Latest news with #thought leadership
Forbes
6 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
What's The Best B2B Thought-Leadership Content?
Great B2B thought leadership starts with a sharp point of view—but it lives or dies by the strength ... More of the story. Companies in B2B are creating large amounts of content. But not everyone is creating thought leadership. As more companies invest in thought leadership programs, many teams are asking a deceptively simple question: What's the best type of B2B thought-leadership content? If you're hoping for a list of formats ranked by performance—white papers vs. videos vs. webinars—you'll be disappointed. That's because the best type of thought leadership content isn't a format at all. It's an idea, shaped and delivered with clarity and confidence. That's what sets it apart. As someone who works with teams scaling thought leadership programs, I've seen this truth consistently validated: The best thought-leadership content isn't about the container. It's about the content strategy—how the idea is framed, who it's for, the evidence offered, and how it serves. Let's unpack what that looks like in practice. 1. The Best Thought-Leadership Content Solves a Real Problem The most effective thought leadership is problem-led. It meets the audience at a point of tension—an emerging risk, a blind spot, a misunderstood opportunity—and provides a perspective they haven't heard before. This is the fundamental test: Does the content help your audience make a smarter decision? Avoid a misstep? Spot something they hadn't considered? If it doesn't, it's not thought-leadership writing. It's just content. Strong thought-leadership content doesn't just reflect what your company knows—it's what your audience needs to know now, before a competitor tells them first. 2. Thought-Leadership Content Starts with a Big, Original Idea If the problem is the entry point, the big idea is the differentiator. This is the 'aha' that makes your point of view both credible and memorable. It's not always contrarian, but it is distinctive. It often challenges conventional wisdom or reframes a known challenge in a surprising way. The big idea is the hardest part to get right. It takes synthesis, insight, and courage. It rarely comes from recycled slide decks or client deliverables. It often emerges from patterns your team sees across engagements, data anomalies, or observations from employees with client contact. This is where many B2B firms miss an opportunity: They look only to the C-suite for thought leadership. But the best ideas often come from deep inside the organization—product leads who notice shifting customer behavior, delivery consultants who see what clients are struggling with, or data scientists who spot a trend nobody's talking about yet. At IBM, for instance, their Institute for Business Value brings together contributors from across functions—data teams, legal, ethics, operations—to create content on topics like trust in AI. That diversity of perspective gives their ideas depth and makes them useful to a wide audience. 3. The Best Thought-Leadership Content Is Framed With Journalistically Once you have a good idea, the next step is framing. This is where strong content can become part of a body of work that is thought leadership. Framing means answering: Why does this idea matter now? Who is it for? What decision does it inform? What change does it propose? Most thought leadership underperforms because it never gets framed clearly. The idea is buried, or it's too safe, or it's framed around the company's expertise instead of the reader's need. In our story workshops, we teach people to use a journalistic lens to frame their ideas—looking for the tension, the angle, and the urgency. That's how you turn a generic headline into something specifically useful for your target reader. 4. The Format Follows the Idea Once the idea is clear and the frame is sharp, then you can ask: What's the best way to deliver this content? Different ideas require different formats. A highly technical breakdown might belong in a deep-dive study. A bold contrarian take might work best as a punchy op-ed. A story-rich insight may shine in a podcast or video. Remember, format follows the idea—not the other way around. 5. The Best Thought-Leadership Content Is Authentically Sourced The strongest content programs don't just rely on senior leaders to define the agenda. They mine the organization for signals—bringing in perspectives from across roles, regions, and disciplines. This 'inside-out' approach creates thought-leadership content that feels lived-in, not parachuted in. At Accenture, for example, their thought leadership engine includes researchers around the world, many of them domain experts embedded with clients. That proximity to real-world problems makes their ideas feel timely, relevant, and grounded in action. Great content leaders know how to listen across the organization, surface promising sparks, and work with subject-matter experts (SMEs) to shape them into bold narratives. That's part editorial, part cultural. 6. Strong content Performs by Being Useful In B2B, buyers and decision-makers are not short on content. They're short on time and clarity. The best thought-leadership content earns attention by delivering utility. That doesn't mean checklists or how-tos—but it does mean clarity, structure, and ideas that make the complex feel it can be navigated. Useful content helps readers do things like: When your audience finishes reading and says, 'That helped me think,' you've done your job as a writer or publisher. 7. Thought-Leadership Content Is Written with Discipline and Flair The final differentiator is in the execution. Great thought leadership is readable. It's structured. It has voice. It cuts the fat. Many companies confuse dense language with credibility. Instead, the best content is clear, not complicated. Write with: Writing like a thought leader isn't about writing to sound smart. It's about being generous with your knowledge and guiding your audience through complexity with care and concern. It's the kind that starts with a fresh idea framed journalistically and delivered in the best-fitting format for that idea. It's content that solves real problems, reflects diverse expertise, and is built to help solve important problems—not to sell. Ask yourself if your content: If you want to lead with your content, don't ask 'Should we do a podcast or a white paper?' Instead, ask, 'What's the idea that only we can own?' Then build your thought-leadership content around that idea.
