How to Build Thought Leadership Among Your Employees

What is thought leadership?

Thought leadership means that you, as an individual, are seen as the knowledge leader in your field. It reflects how influential your thoughts and ideas are in your field. 

As a business, one way to grow your thought leadership and establish yourself as a knowledge leader in your field is to help your employees further and showcase their expertise in the eyes of your target audience. You want (yourself and your employees) to be perceived as thought leaders, from gaining a competitive advantage in the market to building trust and credibility.

5 benefits of thought leadership

• Building Credibility and Trust.
  Gaining credibility and trust is not an easy task for businesses, especially given how wary and distrustful online users of paid advertising are. When employees share their expertise, insights, and innovative ideas on social media, they position themselves—and, by extension, their company—as authoritative voices in the industry. This credibility is crucial, especially so in B2B and SaaS markets, where purchasing decisions are often complex and require a high level of trust.
  
  According to a study by Edelman, 63% of buyers trust technical experts and industry analysts more than company advertisements and marketing materials. That’s why, by showcasing employees as thought leaders, businesses can leverage this trust to influence decision-makers and drive sales.

• Enhancing Brand Visibility and Awareness.
  When employees actively participate in industry discussions, share insightful content, and engage with peers on social media, they extend the reach of the company's brand, thus boosting visibility and awareness. This organic exposure is often more effective than traditional marketing methods, as it comes from authentic and trusted voices within the industry.
  
  LinkedIn reports that companies with active thought leaders see a 58% higher brand awareness and are 90% more likely to be considered for business opportunities. plus, enhanced visibility and awareness aren’t only helpful for generating new business but are also a crucial factor in talent attraction, acquisition, and retention.

• Driving Engagement.
  Employees who are recognized as thought leaders are more likely to connect meaningfully with their audience and engage in conversations on social media. Addressing industry challenges, trends, and innovations gives place to deeper engagement with the target audience, and this engagement is invaluable for building long-term relationships with clients, prospects, and industry influencers.
  
  
• Generating Quality Leads and Shortening Sales Cycles.
  Thought leadership content, such as articles, whitepapers, and social media posts, attracts genuinely interested prospects to the company's solutions and expertise. And that added layer of authenticity that comes from the employees sharing the content makes the process more credible. The result is that these leads are often more educated and ready to engage in meaningful conversations, which can shorten the sales cycle.
  
  A study by DemandGen Report revealed that 96% of B2B buyers want content with more input from industry thought leaders. This indicates that thought leadership can play a crucial role in lead generation and nurturing. By aligning thought leadership efforts with sales strategies, businesses can create a more efficient and effective sales funnel.

• Strengthening Competitive Advantage.
  In highly competitive industries, differentiation is key. Thought leadership provides a unique opportunity for businesses to stand out by showcasing their unique insights, perspectives, and innovations, nurtured in-house at the employee level. Companies that position their employees as thought leaders can differentiate themselves from competitors who rely solely on traditional marketing tactics.
  
  A report by the Content Marketing Institute found that 89% of successful B2B marketers attribute their success to high-quality, informative content that positions their brand as a leader in their industry. This competitive edge can be the deciding factor for potential clients choosing between similar solutions.

How to establish your employees as thought leaders

Employee advocacy programs offer companies many more benefits than just amplifying marketing and sales efforts and claiming visibility online. Employee advocacy is extremely important in helping your employees build their personal brand and ultimately establish themselves as industry leaders.

Here are 4 ways that employee advocacy can do that:

Providing social media training

Thought leadership, for the most part, occurs on social media. By extension, that requires aspiring thought leaders to be able to navigate social media platforms.

We all know that not everyone is a content creator, a copywriter, or a social media manager. While some people may feel more comfortable trying things and figuring out how everything works on their own, a large portion of people would rather be trained.

Employee advocacy programs can do that. With campaigns or more formal workshops, community managers can provide tips and best practices for using social media and train employee ambassadors in social media usage. This will, with time, help them navigate this world and feel more confident using those platforms to establish themselves as thought leaders.

Sharing branded and approved company content on social media

Most employee advocacy programs rely on the practice of social sharing, namely, what happens when companies provide content for their employees to share on social media. 

Yes, this grants the company a wider reach and enhanced visibility online. Leveraging employee networks can significantly impact those metrics, given that the employee networks are collectively 10 times bigger than the company’s own. 

A nice-to-have side benefit, or even another major benefit of social sharing, is that employees get to present themselves as knowledge leaders on company-relevant content and topics and, on some level, knowledge leaders in their industries.

Sharing product and industry insights on social media will, with time, enhance one’s profile and heavily shape one’s personal brand on social media, thus appearing more and more effectively as an influencing presence. Followers and connections on social media will come to perceive employees as knowledgeable sources of information on a specific topic, and they will so be able to grow as thought leaders.

Inspiring employees with suggested copies to find one’s voice

However, mere social sharing alone won’t achieve the results you dream of: what you need is an advanced employee advocacy solution that can also cultivate thought leadership in your ambassador community before pushing it to the outside. 

What does this mean concretely? This, for example, entails supporting employees in writing their own content to go along with the articles, podcasts, or what have you that the company itself provides for them to share. This may seem like a trivial thing, but you’d be surprised to know how much time and effort it can take certain people to come up with good enough and convincing copies to post on social media. 

An advanced solution like Ambassify allows you to configure several copies to go along with your content when your employees are sharing it. Plus, it will still allow your most creative ambassadors to edit the copy as they see fit and adapt it to their own tone of voice. At the same time, those less confident ambassadors will have the chance to share content stress-free and showcase their expertise and knowledge online while also learning how to write their own content and getting inspired by those options.

Share 3rd party content on industry-relevant topics

Last but not least, thought leadership is also about expanding one’s horizons beyond company-related content. The next step, and something an advanced solution should be able to afford you, is the possibility to import content from trusted, 3rd party sources to also share with your employee ambassadors.

This would have a massive impact on thought leadership efforts, as it allows employees to also share opinion pieces and expert insights from sources outside of one’s company, too. And that, of course, feeds the thought leadership machine.

Conclusion

Whether you’re looking to establish yourself or your employees as thought leaders, the rules of the game are pretty much the same. The benefits abound, and the key to showcasing your expertise to become a knowledge leader is to curate your personal brand with industry- or topic-specific content and engage in online conversations about it.

If you’re looking for a way to support your employee ambassadors’ efforts to become thought leaders and reap its benefits, then employee advocacy solutions like Ambassify should be on your radar. They can play a massive role in supporting your employees’ content production to training and more.