Letter #63: How to win at creating thought leadership content
Expert interview on bringing out the best insider stories.
Howdy amigos!
This week’s newsletter is brought to you by a tall cup of vanilla latte and a Masooma turning over the various definitions of thought leadership content in her head.
Truth be told: there’s not just expertise but also a healthy slice of courage that goes into producing thought leadership content.
I say this because sharing your expertise, insights, and unique processes can feel overwhelming — and you’ve to be open to any criticism that may come your way (there will always be naysayers).
But, truth number 2: in a crowded content landscape, “unique thought leadership content that only your company can write” is what will help you stand out.
To help you create it (and refine your POV of it), I got Fadeke Adegbuyi today. Fadeke’s a content empress (trust me!) who’s worked with companies like Doist, DigitalOcean, and Every.
As is our alternate Tuesday thing, I asked her our 3 regular questions:
A mistake Fadeke noticed in the thought leadership production field
An actionable tip to get you one step closer to creating epic thought leadership content
And a secret tip to effectively win at making this type of content
Here’s what she shared:
👉 Don’t make this mistake: Stop pursuing the trending bandwagon — go niche instead.
“Across content marketing and editorial, there’s often a desire to be a part of every trending conversation and find positioning as an expert on the hot topic of the day,” Fadeke notes. “But most people have a narrow area of expertise and that’s okay.”
“Pitch potential topics to Directors, VPs, and C-suites that they have direct expertise in, instead of joining wider discussions that are overcrowded anyways. For founders or venture capitalists, focus on the area they’re building their business in or the areas they invest in, respectively.”
Remember: “Good thought leadership writing draws on professional expertise and real-life examples to make salient observations about the present or grounded predictions about the future. If you pitch a topic that lacks these, you’ll find the piece falls flat regardless of how well it’s written.”
👉 Do this today: Pitch ideas internally — don’t wait for senior executives to come up with ideas.
“If more thought leadership content is a content priority for your company, get used to pitching them — not the other way around.”
To do so:
“Look through internal communications and come up with five distinct ideas based on compelling information you feel would make for great thought leadership content. Then, pitch them.”
“The quality of your content is limited by the quality of your idea, so try to build your idea spotting muscle by continuously seeing internal information as a content opportunity.”
👉 The secret tip to bringing out the best thought leadership stories: Review internal comms for awesome ideas.
“If you look internally across Slack announcements, corporate memos, and company-wide emails, there’s a wealth of insider information — directly from experts — that never gets conveyed to the public but can be captivating to an audience.”
“Ask the authors of this internal information if there’s a place for those ideas to be further developed in the public sphere through an article, instead of coming up with topics from scratch. They’ll often be more inclined to say ‘yes’ because much of the work is already done. “
To conclude:
“In the end, the best stories might not be the ones you think will slot nicely into your editorial calendar or align with your quarterly themes, but the ones that leaders are truly passionate about and can speak to authoritatively.”
So today’s takeaways:
Go niche with sharing expertise — it’s okay not to jump on every trending idea
Build your idea spotting muscle to pitch superb content ideas
Review internal comms docs for idea generation
That’s all for today folks!
If there’s some awesome TC content you’ve read lately, hit reply and share it with me — I’ve been consuming and creating it a lot lately with my clients.
Cheers,
-M
👍🏿😎 An example of why all areas of a business need to connect and work together. They may have different areas of focus, but each works toward the same goal. I will make an effort to apply this more actively moving forward. Thank you Masooma... and latte.
This is brilliant ✨🔥though I haven't treaded thought leadership yet, I have noted down points and thanks for bringing an expert like Fadeke.