Forbes
21-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
I Have A Problem With The Term 'Thought Leadership Ads'
With LinkedIn's thought leadership ads, the line between genuine insight and paid promotion is ... More blurring—raising questions about what thought leadership really means. Recently, I saw a webinar titled 'LinkedIn Thought Leadership Ads.' The name alone made my stomach churn. For a moment, I thought I had misread it. Surely, this wasn't real—surely, no one had decided to mash together the words 'thought leadership' and 'advertisement' into a serious marketing product. But yes, it was true. LinkedIn now has a format called thought leadership ads, which lets companies sponsor posts from individuals—typically their own executives or employees—to promote thought leadership. As someone who has spent the past decades studying, practicing, and teaching the art of writing, particularly for B2B companies, I can't help but feel that this development is not just a misstep. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of what thought leadership is and what it's meant to do. Let me be clear: Thought leadership is not a campaign. It's not a post. It's not a shiny new format for marketers to test. It's a philosophy and a practice rooted in generosity. At its best, thought leadership is the long game of building trust by offering something meaningful and valuable—ideas, perspectives, frameworks—for free, in service of your audience. When I teach writing for thought leadership, I emphasize that thought leadership emerges when an expert becomes an idea guide. This person doesn't just share information—they serve their audience by helping them solve important problems. That's the price of admission: usefulness. Not visibility. Not virality. Admission requires relevance and usefulness. What makes the thought leadership ad format so jarring is the contradiction at its core. Sponsoring someone's post and calling it 'thought leadership' undermines the entire premise of what we're trying to build in this space. Thought leadership isn't supposed to be transactional. You don't get to buy your way in. You earn it through creativity and critical thinking. Thought Leadership Ads: From Individual Voice to Brand Megaphone Let's look closer at what these ads actually do. Companies can now promote posts from their executives' personal profiles—meaning, you're scrolling through LinkedIn and see a thoughtful update from someone who seems like an expert in their field. But look again. In small letters, you may notice: 'Promoted by [Company Name].' The brand is paying for that message to reach you. The post hasn't organically pleased the LinkedIn algorithm. It's strategically distributed paid media—and the label is subtle enough that many users may not realize what they're seeing is an ad. This kind of stealth branding muddies the waters between genuine expertise and corporate messaging. Companies are right to be engaging their experts for their content, but I believe we need clearer labeling which gives us the ability to tell the difference between a hard-won idea and a boosted post. I'd like to see labeling as clear as the difference between a newspaper's opinion page and it's sponsored sections. The Real Problem: Dilution of the Term Thought Leadership In small ways, I've been working for higher standards in thought leadership for years. LinkedIn's ad format worries me because it pulls us in the opposite direction. Just as groups like the Global Thought Leadership Institute are working to define and professionalize this practice, LinkedIn's feature invites a flood of performative, pay-to-play content. In an environment where the term thought leadership is stretched to include individuals' posts promoted with budget, thought leadership as a practice is diluted. And when a term loses its meaning, it loses its power. That's not just a branding issue. It's a credibility issue. How can professionals be expected to invest in their own deep thinking, original research, or courageous opinion writing when branded soundbites dressed up as fresh thinking are the norm? Let's Call Thought Leadership Ads What They Are—Advertising Let's face it. Thought leadership ads are not a clever evolution of thought leadership—they're just another kind of advertising. Such posts may actually contain expertise, but make no mistake: These are ads. They are bought. They are targeted. They are tracked. And I'd venture to say that they're engineered for engagement more than insight. Let's stop confusing the medium with the message. Just because an idea is sponsored doesn't make it unworthy—but we must label it front and center for what it is. Thought leadership is a standard we should preserve, not a term we should co-opt for clicks. Here are some ideas about how LinkedIn could rename the labels for the actual posts. And here are some ideas about what the product could be called: Any of these would be better than calling them thought leadership ads. More importantly, a new product name wouldn't hijack a phrase that many professionals have worked hard to live up to. If we allow this blurring to continue, we risk undermining everything that real thought leadership is meant to stand for: courage, clarity, curiosity, and the willingness to give without asking for anything in return. Why The Name Of Promoted Posts Matters This isn't about semantics. It's about values. Thought leadership, when practiced well, is about helping others. It's about taking risks with your thinking. It's about earning trust over time—not buying it in the moment. That distinction matters, especially when we're drowning in content and starving for substance. It matters even more for the people doing this work—professionals who are putting in the effort to frame their ideas, test their hypotheses, research deeply and write with the reader in mind. If we tell them that the only way to be seen is to pay, we're telling them that the hard work doesn't matter. That the system rewards visibility over value. That's a message I don't want to support. Going Deep Instead of Going Wide The best thought leadership doesn't come from amplification. It comes from intention. It comes from doing the deep work of identifying the real problems your audience faces and offering insights that help them move forward. No ad can manufacture that. As the autor of Write Like a Thought Leader, I want to say, clearly and unequivocally: advertising is not thought leadership. Yes, thought leadership is in service of a product or service you're selling, but advertising language should not be part of it. In my view, you can't buy trust with thought leadership ads. You can't promote your way to authority. And you can't call something 'leadership' if it doesn't begin with service.
