The value of thought leadership articles & white papers

Creating thought leadership articles or white papers as part of your content strategy is a good move – if you take a well-planned, consistent approach to building your personal or brand thought leadership profile.

If the readers you hope to reach are C-Suite or a sophisticated B2B audience, you likely already know that it takes something quite special to capture their attention with content.

There are some other solid reasons to get serious about producing thought leadership content now:

• Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines.
• AI changing the way people search for information.
• A shift from SERPS to CHERPS (Chat Experience Results Page).
• Google SGE (Search Generative Experience) – coming soon.
• AI empowering anyone to scale up content production.

Signalling credibility, authentic topic authority and industry expertise should be a key goal in your content strategy. Publishing quality thought leadership articles is a way to contribute to that goal. It’s also likely to be the best path to visibility in an environment being polluted at scale with vast volumes of mediocre content.

Leading the way on LinkedIn

• Thought leadership content stands out on platforms like LinkedIn.
• It’s highly sharable, likeable, and comment-worthy.

If LinkedIn is a platform of choice for you or your company topic experts, thought leadership articles can help build strong connections and start conversations.

There are many, many C-Suiters and B2B executives using LinkedIn every day. To increase their own visibility on the platform people look for sharable and comment-worth comment. And thanks to AI empowering content creation at scale, that sharable and comment-worth content is getting ever-harder to find. Discovering a well-thought out article to share or comment on is like finding gold. Be the creator of that content!

Third-party publications and PR

Good content is in demand. So is expertise. Creating content that showcases expertise can open up opportunities to publish pieces in industry magazines and other third-party publications, extending your brand’s reach and credibility. It can also lead to requests for commentary on related news stories, and invitations to speak at events.

How Article Writers Australia can help

AWA specialises in planning and creating this type of content for clients. (Find out more about our white paper writing services)

For marketing managers with a defined set of thought leadership article topics and a brief, our approach is typically to interview your in-house subject matter experts to glean their insights, and conduct additional research required to draft the content. We’ll then apply feedback from your stakeholders to produce subsequent article drafts.

Our experienced copywriters are accustomed to interviewing in-house and third-party subject matter experts, and working on projects that involve multiple stakeholders.

Consultants or business owners often need more comprehensive help – and we can assist by developing a strategic approach, identifying relevant topics, and preparing a content plan for you.

We can also introduce you to specialist collaborative partners for the planning and creation of other popular content formats including:

• Podcasts
• Business books
• Videos

White papers and campaign content

Long-form content is often the pillar of marketing campaigns that aim to capture and nurture leads from a sophisticated target market. You can brief AWA for all your written campaign content – white paper, supporting blog posts and EDM copy. We’ll also provide supporting social media copy to assist your team to promote the content on social channels.

Next steps

If you’re planning to create thought leadership content, book a call with Leonie to discuss your requirements (15, 30 or 60 minute calls available), or send an enquiry using the form below – we promise a prompt response!

If you’d like to know more about developing thought leadership content, read on!

How is a thought leadership article different from other articles?

A good thought leadership article offers insights, information or commentary drawn from deep experience or expertise. While they often do involve topic research or data driven insights, they go a step further than merely presenting information. They tend to analyse, put forward a fresh way of looking at an issue, or offer informed speculation about what lies ahead in the context of their topic.

The ROI of thought leadership

It’s not easy to capture the true ROI of thought leadership content. Sure, you can review the usual metrics. There may be some sales you can trace back to a connection made through content. But there’s almost no way of precisely measuring the number of sales that come about because a strong opinion of your brand credibility was formed by someone reading your content. Or the opportunities that result from extended reach and impressions of your company as leading experts in your field.

The challenges of creating thought leadership content

So many! If you’re relying on employed topic experts as named authors of your content, they’re likely to move on at some stage, whether it’s to another company, or into retirement. But in our view, this shouldn’t deter you from creating the content and utilising their expertise while it’s available to you.

You can also create company level thought leadership content, without nominating an author – however, this approach is likely to be of more benefit to larger companies with a significant online presence and a high existing level of credibility.

Stakeholders! For larger companies, creating thought leadership content typically involves multiple stakeholders and decision makers. Moving from the idea stage to publication stage takes time, and the path to final approval can be bumpy. But that shouldn’t be a deterrent – the rewards can be worth the effort.

To get started, contact Article Writers Australia. We can assist you to develop a thought leadership content strategy, plan topics, and create the content. Alternatively, you can brief us on topics or campaigns you’ve planned in-house.

Article Writers Australia is a Sydney based content agency, established in 2009. We also have copywriters in Melbourne and a content marketing agency in New Zealand.