Are you striving to position your organization and its leaders as thought leaders? This episode with guest Ashley Faus sheds light on how to do that very thing by using content and social media.
Faus, an expert on the topic, delves into the nuances of crafting a thought leadership strategy that not only caters to metrics and dashboards but also drives actual thought leadership.
She focuses on transcending the basic approaches of inbound marketing to create content that resonates, inspires, and positions your organization and leadership as though leaders.
For example, she advocates slowing down in order to speed up—i.e., reflecting and thoughtfully planning so that you can then quickly create and implement an impactful strategy.
Check out the video for more details, and the full podcast (link below the video) for the entire insightful conversation.
Don't miss future episodes: Subscribe to the Marketing Smarts Live Show on YouTube. And to catch up on all previous episodes, check out the full playlist on YouTube.
Episode Details, Guest Information, and Referenced Links
Episode No. 38
- Live date: June 5, 2023
- Episode link: youtube.com/watch?v=LL8jQdvxwXc
- Original podcast episode: Developing a Content and Social Media Strategy to Foster Thought Leadership and Business Growth: Ashley Faus on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]
Guest's social media profiles:
- Twitter: @ashleyfaus
- LinkedIn: Ashley Faus
MarketingProfs resources referenced in the show:
- So, You Want to Be a Thought Leader? A Framework and Guide for Your Thought Leadership Strategy
- How Online Thought Leadership Can Transform You (And Your Company) Into a Trusted Resource
"In B2B News" article referenced in the show:
"From the #mpb2b Community" links referenced in the show:
Transcript: Developing a Content and Social Media Strategy to Foster Thought Leadership and Business Growth, With Ashley Faus
Do you have a thought leader content strategy in place for your organization?
What does that mean pertaining to the type of content you should be creating?
Then stick around because today's show is going to be entertaining and educational all at the same time!
Welcome to the "Marketing Smarts Live" show by MarketingProfs and the Marketing Smarts Podcast. Where we dive into B2B news, resources, valuable guest content, and much more each week.
If you're a B2B marketer looking for a place to learn, keep up to date, and have some fun along the way, grab a beverage, a notepad, or at least some style of writing utensil, and welcome to the show!
Hello to all my Marketing Smarts Live viewers today. I'm super excited to bring you Episode 38 of the Marketing Smarts Live show. This week's topic is all about Developing a Content and Social Media Strategy to Foster Thought Leadership and Business Growth.
So, if you're ready to get your learn on, buckle up and let's get ready to rock and roll.
Hey, I'm your boy George B. Thomas, speaker, trainer, catalyst, and host of this here show, the Marketing Smarts Live show, as well as the Marketing Smarts podcast found on your favorite podcast app. Our guest clips today are brought to you by none other than Ashley Faus.
Ashley Faus is a marketer, writer, and speaker by day and a singer, actor, and fitness fiend by night.
Her work has been featured in TIME, Forbes, and The Journal of Brand Strategy, and she's shared insights with audiences at Harvard Business Review, INBOUND, and MarketingProfs.
She works for Atlassian, a collaboration software maker on a mission to unleash the power of every team. Follow her on LinkedIn and Twitter, @ashleyfaus.
Now, remember the clips of Ashley Faus today are pulled from the full marketing smarts podcast episode, and if you want to listen to the full interview with Ashley Faus and myself, make sure to tune into the Marketing Smarts podcast, link to the full show will be in the description below after the live show ends.
Now, in this episode, again, I'm talking with Ashley Faus about Developing a Content and Social Media Strategy to Foster Thought Leadership and Business Growth.
Traditional marketing attribution is all about dashboards and metrics and how inbound affects the bottom line. But thought leadership, says Ashley Faus, is a different beast. It can't be measured using traditional methods.
So, to get us started, I wanted to pick Asley's brain about why is slowing down long enough to create a strategy around thought leader content so important for organizations.
This is what she had to say.
Ashley: Two big things. One, humans are lazy and platforms are greedy.
Most people don't come to you for the heck of it and to make you feel good. They come to you to get something for themselves. If you become that destination that they go to get something for themselves, then eventually there is going to be some sort of reciprocity. Build that trust, building that affinity is the foundation. If you don't step back and know the value that you're giving to them, if you're just churning, you're only doing things for yourself, and your audience is too lazy for that.
The second piece of this is that the platforms are greedy. The platforms don't want you to go anywhere else. LinkedIn wants you to stay on LinkedIn. Even your own website, you want people to stay on your website. You don't want them to go off and go somewhere else, unless the going somewhere else is to talk to a sales rep. Again, you still want to keep them in your own little ecosystem.
When you start to realize I'm going to have to fight for attention not only from the humans that are consuming my content, but also from the platforms that are hosting or serving my content, you start to realize you need to suit up for that. You don't go into a battle with just shorts and a T-shirt. You have to put on some armor, you have to bring your weapons, and that requires some training, it requires some skills, and it requires some thinking.
That's where you start thinking about that strategy. First is focus on that audience, what do they want, what do they need, how can you serve them. Second is how am I going to win against all of the other things on the platform that are going to keep their attention on the platform and not on my content.
OMG, most people are lazy, and all platforms are greedy!
Did you hear the important words? Infinity, trust, and reciprocity!
Can you start to feel the importance of the fight for attention?
I love how Ashley talked about you have to suit up!
And again, the important words—Training, skills, and thinking!
Do you have a strategy in place that gains infinity, trust, and reciprocity?
Put the answer to that in the chat pane or let me know on Twitter using the hashtag #mpb2b and, of course, tag me using @georgebthomas.
We'll get back to Ashley Faus and her thoughts on Developing a Content and Social Media Strategy to Foster Thought Leadership and Business Growth, But first, I have to ask...
Are you part of the MarketingProfs community? If not, become part of the MarketingProfs community by heading over to mprofs.com/mptoday - that's mprofs.com/mptoday.
Now, it's time for one of my favorite sections...
In The B2B News: Where we talk about breaking B2B news or really important tips we find on the Google news tab related to you and your B2B business. This week, the title is...
How to do B2B content marketing the right way (with 5 examples) by Julia McCoy
Here we are, over two decades into the 2000s, but bad B2B content marketing still exists.
Digital content marketing has existed for at least 10 years, but some businesses still make elementary mistakes that wreck their potential for results.
That's a shame because most content marketers (71%) will tell you that content has only become more important over time.
Ready to see what content success and failure look like? To read this article, check out the link below when the live show is over.
So let's return to Ashley Faus and her Marketing Smarts podcast episode.
Now that we know how important it is to have a strategy, how the heck do you get started?
That is exactly what I wanted to ask Ashley next.
Ashley: That is a hard question, particularly for thought leadership, because so many people go to the goals, and usually those goals are around revenue. I think that in many cases for thought leadership you're going to have to abstract it a little bit away from revenue.
My sense is that thought leadership is not meant to drive short term sales. That's sales and that's marketing and that's product marketing, and that is buy intent content. That is not what thought leadership is meant to do. Thought leadership is meant to attract the right people to the brand and the company. That could be talent, that could be strategic partners, that could be for comarketing opportunities, that could be for investor relations or to improve analyst relations. There are a variety of things that you need to build from a trust perspective.
When you look at your thought leadership, you need to be cognizant of which of those audiences are going to result in the short term and long term outcomes. Yes, being a thought leader in your industry, being trusted, having that affinity across a variety of different audiences will ultimately lead to long term business growth, but that is very different than short term revenue. I think that mindset shift is the big piece.