34 Benefits of Developing Thought-Leadership Content

Have you considered developing thought-leadership content before?

Do you believe you could actually help others by sharing the insights you’ve gained from operating a business or creating a personal brand?

Do you have a unique perspective on your industry that could change it and the people in it for the better?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, but haven’t taken the plunge to begin developing thought-leadership content… Here are 34 reasons and benefits why you should!

Benefits of developing thought-leadership content…

For Your Business or Organization

1. Encourage your people to promote your business for you – when you create powerful thought-leadership content, your employees and customers alike will have something valuable to think about and share, gives them the ability to spread awareness of what you do.
2. Thought-leadership content should always be something you can act on – by creating something that a business could use or learn from, the obvious next step is to take that action or show how your business has already done so and the results, which makes for powerful content.
3. Let the world know what your business values and respects – every company will have some goal or target to achieve, or perhaps a strategy to follow in terms of growth, yet customers need to know what your business cares about before they will go to you.
4. Businesses with a strong brand are magnets for the best employees – by creating a strong awareness of what your company is with thought-leadership content, talented people who share that vision will come to work for the business they care about.
5. Hold onto customers that might otherwise go elsewhere – informative thought-leadership content provides a steady source of news and trends in your industry so that even irregular customers will remember your name the next time they need your business.
6. Single out people within your business as exceptional – similar to having an “Employee of the Month” board, thought-leadership content can be based around inspiring others with the stories of what someone recently did, which motivates everyone to try their best too.
7. Create a business made of people with faces and names – you don’t want the public face of your business to look like a marketing machine, so connect with potential customers through thought-leadership as yourself, a human with your own ideas, beliefs, and interests.
8. Stand out among the many other businesses and their marketing – great thought-leadership becomes the example by which your business creates an impression on others, allowing this content to show your company’s value in the industry.
9. Keep up with your competitors who are also creating thought-leadership content – if your company allows others to direct the industry and become the leader without contest, your position will either be their follower or an outsider falling behind.
10. Communicate with a field that cares about your industry – by creating bold and opinionated content, you give others something to talk about and discuss, whether they agree or disagree, which can grow the subject and bring in more thought-leadership.
11. Expand the boundaries of your industry – a lot of thought-leadership content pushes at the edges of a field, defining what is inside or outside while potentially bringing more in over time as future content bridges the gaps and grows what is included.
12. Thought-leadership is the perfect content to master SEO – the words and phrases people search for online are often great topics for discussion, which means your content can be targeted at what people are wondering now and in the future.
13. Codify how your business operates for future generations – even the best companies will change over time with new leadership or for new market needs, but strong thought-leadership content creates the playbook and guide by which a business continues to flourish.
14. Customers trust an organization or business with great thought-leadership content – many executives claim some specific content influenced their decision to work with another business while purchasers are likely to judge vendors based on content.
15. Thought-leadership from the leader of a company helps the business – by creating useful or just plain interesting content about the company or their industry, a leader can build an audience that views them and the company as useful and interesting for the industry.
16. Prospective customers are drawn to companies with thought-leadership – when people see content from a company, they get curious about the business and may even do research to learn more, bringing them into whatever net you have for finding leads.
17. Provide people with a reason to share their personal information – every business can benefit from a list of emails or phone numbers, but most people won’t give their info unless they can expect to get something valuable in return like great thought-leadership content.

Benefits of developing thought-leadership content…

For Your Personal Brand

1. Change the way your industry thinks and operates – the best reason to create powerful thought-leadership content is when you can see something that needs to change and yet others are avoiding the subject for lack of understanding or fear of misunderstanding.
2. Be heard by your audience in whatever media they prefer – your personal thought-leadership can take many forms, including blogs, emails, podcasts, and videos, just so long as this is what you like to create and what your audience likes to consume.
3. Show your respect and passion for a field – great thought-leadership content demonstrates your expertise and credibility within the industry even if you aren’t yet someone with a high-level position or executive management experience.
4. The feeling of helping others will make you feel better too – creating your personal brand can be tough, but useful thought-leadership content is all about helping people which for most creators is a strong incentive to keep making more content and thus a virtuous cycle.
5. Connect with others who want to learn but lack your sources – everyone wants to be part of the conversation, but most lack the time to find new trends, learn about advancements and discover processes, so your thought-leadership content can become the regular diet of a hungry audience.
6. Invitations to create thought-leadership content with others – as a respected voice in the content field of your industry, many will want you to be a guest of their own platforms and content, giving you another place to spread your ideas with a new audience.
7. Develop a reputation for trustworthy content and reliability – people grow to like creators of the content they see regularly, generally once a week or more, and especially when that thought-leadership is personally interesting and useful to them.
8. Jump into the spotlight of your industry as an authority – every field has one or two members who stand out as the leaders others want to be, and great thought-leadership content can propel you there even for a moment to potentially replace or become the center of attention.
9. Be the source that others look to for guidance – a large amount of focused thought-leadership content could essentially become the place others go-to for information on that topic, simply because your content is wide-ranging and informative.
10. Make yourself unique and different within any industry – if all of your ideas come from others, you’ll only look like one of the many followers of someone’s fad, so create powerful thought-leadership content to show you can’t be grouped with your competitors.
11. People can tell when they are being sold to, so hold off on selling and instead give – your goal as a provider of thought-leadership content should be to avoid all self-promotion other than saying who you are while speaking in an authentic, clear, and knowledgeable manner.
12. Become one of the initiators of discussion on important topics – newcomers to a conversation may find their voice can’t be heard or they don’t know the essential bits of recent history, so the best person to be is whoever started that conversation using thought-leadership.
13. Spreading awareness of your brand brings more offers of work – when your thought-leadership content is built around what you can do, interested parties will come to you rather than you needing to approach them, and that means you get to pick who to work with.
14. Get your name and content into the public consciousness – by creating regular thought-leadership content with your name attached, you can raise awareness of not just your ideas but also your own identity as someone knowledgeable about your industry.
15. Prove your ability to promote and lead the industry you care about – great thought-leadership content is written as an authoritative voice with research, experience, and insights around customer behavior, employee engagement, and regular market forces.
16. Thought-leadership is an actual demonstration of your insights – anyone can say they would be great at something, but by creating content you’ll show what you can actually do and give others a stronger reason to trust when you say your knowledge has value.
17. Build an online space to share information that needs to be heard – when people learn to trust the great thought-leadership content you produce, they’ll be much more likely to consider other important information you want to spread such as interviews, podcasts, and research.

Do you want to begin creating thought leadership content, but don’t know where to begin? We get it! That’s why we’re here to help. When you work with us at Breezy you get an entire content marketing team right out of the gate to make creating thought leadership content easy and effective! Get started right here!