Thought-leadership articles are a popular form of writing used by corporate writers in B2B and B2C marketing. This article genre plays an important role in content marketing strategies from building brand reputation, trust to being a marketing tool and a decision driver. LinkedIn is one major platform where thought-led articles appear often and you may have come across many companies sharing thought-leadership content in their LinkedIn profiles.
Thought leadership content can be categorized as corporate thought leadership and personal thought leadership. Corporate thought-led content is sharing views and opinions from a business perspective while personal thought-led content refers to individuals sharing their own content.
Let’s discuss the importance of thought-led articles in both business and personal perspectives.
Used as a marketing tool
Thought-led content is used to gain brand visibility and become recognized as a leading corporate brand. Brands can share their expertise to a wider audience via thought-led content. Consumers can often turn to that brand after getting to know more details regarding that brand. Thought-led content can also be used to target a particular audience and encourage them to explore more about a company or a brand.
Help in building reputation and trust
Thought led-articles are vital during times of crisis and disruption as they can protect the brand reputation while bracing a positive sentiment. Trust is what matters in the corporate world and customers want to engage with companies and people that they can trust. Thought Led-articles help us portray that trust among brands and people.
Vice President of Marketing at Pendo, Joe Chernov in his Sophisticated Marketers Guide to Thought Leadership explains the importance of thought-led content for building trust: I don’t think you can gain a competitive advantage without thought leadership. The reason why thought-leadership is a prerequisite is because trust is a prerequisite, and thought leadership is a way to build trust.
Thought-led content leads to behavior changes and makes an impact
Lets say a brand continues to leverage on thought-led content and build the consumers trust, more and more people will turn towards that brand. When it comes to personal thought-led content, an opinion of a thought leader might get into the hearts of the readers and compel them to take an action.
Help in decision making
Thought-led articles always have a say in decision making in the corporate world. Be it personal opinions or ideas related to current business affairs, thought-led content have an impact on decision makers. Following are few interesting facts on thought leadership content revealed from a joint research from LinkedIn and Edelman. 71% of decision makers agree to the fact that reading thought leadership is one of the best ways to get a sense of the type and caliber of an organization’s thinking. 88% of the decision makers agree that thought leadership is effective at enhancing their perceptions of an organization. 47% of the C-suite executives say that they shared contact information after reading thought-leadership content. More than half of the Decision makers spend one or more hours reading thought-led content per week. 32% of Decision makers gain valuable insights more than half the time from the thought leadership content they read.
