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“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Philosophical thought experiments and professional services marketing don’t appear to have much in common. But in a content ecosystem where every firm is vying for the mantle of thought leader, the comparison is pertinent. Except the question might be, “If a single tree falls in a forest where hundreds of trees are falling around it at the same time, does anyone notice it?”

We’re at a point in the arc of thought leadership where the term itself has lost some of its meaning. That’s because most firms approach content marketing from the thought perspective — attempting to create useful, novel, urgent analysis on the issues of the day – while ignoring the leader angle that implies cultivation of heavy readership within key audiences. The result is a lot of well-written content that isn’t breaking through to those audiences.

For years at Greentarget, we’ve studied this phenomenon and it was a key consideration in our 2019 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey. We found that busy executives increasingly prefer vendor websites and blogs as sources of information. And they still trust traditional media’s credibility above all other sources.

That gives firms and their marketers multiple avenues for engaging C-suite audiences. But to do that effectively, they have to ensure their owned content and published bylines are conveying true authority – by providing the value executives want: relevance, novelty, urgency and, above all, utility.

The beautiful thing is that SEO, when combined with expert editorial judgment and a deep understanding of the relevant issues, can help deliver all of those things. In other words, it’s not just a tool for optimizing your web pages – SEO can actually make content better. In fact, combining these three elements will supercharge the editorial process.

SEO research is a proxy for user interests: because search queries represent informational needs, this type of analysis helps marketers identify the topics that matter and how they can answer audiences’ most burning questions. Instilling SEO techniques into your editorial process will not only lead to more effective website architecture and better search ranking for your content, but a much deeper understanding of your customers and their current needs that translates into stronger and more relevant points of view. All of this is essential for organizations working to pinpoint and focus on the topics and attributes decision-makers value most.

Finally, SEO is critical for lead generation. Traffic from search, known as organic traffic, is almost always going to be more engaged than traffic from other channels because it represents users who are actively seeking content in response to a need, rather than just clicking on an ad they were served or a post they stumbled across. Creating content that anticipates their most pressing needs is the most effective way to keep them coming back for more, thereby establishing a strong pipeline of leads from your content marketing efforts.

Optimizing your site for organic traffic means optimizing for strong user experience, and in an environment where dozens of firms with similar practices are frantically publishing similar content, SEO techniques will help make your thought leadership visible and valuable. Making that content findable, navigable, and actionable will create a lasting competitive edge that will establish your site as a repeat destination for thought leadership.

A version of this article appeared in the 2019 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey, released in July 2019.

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College students angling for a job in PR can basically forget about their resumes – nobody cares about them anymore.

So says Ron Culp, professional director of DePaul University’s Graduate Public Relations and Advertising Program (PRAD). According to Culp, prospective employers are more likely to find his students through LinkedIn. “That’s why it’s crucial to update your profile and make sure you’ve got your 500-plus connections,” he says.

Culp dished this advice during a recent Q&A session about the evolving media landscape at Greentarget’s Chicago office. The veteran PR pro – Culp led media relations at Sara Lee Corporation and Sears, among other places – dropped by as part of our speaker series.

While piling up more than 500 LinkedIn connections might seem daunting, Culp says the significance they have for college students is indicative of the many ways the industry has changed in recent years.

Case in point, PRAD, which Culp joined early this decade, has moved from a traditional textbook-driven program to one that prioritizes real-world experience. About 80 percent of the PRAD faculty previously had full-time jobs in advertising or public relations and guest speakers appear regularly, so the students get first-hand insights into how the public relations world works outside of academia.

“For most of my classes, I take my students to corporations and agencies in person,” Culp says. “We’ll sit down and brainstorm with the agency – maybe they’ve got an idea they’d like to kick around that they’d like some good millennial perspective on.”

“For many of the students, it’s the first time they really see what their career progression might be. Invariably, someone will say, ‘That – I want that job.’”

As they shift away from textbooks, Culp instead asks students to find and share real-world examples that reflect particular lessons (which he provides in advance). He then has his students share those examples online and discuss them.

Culp also shared his observations about how students are consuming news. “They get everything from their mobile – and they’re very selective about what they read,” he says. He added that traditional media still resonates though and that knowing your audience has never been more important.

After content has been created and published, it becomes more important than ever to drive engagement – for news organizations and businesses alike. “If you have a client base that understands what you’re trying to do, you can maximize coverage by building an influencer program,” Culp says. “People used to think they didn’t have the resources, but now they’re realizing how easy it is to do.”

