By Mike Azzara, Chief Content Strategist, Stein + Partners Brand Activation

Think Through The Full Spectrum Of Thought Leadership

My last post was about the “extreme” form of thought leadership I’ve had the good fortune to participate in a handful of times in a long career. But, of course, there’s a whole spectrum of content-driven thought-leadership possibilities through which a brand can “activate” its audiences. This point jumped out at me, demanding to be heard, earlier this week during a new business pitch–and today’s post is giving it its voice.

When this “spectrum” thought hit me, we were at the stage of the meeting where we were describing relevant previous work. We were talking about content developed for, and in collaboration with, our client PR Newswire. PR Newswire is a category leader in the PR and investor relations markets, and it is expanding its footprint in the marketing vertical, as well. Few groups have seen their worlds upended to the extent that public relations professionals have with the rapid advent of social media.

We showed literally dozens of whitepapers, articles, and videos through which PR Newswire has tapped into the knowledge and insights of its customers and prospects, who were leading and responding to this wave of change, and shared their expertise with the rest of us.

But here’s the thing: Some of those customers and prospects lived at the bleeding edge of integrated paid-earned-owned-social-mobile media (which was captured in many pieces, but my favorites are “Marketing is Content ” and “Earned Media, Evolved ”). Some were bewildered by it all. But the vast majority fall somewhere between those points.

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So we pursued a deliberate strategy to address that full spectrum. We identified topics that would unlock value for communications professionals still feeling their way forward, those at an intermediate level, and those at the “ninja” level.

In addition to the “post-graduate” titles mentioned above, there were pragmatic, actionable titles like "Mastering Public Relations in Social Media“ and “Amplifying Your Social Echo" for the “undergrads.” For those needing to gain valuable insight but from a more-or-less standing start, a truly fun e-book called "Unlocking Social Media for PR" was produced.

Initially, there was some hesitation about publishing thought leadership that may not be considered all that “leading” by every member of our audience.

But we realized that in times of such rapid change, customers would be at very different stages of the learning curve. There was information of value that would activate customers at every stage–and no customer should be left behind. Does it surprise you that those “pragmatic” titles were the biggest hits, as was a series of even more basic “best practices” articles?

The moral of this story: Activated brands use content to activate the full spectrum of their customers and prospects.

Read more: http://www.cmo.com/branding/think-through-full-spectrum-thought-leadership#ixzz27Vqo0fzA

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