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You can target a superset of audiences with excellent thought leadership to maximize reach and impact. A strategy that tests your abilities to micro-tune your main message to specific channels with high potential

What is new: Build a superset of your thought leadership points for each topic that can be micro-tuned for influential industry channels.

Why it matters: When communicating thought leadership in industry channels, it must resonate with their specific audiences.

📰 Earned media: Thought leadership traction in trade press channels depends on buzz-generating news elements. No matter how good your thought leadership quality is, news elements are the ticket to play in earned news.

News can be unpublished insights from a light-house customer, new primary research results, or thought leadership linked to new offerings or performance advancements.

The tunings to aim for here are easy-to-understand insights, which will allow media channels to quickly pick up and share your point of view.

🎙Industry conferences: The speaking programs at the prime industry conferences are an excellent opportunity to position your thought leadership. They are a competitive environment where you often speak together with your main competitors.

Focus on where you stand out and on critical points of differentiation. While part of your talk can be about neutralizing competitor differentiation, the fundamentals of thought leadership, insights, and evidence should remain central.

To perform well in this channel, you must prioritize between your points and stress high-level and high-priority points. It is easy to over-gravitate towards standing out and forget you still must be relevant to your customers.

🧠 Analyst interactions: Interacting with industry analysts is an opportunity to validate your thought leadership to see if it works and sticks. The best industry analysts are also an essential channel and reference for other channels and your audiences.

Industry analysts look for the depth in your thinking, the logic connecting your points, and solid evidence for your points. Customer and partner evidence that matches your viewpoint represents a powerful combination.

Prepare for interactions by answering three additional questions you expect to get for each central point you make. Excellent industry analyst references make your job for earned media and industry conferences a lot easier.

🤝 Partner events: Partners can play a crucial role in the value and quality of your thought leadership. Many businesses today operate in a complex ecosystem where partnerships happen across open interfaces. Large ecosystem anchors often host flagship events to reinforce their role in the ecosystem.

At a partner event, your thought leadership should address the host, other partners, and the value you provide to the broader ecosystem and talk less about you and what you do for customers. This channel can drive a more considerable shift in your storyline, as significant as the mindset shifts from thought leadership to “thought partnership.”

Spend time tuning your story to value growth for the whole ecosystem. Your top priority is to have a strong story that aligns with the host who has invited you. Your story must also resonate with partners’ partners to reinforce your role in the ecosystem.

Bottom line: These four channels can strengthen your thought leadership communication, and they all require tweaks to your overall story to work well.

Additional reading suggestions

For deeper dives on this subject, consider:

• Why earned media is crucial for thought leadership brands [ARTICLE] – by Jodi Amendola, Forbes
• Building presence: The impact of events and thought leadership [BLOGPOST] – by Rob Scott
• 8 types of thought leadership events to build your brand [BLOGPOST] – by Harshala Chavan
• How to build meaningful thought leadership and community and industry events [BLOGPOST] – by Rudi Veridiano
• Five ways tech vendors can leverage industry analysts to shape and refine their thought leadership [BLOGPOST] – by Herve Dhelin
• Why thought partnership is the next level of thought leadership [BLOGPOST] – by Christoph Trappe