Share Your Expertise With 7 Types of B2B Thought Leadership Content

To bring more attention to your brand, you need to position yourself as an industry expert. 

Cue thought leadership. 

Great thought leadership threads the needle between pontificating about conceptual matters and being overly tactical. It often introduces a new, high-level concept but ties things back to practitioners. 

"You're doing it all wrong. Here's my genius framework," isn't thought leadership. Neither is "How to do XXX."

“I think about ________ in this unusual way, and it means my work looks like _______ instead of the status quo. Here's how you can do it too," is thought leadership. 

Interested in creating your own thought leadership content? Read on as we explore the different types of thought leadership content and how to develop and leverage each one. 

1. Podcasts 

Podcasts are a good medium for B2B thought leadership because they're easy to produce and conversational. This means less work for your marketing team and a greater ability to capture your target audience's attention.  

Further, since they're in audio format, audiences can easily listen at any time, such as during daily commutes, which would be challenging with other pieces of content.

You can also repurpose podcast content for different distribution channels, allowing you to capture a broader audience. If you decide to publish your podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, you can repurpose the podcast script as part of your blog content or even post the podcast on a video platform like YouTube. 

With an estimated 547 million podcast listeners by the end of 2024, this isn't a format you want to miss out on. Of course, your thought leadership podcast will only be effective and capture your audience’s attention if you put in the work and create interesting, valuable, high-quality content. 

Here are some tips to keep in mind during content creation:

• Come up with content ideas that align with your niche: You want to be known as a thought leader in your industry. So track industry trends and challenges and build content around them. 
• Invite industry experts: Collaborating with other thought leaders in your industry can help you provide out-of-the-box insights. 
• Pick alternative podcast formats: The straight host/interview approach is getting a little stale. Consider an alternative option like a co-hosted format, where subject matter experts have a straightforward conversation. 
• Choose an appropriate podcast length: Many podcasters produce 20–30 minutes worth of content, so this would be a great start. But it isn't set in stone — try out different lengths and leverage your chosen platform's analytics to see how long your target audience listens to episodes before they drop off. 

Various brands are already using podcasts to share thought leadership. Take Ten Speed, for example. We've successfully built authority through our podcast by leveraging in-house SME experts to offer innovative solutions in the B2B SaaS marketing niche. 

2. Blog posts

Blog posts are a great way to add thought leadership to your overall content strategy, as they allow you to demonstrate your expertise through in-depth analyses and solutions.

Industry peers often share and link back to well-written blog content, which can broaden your reach and improve your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Better search engine rankings ultimately result in greater visibility and brand awareness, bringing you closer to being considered a thought leader. 

The secret to effectively demonstrating industry expertise or establishing your brand as a thought leader is to say something meaningful. People read thought leadership because they want an opinion or insight they can't get anywhere else.

This is what guides us at Ten Speed. We look at your brand values, your first-party data, and your unique POV when we do a live interview on a topic to make sure you're actually producing thought leadership. The goal is to ensure you don't echo what other businesses are saying but instead showcase new ideas that align with your brand. 

The article "Hump? What Hump? Why You Should Listen When Someone Says You're Doing It Wrong," by Dave Kellogg, is a great example of thought leadership in action. It challenges conventional thinking on criticism, shows how people avoid negative feedback, and offers a new, insightful perspective on why accepting criticism is vital to career advancement. 

3. Research reports

Research reports stand out from other content formats because they maximize the use of original data. With these reports, you're saying something no one else can say because you took the time to get new information. In B2B, that's extremely powerful because it gives potential customers confidence that you have insights your competitors don't. 

Essentially, it builds trust. In fact, 55% of decision-makers consider content that cites strong data to be the highest quality thought leadership. This means they're more willing to trust its insights. 

Further, a great report will drive a social, PR, and sponsorship strategy, which are excellent avenues to promote your best content. 

So, how do you create and distribute the highest quality research reports? Here are some tips to guide you:

• Make sure your report is based on original research: This can help you build credibility. Conduct interviews and surveys for fresh insights. 
• Provide clear, actionable solutions: Thought leadership doesn't just identify industry problems and trends. It also offers thought-provoking solutions and identifies new opportunities. 
• Partner with industry experts: Today’s customers know that brands can essentially say whatever they want — true or not. Join forces with other experts in your industry to enhance your report's credibility. 
• Use visual representations like charts: Incorporating visuals can make your reports more engaging and digestible. 
• Publish the report on multiple channels: This broadens your reach and visibility. Great options include your website, LinkedIn page, and email newsletters. 
• Measure thought leadership success: Regularly monitor metrics like media mentions, website traffic, and content shares to determine if you're using the best distribution channels. 

Verblio's Digital Content Report is a great example of thought leadership research. It meets most of the criteria discussed above — it's based on original data, leverages visual representations, and provides actionable insights into creating successful digital content.

4. Infographics

Between decreasing attention spans and content overload, it’s getting hard to truly engage your audience — and keep them engaged.

This makes visual aids like infographics great additions to your thought leadership strategy. They're not only easier for your target audience to consume but also fast to create, especially if you've got a great designer. 

