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Guest Post by Jason Khoo

Over the years, it has become much more difficult to become established online. In the past, simply peppering various keywords throughout the content on your website was enough to start ranking pages on search engines and bringing in a steady stream of traffic. However, the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) landscape looks much different today.

For any business looking to establish themselves as a relevant source of information – both to users and search engine algorithms – they need to provide a much better user experience in all of the information they provide.

This involves creating “thought leadership” content that contains unique and expert-level perspectives on relevant topics that set themselves apart from much of the generic information found online.

What Does it Mean to Be a Thought Leader?

Thought leadership is a term that many businesses hear regularly discussed in digital marketing circles. The concept of being a thought leader means offering unique insights on industry topics that haven’t already been duplicated across various online platforms.

The primary differentiator of thought leadership content is in its purpose. While traditional marketing approaches focus on highlighting the benefits of certain products or services with a suggested CTA (Call To Action) to help drive new sales opportunities, thought leadership content is specifically designed to benefit the user.

The value of creating thought leadership content is to prove yourself as a trusted resource for industry-specific information. To do this effectively, brands need to inject authenticity into their messaging that incorporates genuine perspectives and important issues or challenges that customers face as well as clearly answering the questions users have.

Becoming a thought leader isn’t something that will happen overnight for a brand. However, over time, the trust and credibility that it helps to establish can pay dividends for businesses in the long term.

The Benefits of Thought Leadership for Improving Online Visibility

Placing priority on the development of thought leadership content can provide a number of benefits for organizations. These include:

  • Better Brand Awareness: Creating thought leadership content gives you the opportunity to build more awareness of your brand. As users explore topics that are important to them, high-ranking web content can be a great way to introduce your brand as a helpful resource for them.
  • Improved Credibility: The Internet is filled with false information and unreferenced material that can mislead individuals looking for accurate answers to their questions. By ensuring the content you create is factual and always backed by valid research and statistics, you prove to be a much more reliable source of information for users.
  • More Effective SEO: The quality of your content plays a significant role in how well your website is able to rank on search engines. Search algorithms now prioritize thought leadership content that is helpful to their users and use this variable to decide on whether or not to highlight content on search engine results pages.
  • Improved Lead Generation: While the purpose of thought leadership content should be to provide helpful information to an audience, it can naturally improve the lead generation efforts of organizations.

How to Develop Authentic Thought Leadership Content

While establishing yourself as a thought leader in your industry won’t happen overnight, there are some effective steps you can take to set your brand and the content you create apart from the rest.

1. Find Your Niche

Take the time to carefully decide on the niche you want to write about. The topics you choose should be ones that you can provide insightful information on as well as highlight your expertise in the area.

2. Understand Your Audience

In order to better understand the type of queries your customers might have, it’s important to put yourself in their shoes. Research your audience to identify commonly asked questions they have or challenges they’re experiencing. Addressing these issues directly helps you to better connect with your audience and provide them with more value.

3. Prioritize Originality

With the prevalence of AI tools available today, businesses can successfully create blog posts on just about any topic with very little knowledge of the subject. However, this content is often rinsed and repeated online and may also be inaccurate.

By ensuring your content is original and expresses your actual thoughts and insights on different topics, it will resonate more with your audience while also supporting your SEO efforts.

4. Consider Alternative Content Formats

It’s important to remember that not all people digest content online the same way. This is why it’s important as a business to diversify the methods you use to provide insightful information.

Think about various content formats you can use like blog posts, videos, infographics, or podcasts. Using multiple ways to convey your messaging helps you attract a broader audience and highlights your professionalism in the industry.

5. Focus on Quality Over Quantity

Many companies get into the bad habit of assuming that the more content they create, the more web traffic they’ll bring in. While regularly contributing helpful information for your audience is important, focusing on pushing out massive amounts of content rather than prioritizing the quality of that content won’t help.

When establishing your business as a thought leader, you’ll want to make sure “all” of the content you create and distribute is carefully researched and provides real tangible value for readers.

6. Stay Consistent

A primary element of thought leadership content is authenticity. This is why it’s important that the messaging you provide stays consistent in both its intent and quality. Staying true to yourself and the brand is a major factor in building trust with an audience, and your tone should stay the same as your business scales.

7. Measure and Refine Your Strategies

Don’t be afraid to experiment and analyze your results. When creating content, you can use a wide variety of website analytics tools to track key metrics such as website traffic, engagement rates, or social media shares.

By understanding what resonates and what falls flat, you can continuously refine your approach and tailor your content to better meet the needs of your audience.

Leap of the Week

Establishing your business as a thought leader in your industry can be a powerful way to attract more website visitors, build credibility with your brand, and stand out from the competition.

By following the tips discussed, you can ensure that the content you create provides real value to your readers and supports efforts to grow your online visibility. Looking for more insights? Master your skills and grow your thought leadership with LeapZone LearningLab.

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Image by Memin Sito from Pixabay
Post Written by Jason Khoo.

Jason Khoo started freelancing in SEO in college, sold his first agency, and now is the founder of Zupo, an Orange County-based SEO consulting agency helping construct powerful long-term SEO strategies for our clients. Jason also enjoys multiple cups of tea daily, hiding away on weekends, catching up on reading, and rewatching The Simpsons for the 20th time.