10 Takeaways From Competing on Thought Leadership by Robert Buday https://www.frictionfreecommunications.com/blog/books-competing-on-thought-leadership Thought leadership means being known for expert ideas that solve real problems, not just marketing or ads. True thought leadership uses strong research and clear solutions focused on important client issues. Success comes from reaching the right audience and showing how your ideas work in the real world. # Highlights He defines thought leadership as “the acclaim that an organization or individual achieves by becoming known for providing superior expertise that solves a complex problem.” Here are 10 takeaways from the book, but I will tell you that there is so, so much more that you’ll get out of this book if you buy it. You’ll take notes all over it (or in your electronic device) and keep returning to them. Which client problems to focus content on, and how to allocate content resources. Thought leadership marketing promises prospective clients that your firm has superior services for solving certain problems of theirs. The holy grail of thought leadership is having a new and better way of solving a complex and critical business problem in the marketplace. The goal of thought-leadership research should be to identify the most successful approaches to solving a client problem. The best way to break your overarching research questions into subcomponents is through a problem-solution framework: • What is the specific problem of the target audience? • How do we believe most of them have been trying to solve it, and why are they falling short? • How do we believe the most successful companies are solving the problem? • What are the key barriers to adopting the superior solution, and how did the best companies overcome them? “Godfather” movie director Francis Ford Coppola drove the numerous daily decisions he had to make on movie sets from a unifying theme. True thought leadership has the solid foundation of a bulletproof argument, supported by strong walls of experience, data, and logic. The “right” audience doesn’t necessarily mean an audience in the millions. It just means reaching enough of the people who might need your services. Buday talks about the “ripples in the pond” approach to marketing, arguing that the people whom you’ve hired to get your content in front of your target audience need to fundamentally rethink how ideas travel, on their own and with the help of marketing. His basic advice follows #GiniDietrich’s PESO model that requires you to focus on Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned Media The focus of thought leadership content is on how to solve the problem, showing examples of organizations, people, countries, etc. that have solved it for the better.