Establishing a client as an industry expert with unique insight will always be important in helping to build brand reputation and credibility, driving audience growth, promoting business-to-business marketing and securing status as a trusted go-to source for prominent media outlets.
Increasingly, consumers are reporting that they value a brand’s authenticity and corporate responsibility above all else. In fact, according to research from Adweek, 78% of consumers reported they made a purchase decision based on values in the past year. If a brand can demonstrate its values through thought-provoking, authentic content, they are one step closer to being a company that consumers can justify supporting.
Baker Public Relations recommends the following tips for successful thought leadership:
1. Identify and learn your target audience. Are you speaking to peers in your industry? Other businesses? Community members? Figuring out who you want to engage is the first step in finding the right voice to use. For example, if you’re speaking to community members, you probably want to avoid any industry jargon that you would use when speaking to colleagues.
2. Be consistent. Sharing content regularly is essential to building momentum and staying top of mind with your audience. It doesn’t look good when a consumer visits your website or social media pages and sees the last post was from weeks or even months ago.
3. Start small. Sometimes when we mention “thought leadership” to a client as a strategy, they immediately jump to the thought of themselves on a national speaking tour. While that may be the ultimate goal, thought leadership doesn’t need to be a scary endeavor. It can begin simply with a social media graphic answering the five most often-asked questions about your industry, or a short video explaining why your product/service is better than the competition. Remember that things you may think are obvious may not be so clear to others.
At Baker Public Relations, we have always strived to elevate our clients as thought leaders and will continue to do so in 2023 as an important element of our PR strategy. By putting our clients top of mind on high-level industry-focused topics, it sets them apart from their competitors and positions them as market leaders.