In 10 Ways to Improve the Way You Market Your HR-Talent Acquisition-Learning Technology, I talked about how the phrases “thought leadership” and “branding” content have wandered off to mean just about anything.
Now let’s look at 15 potential characteristics of what might be called thought leadership. It’s not necessary for your marketing to include every one of them for it to be “thought leadership,” but they are attributes you may find in thought leadership. Feel free to add your own.
- Challenges the status quo authentically, not for the sake of drawing attention or causing a phony controversy
- Backs up the point with examples or data, possibly from your own technology
- Disagrees with what you’ve said prior and admits you changed your own mind
- Avoids excessive superlatives (“the first talent technology to … ” and “the only work-tech to …” ) unless they are demonstrably true
- Addresses what’s on your customer’s minds vs. just what’s on yours
- Avoids jumping on the bandwagon of repetition; e.g. “AI won’t take your job, but someone using AI will”
- Scores or rates your previous thought leadership (like Barron’s does with its stock picks; like Kevin Wheeler does with his future of talent predictions; like occasionally happens with sports prognosticators)
- May go against the grain of what the political or politically-correct consensus is
- Offers concrete suggestions. This is different from No. 2 above, which is about backing up your point. This is about making your thought leadership more realistic by giving your reader a way to make it happen (I have attended numerous recent webinars about increasing inclusiveness, with little advice for those want to take action, such as “here’s an autism-related organization you can contact” and so on)
- Admits you are not experts in everything; includes a section called “what we don’t know” or “what we don’t have an answer to” and so on
- Educates and teaches more than offers a point of view
- Covers topics that aren’t just the flavor/Coldplay of the day or that have fallen off the headlines, but are still important
- Uses scenarios to indicate an understanding of the customer, but doesn’t pander or assume that the reader is an omnipotent superstar who can buy and use your HR technology to solve a problem with few internal obstacles/roadblocks
- Addresses or is meant for someone who is not the buyer, such as a hiring manager
- Is not a computer’s compilation of other people’s previous thoughts