Thought leadership writing tips for content creators, bloggers, authors, and editors.
Contents:
- Introduction: what is thought leadership?
- Prologue: Never Call Yourself a Thought Leader
- The Value of B2B Thought Leadership Survey Results
- Mission.org: The Best Thought Leadership I’ve Ever Seen
- Business Writing Tips for Professionals
- Writing checklist for web content
- The Storytelling Spine
- Pixar story basics
- Writing analysis tools
Thought leaders are go-to people in their field of expertise.
When people say they are a thought leader, they are saying they take the time to help others by doing good work, and also working to package it up via blog posts, slide shares, conference talks, and the like, so that other people can learn. (Credit)
In business, thought leadership is when your customers look to you for advice about big questions, and when you share your perspectives and recommendations. Thought leaadership can be especially helpful with inspiring ideas and innovative insights.
Thought leadership writing is challenging because the goal is clear communication about complex topics. To help with thought leadership writing, this page has tips that we use to help our teammates.
Source: 3 Reasons You Should Never Call Yourself a Thought Leader
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The title of "thought leader" is an honor to be earned. "Thought leader" is a term other people use when referring to truly visionary people. They shouldn't use it about themselves.
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Calling yourself a thought leader makes you unrelatable. Telling someone you're a thought leader is like telling people you're rich; it usually means you aren't, and it's gauche.
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"Thought leader" is becoming an overused term. Other overused nicknames are maven, visionary, guru, rock star, game changer, ninja, entrepreneur, and the like.
Source: Grist value of B2B Thought Leadership Survey
We surveyed the C-suite at FTSE 350 firms to find out what they expected from thought leadership, how and when it was consumed, and what would make it better.
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Senior executives are positive about thought leadership effects, saying it has importance in: adding value to their role (84%), staying up to speed on key business issues (79%), decision making (76%) and taking a view on the future (76%).
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Follow-on action: motivated to research the topic in more depth (72%), discuss it with peers or colleagues (67%), implement the suggestions (63%).
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Content pros: thoughts of clients (57%), industry experts (53%), professional services firms (44%), the public (42%), peers (36%), and inspirational individuals outside the industry (36%).
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Content cons: too generic (63%), lacks original insight or ideas (58%), promotes the advisor rather than addressing client need (53%).
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Format preferences: short articles of 800 words (63%), blog posts of 300–500 words (57%), feature articles of 1,200+ words (45%), and white papers and research reports of up to 4,000 words (28%), video (26%), audio, (25%), infographics (20%).
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Top sources: professional services / advisory firms (44%), industry events (43%), and online search (40%).
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What content would be most useful in the future? 80% said that they wanted content that they – and their peers – were involved in developing.
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Monday lunchtimes matter. Two thirds of senior executives seek out thought leadership on a Monday. The two hour slot between 12 noon and 2pm is the single most popular time.
Source: Mission.org: The Best Thought Leadership I’ve Ever Seen
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Present an Arc — With a Transformation, a Journey, or a Conflict. The one thing most publishers should take out of hours of drawn-out literature classes is the universality of the narrative arc. There’s an exposition, rising action, a climax, and falling action to a resolution. This structure is universal because anything else is just boring. Try transformation stories, The Hero’s Journey, Man vs. Man, Man vs. Society, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Self, etc.
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Give the Readers Incentive to Read, Deliver Obvious Value. The reason somebody picks up any kind of thought leadership story is to learn something and to apply it. You must deliver obvious value to them and give them an incentive to keep reading. This goes beyond promising a great outcome (more on that below) and goes towards understanding the psychology of the reader. Understand your audience. Flip the script. Paint a dark picture of ignoring your advice. Paint a bright picture of heeding your advice.
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Paint a Transformative Conclusion and Give them a Promised Land. After delivering value to your reader, and painting the pictures of your advice, then give your reader something to strive for through the reading. Be as vivid as you can. Engage their imaginations and empathy. Move from the realm of their fears into your world of opportunity.
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Give Clear Action Items and Make Reading Feel Worthwhile. Action items come in many forms — tools for self-improvement, thought experiments, mental models, and mantras by which to live — and run the gambit from explicit business content to self-help to philosophy. If your readership is expecting something more abstract, give them mental models and psychological tools for thinking about the subject matter in your work. Charts and graphs are fantastic tools for concretizing abstractions.
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Don’t Feel Bound to a Formula / Treat Your Thought Leadership as A Startup. Take a lesson from the startup world: test, test, test. Use beta readers. Get your content out there early. Get feedback. Understand what works. Do less of what doesn’t. Engage an email list. Publish on a prominent platform. Teach classes and give lectures on the topic. Run a podcast interviewing people on the topic. Write, publish, test, pivot.
Source: Business Writing Tips for Professionals: Ten easy ways to improve your business writing skills
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State your most important point up front in the first sentence.
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Be clear, concise, to the point.
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Use a strong active voice, not an impersonal passive voice.
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Write in a conversational tone-- unless you're writing to an audience that wants formality.
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Replace hyperbole with solid facts and reputable testimonials.
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Replace your company acronyms/buzzwords/jargon with words that your audience knows.
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Read your document aloud, to help you find any awkwardness and fix it.
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Write from your customer’s perspective.
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Convert features into benefits to engage your customer emotionally.
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Know your goal: who is your target audience and what is your target result?
Our team checklist in priority order:
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Readers skim. Write sentences that are short, simple, and direct.
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Readers snip. Write one highlight point per sentence, and per paragraph, and per section.
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Readers scan. Minimize participle phrases, prepositional phrases, subordinate clauses, appositives, litotes, etc.
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Readers want action. Prefer active verbs vs. passive verbs such as "is", "be", "was".
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Readers want immediacy. Prefer near (e.g. here and now) vs. far (e.g. there and then).
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Readers respond to recommendations. Prefer imperative present tense (e.g. "create") vs. past or passive.
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Readers respond to proof. Prefer evidence (e.g. quotes, citations) vs. opinons (e.g. conjectures, specultations).
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Readers have ranges of languages. Prefer direct words vs. allusion, connotation, hyperbole, sarcasm, irony, etc.
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Readers have ranges of cultures. Prefer direct meanings vs. allegory, personification, onomatopoeia, etc.
Source: 6 rules of great storytelling as told by Pixar
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Once upon a time, there was [blank].
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Every day, [blank].
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One day, [blank].
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Because of that, [blank].
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Until finally, [blank].
Source: Storybasics I've picked up in my time at Pixar; by Emma Coats
1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.
3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
4: Once upon a time, there was ___. Every day, ___. One day, ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally, ___.
5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on - it’ll come back around to be useful later.
18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.
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Readability Analyzer: Estimate the readability of a passage of text using the Flesch Reading Ease, Fog Scale Level, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, and other metrics.
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Passive Voice Detector: Automatically detects passive voice in a block of text.
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Difficult & Extraneous Word Finder: Identify possible weak points in your prose, to help you write clearly and concisely.
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Thin Content Checker: Analyze a website and the percentage of unique content on each page.