One thing that has remained constant: Culp says students are still primarily interested in working for an agency and less interested in working in-house. “Most students want to work at the big agencies in town,” he says. “But there are 465 agencies in Chicago, so I say, don’t necessarily feel like you have to work at one of the big 10.”

We ended the conversation by asking Culp what we at Greentarget could do, particularly in our internship program, to make sure we’re as welcoming to the next generation of PR practitioners as possible. Culp’s advice, which he directed to the industry as a whole: Prioritize inclusion and diversity.

“Forty percent of my students are diverse students – they are concerned that they’re being set up for failure because they’re not being managed well,” he says. “We need to create programs to make sure that everyone feels comfortable and can see themselves in an agency.”

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Not long after Greentarget and Zeughauser Group closed the 2019 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey, LinkedIn made news when it announced details about changes to its algorithm – changes that validated trends that we’ve been reporting on for years.

Long the preferred social platform for executives and decision makers, LinkedIn made the algorithmic changes to favor more relevant conversations that (as Axios described them) cater to niche professional interests. In other words, LinkedIn realized that viral content wasn’t as important to users as content that they can actually use.

That echoed what we found in our survey (for the second consecutive year) about the importance of useful content – i.e., utility. Both in-house attorneys and C-suite executives want content that’s useful above all things. Because we live in an era when C-suite executives can be as engaged in choosing a law firm as in-house legal officers – and vice-versa for management consultants and other non-legal service firms – this year we compared their content consumption behaviors and preferences.

In-house counsel and C-suite executives define utility quite differently – and understanding those differences is crucial for marketing officers in the age of information overload. Finding ways to make content stand out was also important to LinkedIn, and the results for the social media platform have so far been impressive. Likewise, we believe that professional services marketers can deliver a stronger payoff for their content by taking to heart the findings in this year’s State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey.

In our ninth survey this decade, we provide deep dives and practical guidance – utility, you might say – on topics that are top of mind (or should be) for marketers. We cover content strategy, the keys to content creation, search engine optimization, the importance of research and, of course, how to best leverage LinkedIn.

It’s never been more important – or more challenging – to stand out above the noise when trying to reach decision makers. But that means there’s an incredible opportunity for those who get it right.

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We say “thought leadership” too much in this business. We do it. Our clients do it. The whole industry does it. Last year thought leader even overcame leverage to win the title as the most overused term in PR.

Any term getting tossed around that much is bound to lose its punch and, eventually, its meaning. Thus you’ll find plenty of voices advocating that we stop using the phrase thought leadership altogether. 

I’m usually all about eliminating buzzwords – if I could take leverage out back and shoot it, it’d be dead before close of business – but in this case I think there’s a better way: We don’t need to stop saying “thought leadership,” we need to start producing actual thought leadership.

Because the real problem is not the phrase itself, it’s that there are too many people producing too much content and calling it thought leadership. There are a lot of reasons for that, of course. Publishing is cheap and easy. Marketers have thought leadership fever. There’s too much focus on quantity. Lots of would-be thought leaders don’t know what real thought leadership is or how to produce it.

That last problem is the hardest to solve, and one we encounter a lot. Our clients are incredibly smart, accomplished professionals, many of whom counsel the world’s most sophisticated businesses. They clearly have a lot to say.

But would-be thought leaders too often get hung up on what they want to say, without stopping to consider what their audience wants to hear. Or they get lost in the forest of their expertise and wind up with content that amounts to, as one legal marketer recently described it to us, “nerds talking to nerds about nerdy things.”

Most of the time our key audiences – the people in the C-suite, typically – are not among those nerds. So nerdy content has almost no chance of engaging them or reeling in new business for our clients.

When that happens it’s at least partly our fault. Our job is not just to take notes and churn out content based on whatever comes out of an SME’s mouth, it’s also to educate them about what thought leadership means and on what actual thought leadership looks like.

To help us do that, we created a framework that breaks it down into four attributes. Here it is.

We didn’t just pull these four categories out of thin air. We chose them based on our experience and knowledge of what works and what doesn’t – and on our data. This year’s State of Digital and Content Marketing Report – coming in July – cements our belief that these characteristics make content far more likely to engage executive readers. Let’s look at each of them.

