Thought Leadership Leading B2B Lead Generation?

Posted by JasonB on August 21, 2009

Positioning your organization as a “Thought Leader” in your industry is instrumental in generating B2B leads via the internet.  Today, the web allows companies to dispense large amounts of information across vast networks.  How do you appear as a leader amongst the clutter, and how does this translate to generating B2B leads?  Let’s take a look:

Defining a “Thought Leader”:

A “Thought Leader” is someone who creates, promotes and discusses innovative ideas within an industry.     They are passionate experts who dispense their knowledge asking little in return.  Often, they announce their ideas with confidence, as almost “self-endorsed, ready-to-use problem-solving solutions”.   As time passes, and Thought Leaders build their reputation, their audience grows. 

Steps to Becoming a Thought Leader:

1. Follow Before You Lead

To become a leader, you have to identify how high the bar is already set.  To accomplish this, you must implement social media monitoring…a critical step in beginning any social media campaign. 

By “listening” to social networks, you will observe what messages and media formats are attracting visitors.  You will also glean what your competition is using successfully by the number of viewers reading (or following) their messaging.  In other words, if a company has placed a video on YouTube discussing reducing costs in your industry, and the video has been viewed hundreds of times, then it would follow that the “cost savings” message is popular among industry participants.

The data gathered during your monitoring process should provide the framework for your Thought Leadership strategy.

2.  Plan Your Delivery

Thought leadership relies on consistent, innovative and exciting communication.  To achieve this, you must design a content distribution plan that outlines how often your company can publish content, and where that content will be distributed.  

Viewers are more inclined to view or follow your organizations’ message if they have the promise of more information in the future.   Creating a schedule that publishes a “series” of ideas or thoughts should prompt readers to stay tuned to your message.

Be generous with your gray-matter.  The goal of being a thought leader is to gain a reputation.  With a good reputation comes an audience.   From an audience come B2B leads.  

3.  Become Visible

One of the primary concepts behind social media is getting your organizations’ message off of your website and in front of decision makers on social sites they are visiting.  As mentioned in early posts, decision makers are now using social network sites MORE than corporate web sites to gather vendor information prior to a buying decision.  This means that you must have a presence on these sites to have a chance at getting exposure during this sensitive buying cycle phase (that of gathering vendor information).

To cast your net wide and become visible to prospects, move your message off of your corporate site and onto sites like Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.   These sites get hundreds of thousands of visits daily by people looking for information.    For example, Google now displays video results for searches, and because video has become the #1 tool in social media, many companies are placing their message on YouTube.     

People expect a true Thought Leader to be seen AND followed on the World Wide Web…being visible within social networks will promote your ideas to peers and begin generating attention.  

4.  Set Up Easy Ways for People to Follow (a bread crumb trail back to your company)

A Thought Leader must be easily accessible to develop an audience.  Below are some simple, straight forward tactics for increasing your accessibility to prospects:

-Your Blog:  Ensure your blog allows visitors to subscribe to posts or comments in a variety of ways (email, RSS, etc).   Also provide visitors with the ability to “share” your blog post using “sharing tools” like Digg, Delicious and Twitter.  

-YouTube: Create a YouTube channel for your organization.  This provides your company with a high-traffic venue to host videos, and allows visitors to subscribe for future video posts.

-Facebook: A corporate Facebook page allows visitors to become a “fan” of your organization.  This means they will receive future messages from your company.  Even better, their Facebook “friends” will receive messages from your company.

-LinkedIn: LinkedIn not only provides contact information, it hosts forums for discussions and a Question & Answer area.   Join these discussions and share your ideas.   If visitors find your input useful, they should visit your LinkedIn page or corporate site.

Converting Conversations into New Business

Sales 101 teaches to “ask for the sale”.  However, applying this concept to social media, or Thought Leadership, is a bit tricky.  Social media, by nature, takes a more conversational peer-to-peer approach to communicating with prospects.   That being said, if you never “ask for the business”, you probably won’t get it.

We suggest posting a call-to-action on most of your social media content.  This can be as simple as a link saying “click here for more information”.    Your call-to-action should, however, take a distant second place in visibility to your primary Thought Leadership message.   An aggressive  sales message such as “Contact Us Now To Receive X% Off” will quickly detract from your primary message and suggest to viewers that you are NOT a Thought Leader, but instead an organization trying to use a good idea to sell something.   Visitors will enthusiastically follow (and perhaps eventually contact) a true Thought Leader, as by their nature they dispense good advice at no charge.

I hope the information in this post will help your company consider its ability to become a Thought Leader.   As usual (here’s our call-to-action!), let us know if we can help in any way.

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