There’s a massive appetite for thought leaders and those who can do thought-leadership writing. Those who can help us navigate through the uncertainty created the COVID-19 pandemic creates.
Do you have expertise in your chosen field? You might be a candidate for thought-leadership writing. But there’s a tsunami of content online. How do you get your original insights out there as an industry expert and build your brand?
Consider sharing insights from your skills and experience in your own sector or industry in a thought-leadership piece. For inspiration, consider if your peers have mentioned you’re a respected leader in your field of expertise. That’s the nudge you need to get going.
Writing articles that establish you as a thought leader is a valuable exercise in promoting your brand. Here’s how to go about it from the ideas stage to pitching it to an online high-authority website and beyond.
Thought-leadership article writing is an expertise you can build
So, why listen to me?
I’ve written thought-leadership pieces under my own byline and ghostwritten for business, education, construction tech, transport tech leaders, and even fire management. Over the past 35 years, my words have appeared in more than 100 print publications and on online sites, including highly authoritative ones. I’ve worked with leaders who are just starting to get their insights out there right up to those with their own established international profiles.
Thought-leadership article writing is an expertise you can definitely build. I’ll share my process with you. It’s not a prescription, though. Your journey will indeed be your own.
First up – how not to do it
There are no short cuts, and ethical behaviour plays a big part.
Occasionally, would-be clients have approached me to mention their name or brand in a story I’m writing for a high-authority website or print publication. They offer me payment for the ‘placement’. I see that for exactly what it is – a one-time bribe that could damage my reputation, not just with that site/publication but broader.
My answer is always ‘no’.
It’s a short-cut solution for that potential client, but a writer who agrees would be saying ‘yes’ to other such requests. It makes you wonder about the value of their published words. Who else are they giving a plug?
This could be confusing, so let me explain.
Why thought-leadership writing is not about your PR
If you’re paying a content writer, content marketing writer or copywriter, they’re writing for you – you’re paying them to produce that story, not necessarily placing it. You are their client. They’re doing your PR.
But, a journalist or expert writing for a publication is meant to be independent and balanced because that publication pays them or they have an ongoing relationship as one of their unpaid contributors. There are no obvious plugs in their content. Their insights shine through. They’ve earnt that mantle. It’s part of their own publicity and brand building, and that’s taken time and effort to achieve. And, they’ve learnt their trade on the go.
If that journalist or writer starts accepting bribes to promote their clients, they’re doing PR for those clients; they’re not producing insightful, balanced, and independent articles. More importantly, when you look at the fine print of the submission guidelines for high-authority sites, they will often forbid you to promote a business or organisation, even your own. Quite simply, they’ll delete those mentions.
If you’re paying a writer to create a media or press release for you, then the publication or website that opts to use that press release does not pay your journalist. You also have no control over how and when the story appears, if at all.
What’s already out there?
As a thought leader, you need to research what others have said in your field.
I encourage you to follow influential people on channels such as LinkedIn and their own blogs. Comment on those and engage as you feel appropriate. This will help you sharpen your writing muscles … it’s also akin to shadowing or stalking, but that’s ok, we all do it.
Ponder these questions in your research:
- How do you define a thought leader?
- Consider what’s distinctive about each of the thought leaders that you now follow – what makes them genuine leaders, not just another voice in the echo chamber?
- What’s a question, point, or issue that keeps coming up that you feel is unresolved?
- What’s missing in their argument?
- Can you add a local or regional angle to what they’re saying – making it more relevant for people in your area?
- What ideas are you seeing internationally that haven’t been picked up by thought leaders in your country?
- Are you comfortable about adding your insights and views to the online debate?
- Think of the top misconceptions in your field – those that practitioners in your field hold as well as outsiders.
- What are the emerging trends in your industry that no-one seems to be writing about?
- How is the fourth industrial revolution (think artificial intelligence, automation, robots, etc) impacting your field?
