When thought leadership is a business imperative, how do you design a program that sticks with your customers? I recently sat down with Anne McSilver, who works in marketing and thought leadership at LinkedIn.
Her most compelling bit of advice: before you sell anyone else, you have to sell your own sellers. More on that below.
Comms and marketing both need to consider ROI
Whether it sits under marketing or communications, thought leadership needs to be accountable to the organization's high-level goals. That means measuring its impact on brand, renewals, or other outcomes the business already cares about. As Anne put it: you can't be successful if you don't have a way to measure your success.
Investing in thought leadership can feel out of reach for resource-strapped companies, but there's a lot communicators can do to break through the noise without breaking the bank. Focus on quality, not volume. Slow down and invest time in something distinct and uniquely you. That could start as small as a series of LinkedIn posts from a founder with a strong point of view. And don't rush the insight stage — take the time to collaborate with smart colleagues and explore what's striking, what feels important to share.
Anne's team spent a year creating LinkedIn's Talent Velocity Report, building on conversations with industry leaders about keeping an organization's skills up to date while AI transforms the workplace. A market research study and additional reporting laid the groundwork for a new framework that addresses a key pain point for many organizations.
Tell stories with data and human voices
Data-driven storytelling and data visualizations matter in any thought leadership piece, but what makes a story stand out is the human voice. That was a centerpiece of the Talent Velocity Report: customer stories and case studies showing how the ideas actually play out in real life. Most people aren't going to read a 40-page PDF, but the pull-quotes, human stories, and examples are what stick in people's heads long after they've scrolled away.
Executives have distinctive voices, so channel those identities into the writing. As someone who does improv comedy and a little acting on the side, I love the idea of embodying the character, mannerisms, and physicality of a leader to inform how you write in their voice.
One big idea, many small doors
Attention spans being what they are, communicators need to be intentional about keeping an audience engaged. Design content and visuals to be easily skimmable. Slice the big piece into smaller assets and social posts.
A few months after the report launched, LinkedIn Learning released an interactive quiz that brings it to life in a different way: a three-minute assessment that identifies your two largest areas of opportunity and suggests next steps. The big ideas from the longform piece, made bite-sized and actionable.
And bringing content into the real world helps it stick. The team has been running an in-person workshop series with customers, helping leaders build actionable 30/60/90-day plans for their organizations.
"You have to sell the sellers"
An often-overlooked platform for amplification is your own team. It's a phrase Anne has been thinking about a lot: you have to sell the sellers. She put real energy into training customer-facing people across the organization — getting them to deeply understand the content and get excited enough to share it in their day-to-day work. Engagement doesn't happen overnight or without effort. You have to do the selling, rally the troops, and get people excited.
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