Episode Summary
Thought leadership is another popular buzzword in the B2B marketing space. But even though it’s a buzzword floating around, it’s still critical for business growth. And very few companies know how to approach it.
In this episode, Tracey Wallace, the Director, Content Strategy at Klaviyo, joins Erin to share her perspectives on what thought leadership means. Tracey pinpoints what it takes for an individual to be considered a thought leader. And she also outlines how thought leadership and content marketing can work together.
During the conversation, Tracey breaks down the key elements of content that build trust and stresses the importance of repurposing content. They also touch upon the difference between communicating with executives and prospects and how mastering the skill of strategic communication and cross-collaboration can positively influence a content marketer’s career.
Guest Profile
- Name: Tracey Wallace
- What Tracey does: Tracey is the Director of Content Strategy at Klaviyo.
- Company: Klaviyo
- Noteworthy: Tracey also writes Contentment, a newsletter for content marketers aspiring to become content leaders.
Key Insights
- In practice, many thought leaders are not subject-matter experts, and this is not necessarily a bad thing, as our guest says. Although credibility matters, and people want to know you rolled up your sleeves and dug deep into the topic you preach about, it all comes down to how good you are at providing value to your audience. After all, people perceive thought leadership and credibility differently. ''Even if you are far better at talking to people, doing promotional stuff, writing books but not so good at being a practitioner, you can still become a thought leader. That's not something I love. I'm very much somebody who believes that it's important to get in the arena and do the work because you get valuable insights from that.''
- The content (team) can be a critical component of your business strategy. One of the best things about content is that it can be repurposed and used by other teams in your organization to help you get more customers and increase revenue. ''The reason why it can be so strategic is that content can play across your funnel. Content can be a brand play because the ultimate goal of content is to get your organization that thought leadership. But content also sits in the middle of the funnel because you don't want people just coming and reading your stuff; you want them to convert. So you gotta get them into the funnel. And then, once they're into the funnel, how are you reusing content to move leads into MQLs down to revenue? How are you working with your sales team to make sure they're reusing content to reach prospects? And then, of course, how are you using content either in your product or as part of a retention flow to make sure that that content can help keep the customers that you have excited.''
- Focusing on cross-team collaboration and strategic communication can be a game-changer in a content marketer's career trajectory. And that doesn't apply only to creators aiming for management roles. On the contrary, ''even if you don't aspire to become a director or a leader in content marketing, your life as a content marketer is going to be far easier if you know how to communicate well with your execs. The biggest difference is [...] your ability to effectively distribute and communicate your content to your leadership versus your prospects. Prospects are a given — that's the job — but being able to help your leadership understand what content can do for an organization can fundamentally change your career.''
Episode Highlights
What Does It Mean to Be a Thought Leader?
”From an individual point of view, it’s folks who are considered to be experts on a given topic.
Sometimes they’re the first people bringing up specific topics. We see a bunch of creators, and a lot of those folks are thought leaders; essentially, ‘creator’ is a new word for a thought leader.
Companies, of course, can be thought leaders. It is harder and takes more time for companies to become thought leaders because all of us as humans like and trust other humans more and better than we like and trust companies. And so, it takes us a little bit longer to build that trust with an organization or a brand.”
Thought Leadership Is Not a Format, It’s a Goal
”Ever since I’ve been in the content marketing world, I’ve heard this phrase from executives and bosses: ‘We need to put some thought leadership out on it.’ I come from a journalism background, and I’m like, ‘Okay, cool, define that.’ And nobody seems to have a good answer, and everyone’s answer is different.
And so, anytime somebody says that to me, I’d be like, ‘We’re going to put out some content on this topic that relates to our product and make it the best content we can.’
We’re going to make sure we research it and make sure all that research is recent. We’ll do real interviews with […] at least three different customers, partners, agencies, or experts in the space so we can get that content into the piece.
Also, educate a writer because not all writers are experts in the thing they write about nor should they necessarily be. And then, making sure that we find examples.
If we can’t find three examples of our customers doing a thing, then it’s not a thing. We can’t tell people to do this because our organization wants it or because we think it’s a good idea. We need to show them that other people are doing this. […]
That is what creates thought leadership from a brand perspective: your organization is seen as the type of company that puts out trustworthy, well-researched, well-thought-out, and easy-to-follow content. And any time you publish a piece of content on a topic that someone’s interested in, they’re going to read it, check it out, or share it. But one piece of content will never do that for you. One campaign won’t do that for you. You have to build it over time.”
Not Every Blog You Publish Needs to Use SEO as a Distribution Channel
”We have pieces that have SEO as a core part of their distribution strategy. And then other pieces, which we call human-interest stories, aren’t going to get a lot of search traffic, or if they do, it’s not going to be on terms we care about.
Because there are stories about our customers doing cool things and it’s like a feature about them. Those pieces, though, typically get picked up by newsletters. They get shared far more often on social media. Those are our distribution channels for those pieces.
Content needs a good mix of both types of pieces in there. Again, human interest versus education. But that doesn’t mean that we have SEO content versus non-SEO content. It just means SEO is a major distribution channel for one type and not a major distribution channel for another type.”
