materials and marketing materials. So, it’s really a powerful tool for driving trust in an organization, particularly in a B2B context.

DOUG: Yeah. And the report you put together, which will be getting into really some interesting findings to start, what are some of the misconceptions people might have about building thought leadership through LinkedIn?

TUSAR: It’s a great question. I think there’s a couple key things that focus on. One, it’s really important that you have short bites to draw attention. People tend to typically put out like large white papers and large amounts of content. We need to draw people in with all the all the other content that’s out there. There’s also this really important aspect of being human. It’s about coming from trusted individuals and not just companies. Again, we tend to always put stuff out just from the company, but people really resonate a lot. We’ve seen this in the report and just generally, on the platform, people resonate when they’re hearing from an individual who’s a known, respected leader in the industry that they’re in.

DOUG: Yeah. And once they post, Tusar, is there a good way to interact with the audience to keep the conversation going? That’s important, it seems.

TUSAR: Yeah, totally. So, at LinkedIn, we really believe in this idea of being an exchange of professional ideas and learnings. And so, as you think about utilizing LinkedIn as a platform, it’s really important that you not just put content out there, but you also help people who are seeking advice, help, give advice, help even to intake advice on how to get better. There’s a lot to think about in the industry you’re in. And so, understanding how to effectively interact is really about being able to not just put it out there once, but being able to keep the momentum going and starting and continuing conversations that exist.

DOUG: And Annie wants some of the key findings in your study, was that thought leadership, especially effective thought leadership, goes well beyond just creating brand awareness. What are some of the benefits that you found in that report?

ANNIE: So, one thing that we found is thought leadership, as you mentioned, Doug, when it’s done well, it does a lot more than just increase awareness for a brand. If it’s really tuned into what is on your target audience’s mind, and what challenges they’re facing, it can actually prompt your target audience to reconsider how they’re currently meeting those challenges. And ideally, just to take it one step further, whether they might need new solutions or partners to help them do that. One of the key findings was that 75% of decision-makers and C-suite executives, actually, that we surveyed in our report, said that thought leadership had led them to research a product or service they hadn’t previously been considering. So, really, thought leadership is a powerful tool for driving demand for businesses, products, and services.

DOUG: Yeah, and I saw that you felt that and found out that thought leadership can actually help increase the prices you’re able to offer for services because they’re increasing the perception of value.

ANNIE: Absolutely. Thought leadership can help you command a premium for your products and services, as you mentioned, Doug, because it allows you to show that you’re really on the cutting edge of insights. And one thing that we found is that members of a target audience, buyer groups, want to make sure that they are aligned with companies and choosing partners that can help them stay on the forefront. So, it’s really helpful in that respect as well.

TUSAR: Totally. I think there’s also this important concept of thought leadership being education and news for the industry, right? One of the things we’ve seen in the reports in years past is this idea of shrinking newsrooms, which we all know exists across the board in all aspects of, of news, but particularly in B2B. And so being able to find ways to find information, thought leadership provides that. How do we share information about what’s happening in our industry? The more niche you get, the more important it is to put information out to help people stay ahead of what’s going on. And so thought leadership from organizations, people look to companies and organizations to help them get information about what’s going on and find out about the latest trends. And not just think about what they should be thinking about right now, but also what they should be thinking about in six months, in a year, and helping to understand that.

DOUG: You know, that is really great to be thinking forward. Just one thing to add, because everyone sort of takes in the shrinking newsrooms and for B2B that’s definitely there. But oddly enough, for local TV news, in the last ten years, the amount of hours of Spanish local TV news has doubled and English language is up 30 to 40%. What’s interesting about your point, the newsrooms themselves haven’t gotten any larger. The people there just have to put out more content and do more work. There are more channels. So, that’s something that happens all over. Either of you can jump onto this, but are there some specific insights that communicators should be thinking about with the type of content they’re looking to create?

ANNIE: There are three things communicators should focus on when they’re creating thought leadership. And this in the study we asked respondents, you know, what do they find most valuable in their consumption of thought leadership. And three things really rose to the top. The first is that consumers of thought leadership want to see strong research and data. So, make sure that your content really is backed by solid insights, solid research, and solid data that can really help your decision-makers understand their own space, understand the landscape better, and so on and so forth. The second piece is, you know, quality thought leadership helps the audience better understand the challenges they’re facing. And I talked about that a moment ago, but really what the opportunities are for their business that they can capitalize on? And these folks also want concrete guidance and case studies and their thought leadership. So, there are sort of those three elements that we found from our respondents to take thought leadership from good to great.