Use infographics to share complex ideas so they're quicker to digest and simpler to understand. This could result in more content sharing by customers and peers. 

Some best practices to keep in mind when creating thought leadership infographics include:

• Ensure top-notch data visualization: The info has to be clear, concise, and easy to understand at a glance.
• Hire an experienced designer: Leverage their expertise to create visually appealing designs that capture all vital information. 
• Add your branding or logo to the design: With the right branding, it's easier for readers to attribute thought leadership content to your business. 

Column Five's piece "50 B2B Infographics That Prove B2B Doesn't Have to Be Boring" shows how valuable it is to add thought leadership to content strategies via infographics. 

Take Marketo’s infographic, “The B2B Social Marketing Universe,” for example. It briefly sums up their guide to B2B social media marketing — but in a fun and creative way. All the data is bite-sized and easy to take in and presents a fresh take on industry standards.

5. Webinars and virtual conferences

Webinars and virtual conferences are popular mediums, with roughly 25% of organizations holding 50 or more events per year. 

They're great for thought leadership because they allow you to interact directly with your target audience. Since you basically own the audience, it's easy to qualify potential leads. 

As with other mediums, the effectiveness of your thought leadership webinars is contingent on how you plan and manage them. For the best results:

• Invite industry leaders and experts: Doing this can lend credibility to your webinars and spark interesting conversations. 
• Pick the right topic: To make your sessions interactive, choose something that people are eager to tune in live for. Otherwise, you're better off setting it up as a video or podcast.
• Promote your thought leadership content: Create hype around your webinar topic and market the event across multiple channels to pull in a broad audience. 
• Do a dry run before the webinar: Encourage speakers to rehearse beforehand and check for any video, audio, or streaming issues to make sure the virtual conference runs smoothly. 

A few businesses have cracked the code on thought leadership webinars — and Clearscope is one of them. The SEO platform regularly holds successful virtual conferences on SEO challenges, featuring industry experts who bring fresh perspectives to the field. 

6. Case studies

Case studies demonstrate expertise by proving a history of success. They are your chance to use your work as the content and show off a bit. 

A survey conducted by the Content Marketing Institute shows just how important case studies are in the cocktail of thought leadership and content marketing in general. It revealed that 73% of the most successful content marketers use case studies. 

Don't be afraid to niche down when it comes to this medium. Not every case study has to attract every customer persona. Instead, focus on really demonstrating your value to a particular type of customer. 

Also, highlight the challenges you helped your customer solve and how your solution impacted their performance to demonstrate your thought leadership. 

Take our Workvivo case study, for instance. It highlights our client's website traffic challenges before we started working together and demonstrates how our innovative approach boosted the brand's rankings and organic traffic value. 

7. Social media content

With over 5 billion people using social media today, it's more than likely that's where many of your customers are. Posting thought leadership content on social media can help you share your ideas with a broader audience.  

Social media can also be a distribution channel for the other thought leadership content examples we've covered here. You can share your blog posts and research reports on LinkedIn and podcasts on YouTube to capture the attention of peers and customers in these spaces. 

The key to running a successful thought leadership social media campaign is consistency. Post regularly to continuously engage your audience. Not all posts will be viral hits, but you'll develop skills over time.

Just make sure you identify which platforms your audience uses. Here are some great options for thought leadership:

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a winning platform for B2B thought leadership because it's home to millions of decision-makers and professionals. It gives you a ready audience hungry for industry insights and solutions to improve their businesses. 

The platform also has great features, such as articles and posts, allowing you to share long-form and short-form content. You can post blog content, research papers, and case studies on your page and target industry leaders to ensure your content gets seen by the right people. 

LinkedIn is especially great for controversial posts that spark conversation or arguments, as it lets audiences engage directly with you and each other. 

Take the "You're hearing a lot of deal cycles getting elongated" post by the CEO of Outreach, Manny Medina. It challenges sales professionals and managers to look at longer sales cycles as assets they can capitalize on instead of liabilities, something that has initiated quite a lot of engagement from other professionals. 

YouTube

YouTube is a great option as well, as it lets you share complex ideas in a more digestible format. Like LinkedIn, it lets you repurpose content from other mediums, broadening your audience. 

You can post video versions of podcasts, webinars, tutorials, and case studies to give peers and customers a more in-depth and engaging look at your ideas and innovative solutions. 

A great example of thought leadership content on YouTube is the Okta: Identity Belongs to You video. The video content features in-house experts and external thought leaders who share their unique perspectives on how technology can help with identity management to boost security and user experiences. 

Build authority with support from Ten Speed

Thought leadership content can take many forms, from blog posts and case studies to podcasts and YouTube videos, and you can share it across a variety of marketing channels. The key is to choose mediums that resonate with your target audience and consult with content creation experts to build meaningful, impactful, and unique pieces.

Ten Speed can support your B2B thought leadership goals through strategic development and execution. We bake thought leadership into your larger content marketing strategy and have a consistent process for helping tease out the most valuable insights on a topic, maximizing its value to your campaign. 

Schedule a consultation with our team to learn how we can help you build authority in your industry!