Is it thought leadership if no one is listening?

The starting point for every thought leadership program should consist of six key steps:

1. Identifying the audience(s) you are trying to reach
   
2. Assessing their current perceptions
   
3. Identifying your desired perceptions
   
4. Identifying key competitors and their messaging
   
5. Developing the thought leadership program to establish, reinforce, or change perceptions
   
6. Measuring it

Now comes the hard part.  Once you’ve developed your thought leadership program, you are now only 25% of the way home. The remaining 75% is the heavy lifting in reaching the greatest number of demographically compatible targets with the thought leadership program and getting them to believe it.  At this point, the more people you positively influence, the better.

Too many people get lost in taking a victory lap around the completion of the thought leadership development process – they celebrate with PowerPoints, videos and graphics, rather than focusing on the results. The best designed plays in a playbook mean nothing unless you can execute them during the game.

Reaching 500 demographically targets through a LinkedIn posting is great, but how about reaching 20,000 through a byline article or mention in a demographically compatible trade publication? But why stop there -- how about reaching 150,000 targets through an article in the Harvard Business Review or reaching 800,000 targets through an article in The Wall Street Journal?

The key to generating this high-impact press coverage around your thought leadership issue requires two skills:

1. Demonstrable news judgment - what makes something newsworthy. This ability usually comes from having worked in the press as a journalist or as a news producer;
   
2. Creativity to make something newsworthy when it isn’t in its current state.

​Is this skillset already in your team?  If not, get help.