Relevance – Obvious, right? If it’s not relevant, why would anybody read it? Not surprisingly, our survey of in-house counsel and C-suite officers reveals that relevance ranks among the top three attributes those executives look for in articles, newsletters, podcasts and in-person events – in other words, all the content professional services firms produce most.

Novelty – When I was a writer at Forbes, I lived in mortal fear of discovering that a story I was working on had already been written by somebody at the Wall Street Journal or Business Week. If it had, and my editor found out, there would’ve been hell to pay. We all understood that if we weren’t giving our readers something new, something they couldn’t get anywhere else, there would be no reason for them to read the magazine. The same holds true in the thought leadership game: If you’re not saying something new, how can it be thought leadership?

Urgency – How many times do you bookmark something or otherwise set it aside to read later – and then never read it at all. Content that’s not important now is far less likely to win the battle for an executive’s attention. For the second year in a row both the C-suite and the GCs tell us they value content that’s current over all but one other attribute….

Utility – Both C-level and GC audiences say utility is by far the quality that attracts them most to the content they consume. These are busy people in a hyper-competitive world, so it makes sense that when they decide to read, watch, listen to or attend something, they’re not doing it just to tickle their curiosity. They’re looking for insights that will help them do their jobs better.

We also believe that utility is the quality that’s most likely to move a reader closer to a purchasing decision. Content that’s just interesting or informative might make a good impression. But if it tells them what they need to do, they’re far more likely to reach for the phone, to call the author and say “I need you to help me do that.”

And that, at the end of the day, is why we’re producing thought leadership in the first place.

A version of this article appears in Greentarget’s 2019 State of Digital and Content Marketing Survey; that report will be published in July.

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Just 31 percent of C-suite officers rate content created by professional firms as “very good,” and 38 percent find it “barely satisfactory,” according to Greentarget’s 2018 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey – Professional Services edition.

Those are disappointing figures – and improving upon on them should be a goal of most PR marketers in the B2B space. That’s why the topics covered at the Legal & Professional Services Council (LPSC) NextGen’s annual Writing with Impact workshop earlier this month struck a chord.

The panel, which included Greentarget’s own Megan Turchi, offered tangible advice on how to improve overall quality of content, with a focus on the written word. The presenters shared best practices and tips on how PR, marketing and communications professionals can make an impact with their writing and (we hope) improve on the percentages mentioned above.

1. Know and Empathize With Your Audience.

Stephanie Reid, marketing and communications senior manager for legal recruiting and development at Kirkland & Ellis, stressed the importance of knowing your audience. We talk about this all the time. Whether you’re writing an email, a tweet, a LinkedIn post, a blog post or really anything at all, you have to stop and think about what matters to the people you’re trying to reach. It should be the first step before writing a word, even before having a prep call. Empathizing with your audience makes it possible to determine the right tone and language and decide which points to emphasize and prioritize.

2. Do Your Homework

Research. Research. Research. It’s important to be prepared before talking to anyone about a new project, a thought leadership campaign, a story mining call, etc. At Greentarget, we often talk to clients who are at the top of their fields or are known experts on particular subjects. It’s unlikely that we’ll ever achieve that level of knowledge ourselves, but doing homework ahead of time can lead to a fulfilling, productive conversation – rather than one that leaves both parties feeling like the call was a waste of time.

3. Pay Attention to Daily Communication

It might be tedious to review emails several times before hitting send, but what seems like a menial task can quickly become a missed opportunity to establish credibility. It’s important to consider a few factors: Does the individual you are working with prefer to communicate in a professional manner or are they more informal (think about their manner on calls)? How do they format their own emails and other communications? Paying attention and mirroring their methods will show not only that you are good at what you do but that you understand the importance of empathy.

4. Establish a Structured Approach

It can be difficult to gather the information necessary to craft key pieces of content – pitches, proposals, client alerts, press releases, social media posts, event invitations, etc. – but having a content hierarchy makes a big difference. That’s according to Kevin Blasko, global head of communications for McKinsey & Company’s Transformation practice. He suggested structuring your everyday communication in a way that explicitly outlines what you need. For example, in an email about a problem you to need weigh in on, bullet out the situation, complication and proposed resolution so that the recipient can easily identify what it is you are asking for so you can ultimately get the input you are seeking.

5. Be Open to Feedback

Crafting content on behalf of others is challenging, especially when it comes to capturing the right tone. Sometimes, no matter how much due diligence you did, your first draft may still get hacked nearly to death by the author. It’s important to remember that no matter how much time you put into a piece, it still has the author’s name on it. Everyone has their own style and tone – and edits are part of the process. Never take them personally, and make sure to review the feedback, incorporate it into future pieces of content and consider asking colleagues or mentors for a second review.

