Don’t believe these 5 myths about thought leadership content

To differentiate and elevate your content marketing, it’s a good idea to shake up your thinking every now and again – bust some myths - especially when it comes to thought leadership.

Myth #1: You can never have too many white papers

Often if a brand is developing a significant piece of thought leadership, the belief is the end result should always be a giant white paper.

The truth is, with more content generated last year than in the history of mankind – unless your potential customer is a superfan of the topic, it will be a tough job persuading them to deep dive into thousands of words.

Our experience in quality thought leadership has shown that developing bite-sized highlights and promoting those on the appropriate channels will gain a lot more traction and provoke a lot more click-through action, than a monster discussion paper.

Myth #2: Pumping out static, formulaic social posts is enough

A lot of brands resort to one trick on their socials – usually a static image with posting copy.

Such assets have a role to play but we’ve found using bite-sized blog highlights and quotes - and most importantly, highly-dynamic video to highlight what the thought leadership is about, gains a lot more engagement and also helps elevate the brand.

Myth #3: Inhouse experts talking on camera automatically engage

“Let’s do a video in the office to highlight our thought leadership,” say a lot of people all the time.

This is usually a missed opportunity. Creative execution and quality production can boost this kind of content dramatically.

This video 3rdspace created for the EY CEO Imperative research launch does feature an expert talking to camera – but we’ve shot it in a dramatic location that fits the brand, we’ve stylised the look and feel, and added in dynamic graphics to tell the story. You can see from the first few seconds how that makes it instantly more engaging.

Myth #4: All we need to do is tell them what we have learnt and what we think

True through leadership starts a dynamic conversation and utilises innovative ways of having that conversation so your audience is encouraged to explore the content further.

3rdspace use a mix of technical backends to do this – from LinkedIn Live streams where the audience can ask questions and comment in real time, to webinars that stream out of social channels with questions on all platforms being aggregated to the speakers, to a hybrid virtual event that allows for Q&A – but also break-out rooms. See NEC Immersion for examples.

Myth 5: Thought leadership can be disconnected from your values and people

The greatest way to raise the profile of your brand is to prove how you are adding value to society and telling the story in a dynamic way that makes people think, at the same time, showing (not telling) what your business does and featuring your people.

3rdspace worked with our client NEC, The National Gallery of Victoria and acclaimed digital artist Refik Anadol, to highlight what can be achieved when you combine humans with technology. The resulting video highlights the process that Refik goes through and how he uses big data and a giant canvas provided by NEC to create immersive art. jasaseo.link

The art is visually dynamic but the story of his process is the bit that makes you stop and think – inspiring you to find out more.

What other myths can we help you bust? We’d love to chat.

rob@3rdspace.com.au

3rdspace is a content marketing company whose purpose is to help purpose driven brands connect with the values of purpose driven consumers. If you’d like to chat about how your content marketing can better connect with your consumers by finding the place of shared purpose our team of marketing & content strategist, behavioural psychologists and creatives are here to help. 

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