Content marketing is evolving quickly.
First, it’s growing in scale. As quality content proves to be one of the most effective assets in modern marketing, organizations are developing a near limitless appetite for producing it.
Source: contentmarketinginstitute.com
Marketing is becoming a technology.
Pilar Alessandra, photographed by Kevin Scanlon
If “content strategy” is one of the most overused and abused phrases in marketing, then “storytelling” can’t be far behind.
Source: contentmarketinginstitute.com
Yes content should tell a story. But let’s not get carried away by what this means: this could also simply be answering people’s questions.
From the Jay Today video podcast: If you’re going to walk into somebody’s office and try and get permission, you must talk in the language that they care about.
Source: www.convinceandconvert.com
Let’s not confuse the means with the end.
In this talk, Mark Burgess brings to our attention how employees, through social media, are changing how companies market to, and engage with, customers and prospects. With the transparency and opportunity for personal connections that social media offers, pushing fabricated, unauthentic sales pitches doesn’t work anymore. Instead, we are witnessing the rise of the social employee who creates a win/win proposition by leveraging their personal brands to build trust and increase the digital “surface area” of the brands for which they work. The result is nothing short of a revolution.
Source: www.youtube.com
“Employees are the brand at IBM” said IBM’s Ethan McCarty. But isn’t it true in a lot of companies?
Are your employees thought leaders then? Or rather, what are you doing to develop – and show – their thought leadership?
As Burgess develops in his talk, there is a clear synergy between developing employees into thought leaders and building the corporate brand.
But how can this be achieved?
As shown in this topic, thought leadership is highly connected to knowledge. Empowering employees to share their knowledge easily and in an engaging and rewarding way therefore becomes critical:
– easily because they don’t have (much) time,
– engaging because they won’t do it if it’s not impacting,
– rewarding because that’s what’s in it for them.
Aggregating, promoting and spreading that knowledge through collaborative content hubs like the ones Scoop.it Enterprise offers that show the collective curation work of your brand’s employees is one of the most efficient ways to promote your brand: by promoting them.
A win-win deal for all.
Becoming a thought leader is about providing your unique and valuable expertise to people at no cost to them. There’s obviously nothing egotistical about that.
Source: www.linkedin.com
Of course this is not philanthropy either. As this post describes, there are benefits that come with becoming a thought leader, including many direct positive impacts from a professional or business point of view.
We can then go further and ask: can everybody become a thought leader?
To me, it’s down to expertise. If we believe we all have expertise, then we all can show thought leadership. From what we say, from what we create but also from what we read and curate.