In Maria Pergolino’s article on Marketo.com, titled “Why Thought Leadership Rules the B2B World,” she explains that the adoption and proliferation of Social Media, combined with the continued dominance in Search, allows buyers of business products and services to become the hunters, as opposed to being the hunted.  These buyers now possess the power to easily gain insights on their potential purchases, which heavily influences their decisions.  Thus, developing Thought Leadership through meaningful and active social media participation is a must for B2B companies and their executives, as it helps build “awareness, loyalty and equity” among potential buyers, which, in turn, helps lead to new customers and clients.

The Content Marketing Shift:

This article highlights the changing nature in B2B marketing.  Instead of B2B companies hunting for their next customers, the exact opposite is happening: buyers are actively researching the potential B2B products and services, and differentiating them based on aspects of their thought leadership qualities.  In fact, “64% of senior executives are clicking ‘search’ more than six times a day seeking business information,” and “69% of B2B buyers are using social networks.”  This is partly why “56% of B2B marketing executives stated ‘positioning our company as a thought leader’ as their top objective in a recent Economics Intelligence Unit study.”  As Pergolino explains,

Today, however, customers want to attach a personality to a company and, more importantly, they want to know how companies differ.  Thought leadership enables customers to separate companies into the who’s who of the industry.  They’re better able to understand a company’s personality and ultimately understand how processes and strategies work.

In effect, it points out that personalities, processes, and strategies within a company help to develop and drive Thought Leadership across Social Media.  Everyone plays a part, as everyone is involved in building your business and creating your brand persona.  Buyers don’t want to hear from a wooden, inhuman brand.  They want to connect to a real person, with insight, reactions, interests and insider knowledge.

Hurdles with Business Blogging:

With 60%-80% of blogs being abandoned within 1 month of starting, the question arises how to source and create a cadence of relevant and meaningful blog content.  Not every company can hire a dedicated content writer or blogger who possesses the necessary industry insight, knowledge and experience, to carry the internal voice of the brand.  It’s clearly a difficult task that’s becoming increasingly important to solve.

Extension of Marketing Efforts:

Developing Thought Leadership within your industry and among your peers is very important, but it shouldn’t be seen as the only path to take.  This needs to be in concert with your other Marketing, Sales, Product, PR, HR and team building exercises.  In gaining credibility, you need to show a human side.  Your best assets are your fellow employees, and each work to help build your company and establish your brand.

Solution:

For these reasons, we’ve created Relaborate to help companies collaboratively blog, allowing internal experts within your company to help fill the content void and quickly contribute their knowledge to blog post creation.  It’s the first step to extending your brand and establishing your Thought Leadership.

-This article was written using Relaborate.

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Image credit – Google, Talen Gene