By Rhea Wessel
Today I want to discuss something vital for anyone in the B2B space—how to transform thought leadership content into business impact. The 2024 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report provides valuable insights on this topic.
According to the Edelman report, high-quality thought leadership can be a game-changer. These materials significantly impact buyer behavior, stimulating demand, influencing buying decisions, and even shortening sales cycles.
But 95% of business clients aren’t actively seeking goods or services at any given time, the report says. This means most potential clients are out there, just waiting to be engaged in the right way.
Thought leadership content allows us to engage these out-of-market buyers by addressing their underlying challenges and needs, even before they start looking for solutions.
Quality Over Quantity: The Deep Work Approach
The key to creating thought leadership content that truly makes an impact is focusing on quality over quantity.
High-quality content builds trust and credibility, which are essential for influencing buying decisions.
Here are some thoughts on how to do it right:
Deep Work and Focus
In my book, I emphasize the importance of deep work—a concept that involves dedicating uninterrupted time to focus on identifying and articulating new ideas. Deep work allows you to dive deeply into your subject matter, explore it from various angles, and write thoughtful pieces that offer unique insights and solutions.
To get in the zone, you’ll need to allocate specific times in your schedule for deep work.
During these periods, eliminate all distractions and focus on what’s new, different or puzzling to you about your niche. Turn off notifications and phones and put yourself under stress with a clear goal for what you want to achieve during this time.
The Three-Column Idea-Development Chart:
Here’s one exercise you could do.
Use a Three-Column Idea-Development Chart to brainstorm, ideate and keep things parallel. This chart helps you capture unspoken truths, actual truths, and ideal states in your thought-leadership writing.
From Write Like a Thought Leader - Figure 14: Three-Column Idea-Development Chart
How does it work?
Following my example, articulate:
- Unspoken Truth: The false belief or common misconception in your industry.
- Actual Truth: The reality as you see it, based on your expertise.
- Ideal State: The preferred or ideal situation that your thought leadership aims to achieve.
Example:
- Unspoken Truth: Companies believe they will gain traction in the market by producing lots of content about what they do.
- Actual Truth: Companies need to steer away from low-value content and instead find and tell the right stories to engage clients in important conversations and raise sales.
- Ideal State: Subject-matter experts deeply involved in the business have great ideas and stories to tell. They need story smarts to help them articulate their ideas in ways that engage clients and prospects.
Using such a chart to help you structure your thoughts can ensure that your content is not only informative but potentially transformative.
It forces you to think critically about the common misconceptions in your industry and how you can address them through your thought leadership.
Deep work for thought leadership
The 2024 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report highlights the immense power of high-quality thought leadership in driving business impact.
By focusing on quality over quantity and dedicating time to deep work and fresh ideation, you can create thought leadership content that truly resonates with your audience and drives significant business results.
Report link: https://www.edelman.com/expertise/Business-Marketing/2024-b2b-thought-leadership-report
-Rhea Wessel is a writer and founder of The Institute for Thought Leadership. Her new book on using AI to boost your thought leadership is due out late 2024.
-Check out our coaching packages and workshops for your company.