Four Principles of Building Thought Leadership Through Content Marketing

Would you rather be a leader or a follower? Sounds like an obvious question but many brands fall into the trap of being a follower when it comes to their content marketing. In today’s crowded marketplace, consumers are being bombarded with similar content from brands, content that is failing to resonate or make any sort of impact. In order to stand out, you need to do something different.

Building thought leadership is all about using content marketing to portray your expertise and experience in your industry, showing your customer base that your brand is a credible source of information. By doing so, you can establish yourself as the go-to for finding the information that your target market needs.

Now more than ever, it’s a time for providing information, being useful and educating people. Think of it as a brand investment that will pay dividends in the long term. Not only will building thought leadership establish your brand as an industry expert, but it develops trust between your audience and you. This trust goes a long way to gaining loyalty and moving your audience down the marketing funnel.

So, how do you become a leader and not a follower? We’ve got four tips below to help you build thought leadership through content marketing.

1. Be Selfless

Everyone has an agenda, and your customers know this. So, instead of creating content that aims to convince your audience to buy your product or service, defy their expectations by giving them something for nothing. Share your insights and expertise with your audience, no strings attached.

By focusing your efforts on providing the content that your audience is actually interested in, whether it entertains, teaches or informs, you’ll find yourself with a tribe of potential customers who begin to trust your brand.

2. Know Your Audience‍

Our next tip is to make sure you know who your audience is and what types of information they’re looking for. Put yourself in your customers shoes - if you were them what pieces of information would you want to know about your product or service? It’s also worth carrying out some keyword research to see what your target market is actively searching for. You could use software like SEMrush or Moz for this.

Once you have these topics, serve your audience with authoritative content pieces that provide the best possible answers to the questions they’re looking for. Whether you choose to do this through blog posts, evergreen content, video or another way, you’ll find that your customers will begin to keep an eye out for your future content.

3. Demonstrate Your Confidence‍

This tip is all about the way in which you present information to your target market, your tone of voice and the image that you portray. When building thought leadership you have to be able to demonstrate your authority and prove your experience. This is the only way to ensure you prove your brand to be a credible source of information. It’s this that develops trust amongst your target audience.

4. Have an Opinion 

Finally, don’t be afraid to have an opinion! Tell your audience what you actually think about the topic you’re discussing. By doing this, you’re demonstrating your confidence and level of expertise. Plus, by telling your customers what you personally think, you’re providing unique information that can’t be found elsewhere. This is a really effective way of proving that your brand is a leader and not a follower.

Want to know how you could be using content marketing to gain the trust and loyalty of your target market? Get in touch for a chat.