Transcript
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Yeah,
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hello and welcome back to BTB growth.
My name is dan Sanchez, my friends call
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me dan says and I am back with some
more information about thought
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leadership. Of course, I'm continuing
the journey into the deep dive into
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thought leadership marketing this month,
but I'm doing a check in. I've done a
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number of episodes now. I've talked to
a number of different practitioners,
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thought leaders on thought leadership,
a few authors now and I've done a even
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a few solo episodes and book reviews
and different things like that. And
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after doing a number of interviews,
I've discovered some new things, some
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things that I've learned even after
like having read a bunch of books after
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talking to a bunch of different
practitioners. I'm like, oh my gosh,
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there are so many approaches to thought
leadership. So in today's episode, I
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wanted to highlight five different
approaches I've seen to corporate
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thought leadership. This more has to do
with like positioning a company as a
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thought leader, but five different
approaches on how to do it. So let's
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jump right into the five approaches
I've seen thus far. And there might be
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more, but these are the five that I've
seen. So the first one is what I'm
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going to call the anonymous thought
leadership, right? It's company that's
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putting out a ton of thought leadership
content. And the authors of that
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content are relatively obscure, maybe
not even known, like it might just be
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published by the company and there is
no byline attached to it. Or there's a
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multitude of people and their names are
really small, if you can find them at
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all. But it's a company that's pushing
out a lot of thoughts and ideas and
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they're not really tying it to any one
individual or individuals. Any groups,
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they're just pushing it out. There is
the company. And uh that's good. But
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it's definitely, it's a different kind
of approach where you're trying to
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position the company as a thought
leader and none of the people within it.
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Um, so that's the first approach that
I've seen. The thought leadership. The
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second approach is the thought leader
as the founder and or Ceo right? This
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is like classic be like BBC startup,
right? Where the founder is the leading
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person and maybe it's the more
technical of the two founders or
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something. But essentially as the face
of the company, they have the origin
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story, they have the thing that they
figured out maybe there, the head of
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the agency with the new methodology,
their pioneering, but they are the
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courageous founder and they are the
thought leader leading the way with
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their new methodology, their new
technology, their new point of view or
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whatever it is they're bringing, but
it's very much focused on a single
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individual. So that's the thought
leader founder or Ceo. The third one is
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what I'm calling the sme Thought Leader,
the subject matter expert, Thought
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leader. And a lot of companies like the
Ceo of the founder probably isn't the
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technical genius behind what makes the
company good, Right? So it might be a
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lot of different internal subject
matter experts and this company can
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either have one person that's the kind
of the main person or a group of them,
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but it's usually a smaller group and
they're usually experts in the field
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and are now being positioned as thought
leaders because they're bringing some
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unique ideas to the table. Um Usually
Hively assisted by a content marketing
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team that can take their expertise and
then turn it into thought leadership
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material for the company, but their
names are more closely associated with
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it so that people so that there's some
credibility in the thought leadership,
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you know, where it's coming from, you
know, who's who the source of the
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information is. It's it's it's a little
bit more credible. Um So lots of
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companies are using this all over. I
did two interviews where the sme
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thought leader was a big part of the
organization. The fourth method is what
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I'm calling the Thought Leader group.
There's quite a few companies that have
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a almost a a group of different people
within the company that they've like
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classified as thought leaders. They
don't always call them thought leaders,
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But they are thought leaders are the
people that are essentially faces of
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the company or the brand their chosen
from, within the company, they're
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groomed and polished and put out in
front. Um and there's usually a good
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sized group, anywhere from 34 all the
way up to. The largest one I've seen is
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like 23 people. Um If you think of like
Dave Ramsey, he's got a number of
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different personalities, he's calls
them, but they're, you know, they're
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thought leaders, they're pushing
forward a very specific message and
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methodology. They're experts in their
space and their in front of the
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microphone and the camera and writing a
lot of content. So that is the thought
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leader group, but it's a specific group
you've called out in a groomed and have
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specific things, you hold them
accountable to and have expectations of
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them and they may or may not be full
time thought leaders within the company,
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they might be actually external
contractors, but they're associated
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with the group or they might even be
like have a different role within the
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company, like they're the CFO, but they
have this thought leadership expertise
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that they're producing that tends to
work with the buyers. So that is the
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fourth method here that I've seen, and
the last one I'm calling collective
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thought leadership. I'm actually doing
with an interview even later today with
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James Carberry, who's kind of come up
with this term collective thought
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leadership, and that's the one we're
actually using here, Sweet Fish Media
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or want to use that Sweet Fish Media. I
think we're still in the process of
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kind of flushing out what this looks
like. Um But it's more than just a
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group of people. It's actually trying
to make everybody a thought leader,
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which some people say I've been told
this is impossible to do, but I'm like,
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I think everybody has it in them, it
kind of depends on their, you know,
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their hunger and their ambition, but
everybody has it in them to do some
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type of thought leadership thing and
can be at least begin walking down this
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path. You might call them more of a
trying to activate your employees as
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brand evangelists. But I actually think
there is a there is something to be
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said for activating company wide
employees to be thought leaders for the
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brand big and small. So of course some
of them will have a bigger authority,
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more expertise and be a bigger pie, a
spokesperson for the platform, some
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will be less. And that is okay. But
that is the fifth methodology I've seen
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for doing corporate thought leadership
marketing where you're trying to
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position the company as a thought
leader. Some at the very end of the
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spectrum, we started off with number
one being the least personable and the
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fifth one being the most personable
because there's more people. Right? So
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those are just some interesting
learnings that go throughout this deep
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dive. I'll be giving updates on this if
I find 1/6 or seventh version of this.
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But so far those are the five different
methodologies I've seen or approaches
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I've seen to thought leadership um
within B two B companies,
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one of the things we've learned about
podcast audience growth is that word of
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mouth works. It works really, really
well actually. So if you love this show,
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it would be awesome if you texted a
friend to tell them about it. And if
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you send me a text with a screenshot of
the text you sent to your friend meta.
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I know I'll send you a copy of my book,
content based networking, how to
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instantly connect with anyone you want
to know. My cell phone number is
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40749033 to 8. Happy texting.