Brand awareness and new customer acquisition are most frequently cited by our customers as marketing goals. With good thought leadership, you cover both goals at once in the best case. I explain what thought leadership is and why it is so important in this blog post.

Thought leaders are not only leaders – as impulse generators and signposts, they often contribute to opinions being formed in the first place. An entire brand can achieve this status through its acting persons or also individuals(personal brands). The decisive factor here is to be perceived and recognized as an expert by one’s respective target group. Successful thought leadership requires not only expertise, but also close communication with the audience in question. Corresponding relationship management therefore also plays an essential role, as Microsoft’s former chief strategist Daniel Rasmus also notes:

“Thought leadership should be an entry point to a relationship. Thought leadership should intrigue, challenge, and inspire even people already familiar with a company. It should help start a relationship where none exists, and it should enhance existing relationships.”

– Daniel Rasmus | Business Analyst and Bestselling Author

If you look at personas active on the Internet, you can identify four groups: Insiders, Influencers, Experts, and finally Thought Leaders. They differentiate themselves based on their reach and expertise, as I’ve noted in this graphic:

The difference between insider, influencer, expert and thought leader.

Insiders are personalities who are well versed in a field. They don’t necessarily have to have expert knowledge and usually don’t have a wide reach. But they have a decisive knowledge advantage in one area – which distinguishes them from the completely uninvolved outsider. So they have a good base to become opinion leaders, but they lack both reach and expertise.

Unlike insiders, influencers enjoy a high reach, but in most cases this is not based on any particular expertise. And this is exactly the difference to thought leadership: Influencers generate their reach with emotions and recommendations, which can work well in the B2C sector. A thought leader, on the other hand, scores points with facts, knowledge and expertise.

Experts are the other extreme of our consideration: In order to attain expert status, no outreach is required. A university professor is considered an expert in her field, lectures and publishes research results in various papers. However, it only shares this knowledge with its specific target group – the general public has no access to this knowledge unless it specifically seeks it out. This group has the easiest time doing thought leadership because outreach can be generated faster and sooner than expert-level knowledge. Many experts go public with their knowledge. Podcasts, for example, give them a platform that then turns them into broadly effective thought leaders through high reach.

Thought leaders are trusted because of their expertise, and thus they combine high expert knowledge with wide reach. They are influencers and experts at the same time and manage to communicate their expertise to a large group in an understandable and authentic way.
Christian Drosten, who has gained attention especially in the last year, is an example here. As head of virology at one of the most renowned hospitals, he is an expert in his field of research and also goes public with it in interviews, broadcasts or press conferences.

In summary, the following characteristics can be identified for good thought leadership content: