Seems to me there’s lots more “thought followship” around these days than “thought leadership.”
This latter term has become overused as more organizations churn out blogs, white papers, articles and presentations in an effort to demonstrate thought leadership – which, too often, turn out to be mundane accounts of recent work.
True thought leadership is based on the needs of others. I like Craig Badings’ definition: “Thought leadership is about delivering new ideas and content to your target publics based on deep insights into the business issues and challenges they face.”
True thought leadership can attract and engage target groups, but to do so, you must be prepared to share knowledge and insights that are:
– new or different
– relevant to the specific challenges of the target audiences
– helpful to them
– based on proven experience or evidence.
If you’ve got all that – go ahead – share your valuable thoughts!
Corinne Chats About Communicating Effectively 