Peter Winick explains how to build thought leadership by targeting specific niches, researching where those audiences spend time, repurposing content across formats, and measuring what actually generates leads. Give away your core insights freely to establish authority.
Number one, we live in the age of the long tail. So it's not about getting on Oprah, and it's not about getting on the Today Show. If either of those call you, ignore me and take the call. But it's not going to happen. I mean, it's just not the way it works. You need to figure out who your targets are with as much specificity as you can. So if you've got sales content, the world does not need any more sales content. Sorry to tell you that. If you've got got leadership content, ditto. But what the world could use is sales content targeted to newly minted sales professionals in the pharmaceutical space. So now we've just went from this to like that. We can research that and figure out where those folks are hanging out, the blogs, the conferences they're going to, anywhere else they're getting content, and talk to them. Talk to 2 or 3 small audiences and figure out where they are, align your content to the way they like to consume their content. So if it's a younger group and they're video heavy and you're text heavy, convert some of your stuff to video and then get it placed to those populations. Get it out there. Give it away. Give away the essence of the content that gets your message out, your thinking out there. And then measure it. What a good thought leadership marketing program does is not just the branding and the awareness and all that, but it should actually generate leads for specific products and services in specific markets that you want to serve. And it is not time sensitive. It should be part of a machine that you built that is part of your organization. You're in the content business. This is just placing your content and putting stuff out there and putting the hooks out there where the fish are. The fish are not only on your website. The fish are not only on your Twitter account. They're everywhere. And use your content to get it out there. Thanks, Peter.