- What are your forecasts on how work will change in five to 10 years?
- Have you the courage to move beyond ‘obvious’ insights to really challenging ones? Those that, if implemented, could lead to change or improvement.
Drilling into your insights for gold
You might feel you have a nugget of an idea (or several) to start writing your articles. Or maybe you haven’t got any thoughts at the moment. Here’s what one of my favourite writers, Paul Millerd of Boundless, says on this sometimes frustrating time:
“When I first started writing, I was driven by frustration. Frustration that the current business world did not take good ideas seriously. As I wrote, I realized it was much harder than I thought to articulate these ideas, but that if I kept writing, my thinking would become better,” he writes.
“Writing can help you become a better thinker. That’s a great reason to get started. However, the real secret is that it might also expose you to different worlds, different ways of thinking, and living and new friends. In this way, it can give you hope.”
Important points to highlight in the quote are the giving it a go ethos, being willing to expand your thinking, and, of course, practicing the art of writing.
There are a couple of elephants in the room here
First, good ideas. Have you pondered the bulleted questions above?
Second, are you really both an expert and passionate about your field? The latest research talks about five distinct stages of expertise (it builds on the four you may know about already). Here’s the chronological sequence, according to David Robson, who wrote The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise your thinking and make wiser decisions:
- Unconscious incompetence – the complete beginner who doesn’t know what they don’t know
- Conscious incompetence – when you know what skills you lack, and how to overcome the shortfall
- Conscious competence – you can solve most problems but ruminate a lot about decision making
- Unconscious competence – when you’ve achieved years of training and on-the-job experience, so decision making becomes your second nature, and
- Reflective competence – the pinnacle of expertise where you reflect on your feelings and intuitions to pinpoint biases before they cause harm.
Think about where you sit in this paradigm. Thought-leadership writing is not a fast-track to expertise. And no resting on your laurels. The half-life of skills is just five years, says the World Economic Forum. That means every five years, your skills are half as valuable as they were before.
How to start writing your own thought-leadership articles
Usually, as a writer, you have a target audience or specific publication/site in mind, but that’s not always the case with thought-leadership articles. Some thought leaders pen a piece in a creative flow, then aim to shoehorn it, unsolicited, into a publication. That can work, but not always.
Consider working backward:
- What does success look like for you in writing this type of article?
- Do you want to be noticed, possibly headhunted for a new role?
- Are you keen to build your profile?
- Perhaps you’re looking to become a consultant and see thought-leadership writing as a possible side hustle that could become your main gig?
- What are the metrics, the KPIs you want to achieve (and why)?
- Are you planning it as a one-off (minimal impact) article, or will this be a series you do over time (that’s more effective)?
- Do you have an ‘avatar’ of your target reader in mind – where is that person in their career, which industry/sector, what are they looking for?
- Which publications/sites can connect you with your target audience?
Back up your views with evidence
Bring your thinking out of a silo and anchor it to real-life examples. Even better, quote new research from academia and industry organisations/leaders. This works as a kind of ‘third-party testimonial’ to support your arguments.
If you’re reading widely – not just in your own sector – you might be able to see and make connections others haven’t. This is creativity. And it’s very effective.
Take a leaf out of the book of supreme thought leaders – Nobel laureates.
They’re 22 times more likely than the average person to have interests outside of their vocation, writes David Epstein, author of Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.
He quotes one such laureate, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience, as saying: “It appears as though they are scattering and dissipating their energies, while in reality they are channelling and strengthening them.”
In short, creative achievers do have broad interests.
How to write for and pitch high-authority sites and publications
Notable sites and publications want fresh content that’s not been published elsewhere – if they publish ‘second-hand’ articles, it will damage their search engine optimisation.
Please really get to know the publications/sites you’re targeting. Read their content regularly, get up to speed on what they’ve published in the past, understand their backstory, their reason for being in business. Engage with their writers online, comment on their stories, and say why you thought you gained value from them. Or post questions. This groundwork helps you get a sense of their writing style by osmosis, but there’s a quicker way.
