Thought Leadership Should Have an Actual Thought

Eros Bendato by Polish sculptor Igor Mitoraj

About a decade ago, marketers were all being told to “act like publishers.” It was good advice. I’m just not sure we understood it correctly.

We built editorial calendars, established publishing cadences and created blogs, newsletters, social channels and content engines that needed to be fed. Somewhere along the way, acting like a publisher came to mean publishing a lot. But that’s not really what makes a good publisher good.

Good publishers have stories to tell. Good journalists are curious. They ask questions, talk to credible sources, dig beneath the obvious answer and try to get at the heart of what’s actually happening. They look for the tension, the nuance and the human part of a story. I think marketing could use a little more of that thinking right now.

We are surrounded by content that seems to exist largely because someone decided content needed to exist. Five tips. Three trends. Another take on the thing everyone else is already talking about. A LinkedIn post because we haven’t posted on LinkedIn since Thursday. And now we have tools that can produce more of it, faster than ever.

The result isn’t just a lot of content. It’s a lot of content that’s really easy to ignore. We’ve all gotten used to scrolling past the same observations, the same formats and the same vaguely useful advice repackaged over and over again. There’s a fatigue that comes with that, and we’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out quickly whether something is actually worth our time.

That’s a problem for marketers, obviously, but I also think it’s an opportunity. When so much is easy to ignore, something genuinely interesting stands out. A real insight, a fresh perspective, a surprising story or an idea that makes you stop for a second and think, “Huh. I hadn’t thought about it that way.” That’s what we should be after.

The tools available to marketers today make it possible to create more content, faster than ever. That’s a good thing. But increased capacity also comes with increased responsibility to research, edit, curate and push our standards higher. We still have to do our homework, find credible sources, vet what we’re sharing and look for evidence that supports or challenges our point of view. Just because something sounds right doesn’t make it true, and just because we can make something doesn’t mean we should publish it.

I’ve been reminded of that recently through work with a client whose internal marketing mantra has become “professionally provocative.” I love the challenge in those two words. Provocative doesn’t have to mean inflammatory, and it doesn’t mean manufacturing controversy or saying something outrageous to generate clicks. To me, it means being willing to have a point of view, ask the question other people in your industry may not be asking, respectfully challenge an assumption or look at a familiar problem from a different angle.

The “professionally” part matters just as much. You need to be able to back it up. That point of view should come from expertise, experience, research, credible sources and a real understanding of the people you’re talking to.

That little mantra has made our work better. Our advertising is more interesting. Our communications have more substance. Our content is more useful. Instead of starting with, “What should we post?” we’re more likely to start with, “What do we have to say?” There’s a big difference.

It’s especially important when we talk about thought leadership. Somewhere along the way, thought leadership became another box on the content checklist. Write an article, put an executive’s name on it, post it on LinkedIn and call it thought leadership.

But thought leadership should have an actual thought.

The work starts before anyone opens a blank document. What do we believe? What are we seeing that other people may be missing? Where might the conventional wisdom be incomplete? What have we learned from actually doing the work? And, importantly, what don’t we know yet?

Sometimes you need to interview someone, talk to customers, ask an expert, look at the data, commission research or pressure-test your premise with someone who knows more about the subject than you do. In other words, do some of the things journalists have always done before deciding there’s a story. Then tell one.

I keep coming back to a pretty simple standard for the content we ask people to spend their time with. It should educate, enlighten or entertain. Ideally, it does more than one. If it doesn’t do any of those things, I think it’s fair to ask whether we really need to make it.

That doesn’t mean every social post needs to be a Pulitzer contender. Sometimes a useful reminder is useful. Sometimes a photograph makes someone smile. Sometimes people really do want three tips. I’m not arguing that we should make content precious or spend three weeks agonizing over an Instagram caption. I just think we should care whether it deserves someone’s attention.

Because attention is what we’re asking people to give us, and right now people are tired. They’re scrolling past a tremendous amount of stuff every day. Adding another piece of content to the pile simply to prove that we’re marketing isn’t going to fix that. Giving someone something worth their time might.

Ten years ago, we told brands to act like publishers. Maybe it’s time we remembered what good publishers actually do.