Welcome to our Thought Leadership Marketing blog. I’m Jim Pennypacker, CEO of Dance Communications, and we will explore ways to position yourself or your organization as a thought leader in your market. We’ll discuss what it means to think about your market, how to think about it, and then how to communicate your thinking to an audience. We hope this blog becomes an enlightening exchange of knowledge, so please join in the conversation.

We see thought leadership marketing as the intentional positioning of you or your organization as an authority, resource, and trusted advisor on issues that your audience cares about. This positioning is accomplished using a variety of media, including books, newsletters, blogs, e-mail, events…. It allows you to earn trust and build credibility and recognition, differentiating yourself as one who clearly understands the business and needs of your audience. And most importantly, it mobilizes your audience to think and act — engaging with you over the long term.

Thought leaders can be found throughout organizations. The key is to understand who your audience is and to make sure that they see you as the thought leader. You can be an internal thought leader, seen as the go-to person by senior executives as well as others in your organization for your knowledge. Or you can be a market thought leader, demonstrating your knowledge to a broader audience outside your organization, encouraging them to engage with you. And in fact the thought leader might be your organization as a whole, not just you. In any case, you need to understand who your audience is and how to reach them effectively. Most importantly, you need to clearly understand why you want to be a thought leader in the first place — what message you want to convey and what your goals are.

In this brief introduction, we’ve mentioned about a dozen issues that we’ll be discussing in more detail in future blogs — building trust, selecting media, identifying goals, delivering your message, thinking, leading, marketing, and so on. We think you’ll find, as we do, that effective thought leadership marketing requires continual learning. Please join us.

More Information on Thought Leadership Marketing

There are a few other organizations that specialize in thought leadership marketing. In particular we appreciate the work of The Bloom Group, Wellesley Hills Group, and The MarketingSavant Group, and we encourage you to see what they have to say on the subject. Also, Linkedin has a thought leadership marketing group for you to join.