By taking these simple steps, professional services marketers can improve their writing and build credibility. Even the most seasoned writer should constantly be seeking ways to improve and ensure their content is relevant, engaging and compelling – so it’s important to keep these tips in mind as you’re drafting your next email or writing your next article.

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The tech industry stands at a critical juncture. The consequences of the fake it till you make it culture have come home to roost, opening a yawning trust gap between companies, their customers and the society they so earnestly promised to uplift.

In this environment, enterprise tech thought leaders must take up their responsibility to contribute to a smarter conversation — by providing valuable information and intelligence to the audiences they want to influence. Of course, they’re busy building businesses, leaving it to their marketing directors to find creative new avenues to break through the noise in an information-saturated world.

In our work with clients at the growth stage and enterprise level, we’ve sniffed out a few of those paths. Here are six ways to build a holistic thought leadership program that will resonate with enterprise technology buyers.

1. Understand Your Audience by Mapping Personas and Journeys
Before developing a PR and marketing plan, it’s critical to develop a stronger understanding of your best customers, where they’re coming from and the journey that will lead them to you:

  • Interview customers and the sales team to develop what we call an audience proto persona — a brief tactical snapshot that helps you get aligned more nimbly so you can better anticipate what customers need and how to reach them efficiently in ways that matter.
  • Perform market intelligence to ensure your approach and message deliver something exceptional to the people you want to reach.
  • Develop a journey map to help you reach your customers in the awareness, consideration, nurturing and conversion stages.

2. Define and Develop a Signature POV

  • Once you gain a strong understanding of your different audiences and can prioritize them, it’s time to develop a narrative for your company through a signature point of view that explains why you’re doing what you’re doing to the people that matter.
  • Write out and share your vision, informed by the conversations you’ve had with your community of customers.
  • We like Simon Sinek’s Start With Why framework as a guide.

3. Launch and Sustain Public Relations

  • Once your customer journey and narrative are developed, your marketing team can incorporate your vision into planning and structuring milestone announcements including product launches, pivots, M&A activity and important new hires.
  • The complexity of the business drives how much is required here, so prioritize where you’re going to start before allowing the planning process to get too big. We expect and like a high degree of iteration in this process.

4. Plan and Execute Proactive Media Relations

  • Reach out to journalists whose work you, your network and your best customers like and respect; offer them meaningful interactions with your leadership team, and R&D team if appropriate. It’s important to play the long game here. You are not looking for coverage out of the gate, so much as for relationships that are useful to journalists (which in turn must be useful to their readers and, only then, to you).
  • For a client who leads an international network of startup accelerators, we invited several journalists to come check out the flagship accelerator in New York. The next day a few reporters posted pieces based on things they heard; others came back to the subject after a few weeks. But the most powerful story came from a journalist who did not return to the subject for many months and seemed for a long time like she would never write about the accelerator. She was not going to risk her very considerable credibility sharing how unique the accelerator was until she knew its ins and outs, had independently corroborated what she saw and heard, had seen the character of our client. And, most importantly, not until the story was relevant to her readers. Expecting a transactional sequence — “come see us, then write about us” — would have been shortsighted.

5. Develop a Content Strategy
One of the biggest challenges many of our tech clients face is establishing a content strategy. There are several effective ways to implement a customer-centric approach to focus your narrative and plan its execution.

  • Host a summit with key stakeholders to hash out and agree on your key messages and points of differentiation
  • Articulate a content strategy, which is really a plan for consistent storytelling and sharing ideas, and set an editorial calendar for publishing.

6. Promote Your Leaders for Executive Visibility

  • As one of our most successful founder-clients likes to say, even in big-ticket enterprise sales, people buy people, not technology.
  • Continue to refine the conversation tested through the work described above and build it out through the presence of leadership and partners so that a beneficial cycle takes root in which the thought leadership the business shares and develops through its community continues to serve as a reference in the marketplace, where it can be tested with other thought leaders.

These six steps can lay the foundation for a strong thought leadership program. If you want to differentiate your organization, your aim as a marketer is to contribute skillfully to the conversations that matter to your customers, as well as your investors. In an era of rampant noise, ideas that serve your audience and perspectives that help them comprehend and thrive in an era of unpredictability and mistrust deserve to be heard.

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