The Do’s and Don’ts For Creating A Thought Leadership Campaign

We are continuing our thought leadership blog series today with a comprehensive list of the “Do’s and Don’ts” for creating a Thought Leadership campaign.

To ‘set the table’ for our list below, perhaps Elaine Ip from Marketo said it best:

“As a brand, people want to know about your tried-and-true experiences and the tips and tricks you’ve learned along the way. They want to get a behind-the-scenes look at your practices and how you’ve realized success, the challenges you’ve faced and what you learned from them.”

The “Do’s” for creating your campaign:

• Do align topic(s) to the company’s business, customer and brand
• Do research and development (R&D) on your topic and audience
• Do understand customer pain points
• Do understand competitors, and how the topic/position you’re developing is unique compared to them
• Do get buy-in from high-profile people, such as industry leaders
• Do innovate in your area of expertise
• Do recognize that you likely know more about the topic and have more experience in the topic than your audience does
• Do create a content mission statement
• Do build employee-wide support and understanding
• Do create a sense of urgency for your campaign

The “Don’ts” for creating your campaign:

• Don’t keep your best secrets a secret; your competitive advantage could be the very thing that you recruit new customers with!
• Don’t try to invent something you don’t know anything about
• Don’t assume the depth of knowledge or experience your internal and external audiences have
• Don’t leave customers in the dark about your plans or campaign

More about our guest: Jill Schmieg is Founder and Chief Strategist at Sol de Naples Marketing. After serving for more than a decade in corporate marketing at a major commercial fleet management and supply chain solutions company, she founded her own marketing services company, which helps clients discover brighter ways to reach their markets with unconventional approaches, non-nonsense savvy and focused results. For more information, visit www.soldenaples.com.

TMSA invites you to learn more about Thought Leadership marketing by ordering:

Webinar: How To Launch A Thought Leadership Campaign in 90 Days 
E-Book: The Ultimate Launch Kit for a Thought Leadership Program 

Guest author of the TMSA Thought Leadership blog series is Jill Schmieg, Founder and Chief Strategist of Sol de Naples Marketing. 

This blog post is the sixth in a Thought Leadership series brought to you exclusively by the Transportation Marketing and Sales Association (TMSAtoday.org)