Example #2: Social Media Marketing for Business to Business that Uses Thought Leadership

One of the not so wonderful aspects of social media marketing for business to business is the need to continuously feed the machine. However, if you take the time to focus on becoming a thought leader in your world, you can develop a substantial piece of content, like an e-book, that you can leverage for social media purposes for the next 6 to 12 months. Every little nugget of wisdom in your e-book, whether text or graphics, counts as something you can push out on social media. That doesn’t suck!

When it comes to creating thought leadership content, you want to make sure you understand the difference between thought leadership writing and a marketing piece. Thought leadership solves a business problem by educating your audiences, not selling them. You want to come up with a title for your content that will grab people because it so clearly addresses their pain issues. Use simple language and lots of infographics and visuals to go along with your content. Data is also great — others or your own — but make it easy to understand. And, don’t be afraid to pilfer ideas from your competitors — just make them your own.

Here’s a brainstorming exercise to help you get started with coming up with ideas for your thought leadership content:

What service or offering you’re focused on pushing in the next 12 months?
Who are the target audiences for this service or offering?
What challenges are they facing that are associated with your service or offering?
What are some useful and insightful topics you could write about in order to help them with the above challenges?
Do you envision a Report? Survey? E-Book? Series of articles? Other?
What are some potential titles for your content?
What would be involved in developing/writing this content? Third party industry survey? Exploration of strategic partnership? Use of internal content experts? Support from professional agency/copywriter? Other?