Editors will usually have submission guidelines on their site – if not, email them to request them. Follow these guidelines to a ‘T’. Thought leadership pieces are usually between 600 and 800 words, but check with the publication’s instructions as they can vary. Ideally, you’ll ascertain this before you start writing. Those guidelines will spell out exactly what they’re likely to publish. Editors’ email inboxes are overflowing with great ideas and pitches, so think before you email them a simple question.
So, are you ready to start writing?
Try this approach:
- Have your big ideas – the key messages – handy
- Create an overall plan; it only needs to be skeletal, to help you structure your piece
- Work out where you write best – by hand, dictating into your smartphone, typing into your computer, or creating an audio file for your ghostwriter to work with.
- Draft your piece – try not to edit as you go as the will nip your creative flow in the bud (Daphne Gray-Grant, a publication coach, has great tips -including free resources such as a podcast – where she details an effective writing process).
- Revise, edit, tweak, finesse, proofread, then get someone else to read and comment on your piece, then finesse and proofread it again. Add a headline. Don’t try to do all of this in a day. Sleep on it. Spread it out. Returning to your article with fresh eyes is the key to finessing it.
To send it to an editor, decide on a suitable subject line. It could be ‘Submission: [insert your headline here]’. In the body of the email, get to the point. Explain what you’re offering, why it’s relevant for that publication, and why you’re the best person to write it.
Once you’ve hit ‘send’ to email your story, don’t expect a swift reply … unless, of course, your piece is en pointe and brilliant. Wait about a week to email to check if they’re interested in publishing it. If you’re still hearing crickets, pitch it elsewhere. Keep it moving. Expect rejections if you haven’t spent time really unpacking the submission guidelines.
Still, no joy?
Publish it on your company or personal website – if you have one – and aim to optimise it for SEO. Or failing that, LinkedIn as a post (under 1300 characters, including spaces) or article (1300-characters-plus). Add relevant hashtags and tag a few people to generate engagement.
Article published? There’s still work to do
But, just say the publication/site you pitched replies with ‘YES’ and publishes it? Please, thank the editor for publishing the story. Not everyone takes the time to do that.
Then, share the story via your LinkedIn profile (tag people to encourage engagement) and where you’re active on social media. Avoid hitting just ‘share’ and ‘publish’. Tell people why it’s essential, what takeaway it offers, nudge them to read it (not just because you’re boasting), but for what they’ll get out of it.
Once the story is published, usually, the editor will allow you to republish it elsewhere after a certain period with the attribution ‘published first in ‘journal/site’ name’. Some sites won’t let you republish it at all. You need to check that with the site/publication using your work as fresh content.
That’s not a dead-end, though.
If you substantially rewrite the material, you can repurpose it elsewhere.
How to become a regular thought-leadership contributor
Got the writing bug?
Feel like you’re getting in the zone to pump out more thought leadership pieces?
You’ll need to build your community of followers, such as on LinkedIn, your own website, industry association website, etc. This takes time.
If you’ve been engaging with the luminaries in your field online, after a few months, it is acceptable to ask them (through private messaging, for example), if they could recommend you to their editor as a contributor.
Once you’re on board, it’s an honorary position usually, so don’t expect any payment. It does mean, whoever, that you’ll be able to login directly to the portal to publish pieces there. Often an editor will check your article to ensure it follows their guidelines, but they expect to do minimal editing.
Does it sound like there’s a lot involved with thought leadership writing? Definitely, but the rewards are worth it. This is your opportunity to shine, not just be a noisy megaphone. And if you’d like to work with a ghostwriter to delegate part of the task, please get in touch with me at Communications: Keeping It Real.
Links:
There’s gold on this site and in the book by the same name: http://www.keypersonofinfluence.com/
Australian expert in brand building Sue Currie https://www.suecurrie.com.au/