TUSAR: And I can’t emphasize enough that last point about like being able to make it practical and real. A lot of times people will have a lot of theory and ideas, which is helpful to start the concept, but people need to be able to take action and it’s really important. Assuming you get past the point of validating that this is true with third-party information and your own information, being able to help them have insightful action, that’s where you’ll drive that demand that Annie was talking about before, and how we think about the importance of what all these people can do to actually drive business results as well.

DOUG: So, from checking the boxes in this conversation that Annie laid out. This is our 266th episode of the show that we’ll be posting to LinkedIn. So, that is an example, just to make sure we share that during the context of this discussion. Any sort of specific actions or examples that either of you could talk about that maybe check some of those boxes? And Tusar, if you don’t have an answer ready yet, one of the pieces of advice that you talk about is the importance of protecting your core clients, your core business base. So, if you can maybe jump on that first, and then we can get into some examples of some of the actions that work well.

TUSAR: We’re in an interesting economic climate in the B2B world and just in the world in general. And so when we think about this idea of thought leadership in the past, we’ve always looked at it, and this is the sixth year that we’ve done this study. And in the past, we’ve looked about like, how does it increase business? How does it drive price premiums? Which it continues to do, but even more so now than ever is this idea of, uh, businesses are looking to protect the core. How do they maintain their business and not lose market share because there’s a finite amount of budget in dollars that are out there when you have rising interest rates, that even continue to expand on like technology industries and different industries in particular. And so not losing market share is a key area. What we found this year was that it can actually help maintain and protect that core because it’s not just about net new customers, but it’s also about maintaining and building within your current customer base. You know, one of the things we saw, as you know, things change within organizations. Personnel changes, the market dynamics at play that I mentioned before, this idea of protecting your core is that effectively, like your competitors are out there putting thought leadership out there and trying to drive new business and do a bunch of things. And in order to make sure that people are still thinking about your organization, your product, your good, your service in a way that stays top of mind, especially when new people come in with an organization or people end up exiting organizations, it’s really important to build that brand value via thought leadership.

DOUG: So, Tusar, it sounds like, um, business sit-ups are really about protecting your core. And that’s done with thought leadership. Annie, is there such a competition to get your message out there, get your information out there? There are so many more places where content is there. Can thought leadership play a role in helping you cut through, especially maybe even reaching that core audience because you already have a connection with them?

ANNIE: Absolutely. So as Tusar mentioned, newsrooms are dwindling. It really is increasingly hard to break through and get earned coverage in this landscape. And I think thought leadership is a really valuable tool to help organizations do that. So, if you can create thought leadership content, publish it on your own website, and then make sure you’re using tools at your disposal, such as paid distribution on LinkedIn and other channels, organic posting, word of mouth, email marketing, and so on and so forth to make sure you’re getting your target audience directly to your site to consume the content there. That’s a way to sort of break through the noise and ensure that your organization’s perspectives are reaching the people you’re trying to reach.

DOUG: That’s a really important point. As we wrap up, Tusar, anything you’d like to add to this great discussion we’ve been having?

TUSAR: The only thing I would add is just on this idea that, you know, thought leadership is something that I think, I talked about the economic climate, and I think more than ever, marketers, communicators, their budgets are getting squeezed harder and harder as we go forward. And so, it’s really important to understand the value of, you know, maintaining these programs and continuing to fund these programs because they drive long-term value. Our research, year after year for six years now has shown this and continues to show this about the idea of driving value. Obviously, there’s an important part of showing metrics and being able to think about it. We talk about the sector and the research like it’s more than just vanity metrics of number of website hits or number of downloads, but actually working together with your, you know, with your operations teams and your finance teams and your sales teams to be able to show the value this provides because it educates your customers, which is you’re delivering customer value fundamentally. And it’s helping drive the business forward if you do create good quality. Thought leadership helps to stay top of mind. It is branding. Fundamentally, it’s branding in the B2B world.

DOUG: Awesome. Thanks to both of you for this conversation. Really fun and really good information.

TUSAR: Thank you so much for having us.

ANNIE: Thanks for having us. Much appreciated.