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On Write a Thought-Leadership Corporate Blog in Just 5 Minutes a Week
Barry, I appreciate that you like the strategy. The headline would only be sensational and presumptious if it were not true.
Please note I am not presuming that the entire thought process of writing a blog post be distilled down to a mere 5 minutes. In fact, business owners might spend days, weeks and even months thinking and refining their thoughts. But what I am suggesting is when they reach that level of clarity where they can speak their thoughts in a few minutes - that's when this method really starts to work.
Of course you'll have CEOs who won't be comfortable with speaking their thoughts. Or who might never achieve that state of clarity. Obviously this method wont work for them. As I stated in the article itself, it may take considerable practice to get to this level and it may also not happen at all for some.
But it is certainly doable for those who have perfected the art of focusing their thoughts to the point where every word adds to the story. Brevity, in my view, is to be celebrated. And a good rule of thumb while writing blog posts is to focus on just ONE key idea per post. Therefore I see this strategy fitting in well with the right group of executives.
On Write a Thought-Leadership Corporate Blog in Just 5 Minutes a Week
Actually Barry, this post was not the result of an SEO strategy, but was in answer to a legitimate business problem I see with many clients and business owners. They want to blog, but honestly do not have the time for it. There's a lot of advice out there for CEOs on how to take out time for blogging and why its important, how to do it right etc etc but I have not seen any advice on recording blog posts as a solution to the dual problems of time management/authenticity. Therefore this post was in direct answer to that. If it acheived some SEO purpose, then well I suppose I'll be happy knowing it reached its intended audience :) Oh and thank you for the plug to your article - not at all self-promotional ;)
On Write a Thought-Leadership Corporate Blog in Just 5 Minutes a Week
Hi Liz,
Thank you for your comment. Before I answer, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you were having a rough day when you wrote the above. I’m also going to assume that since you have a Google Alert set up for “thought leadership” you probably come across a lot of (useless) banter on the subject which might be the cause for being - as you called it - “snippy”.
Now to the actual valid concerns you’ve raised on the topic.
When I used the term “thought leadership “for this article, I was in no way confusing it with content marketing or curation. I meant the term in its visionary sense - to be a thought leader by presenting insights, angles and thoughts pertaining to your unique position as CEO or executive.
Let me get more specific and discuss people/blogs who, in my view, embody the above characteristics. Mitch Joel is an example that comes to mind immediately. His blog Six Pixels of Separation has all the elements of a thought-leader’s blog. Another person that comes to mind is SAP’s Michael Brenner whose insights are a direct result of his position within the company.
To differentiate thought-leaders from “mere” experts or SMEs, I would say the key difference is one of envisioning the future. If a CEO’s posts are about developing expertise in his industry, then he might be an expert. But if his expertise presents unique insights which could help move the industry forward as a whole, then it falls in the realm of thought leadership.
Consider the blog of Forrester’s George Colony: http://blogs.forrester.com/george_colony/12-10-15-the_mobile_war. This is a perfect example of a thought-leadership blog post, where he is presenting his advice to other CEOs based on his unique position, perspective and mountains of data and research.
Incidentally, this is also a great example of a blog post, the essence of which could be recorded within a few minutes while the finer details of adding accurate statistics and links etc could be the work of his outsourced content team.
I respectfully do not agree with your view that blogs are not a primary vehicle of thought leadership. I could go on about why, but there are many more learned people than myself already exemplifying the use of blogs as a way of putting across inspiring content, so I do not feel the need to debate this here.
And finally, I do find the terminology in your last para to be mildly offensive, but that could be because I’m Asian and we have a much more refined sense of appropriate language, especially while engaging in discourse on a global forum. However, I will still thank you for your comment as it elicited a worthy discussion here and that I’m happy to see.
p.s. I sure do hope you tweak that Google Alert setting!
On Write a Thought-Leadership Corporate Blog in Just 5 Minutes a Week
Hi Kumail,
Thanks for liking the post! I'd like to address your point about attracting readers and encouraging social sharing. In my view, the main purpose of a thought-leadership blog is not for it to go viral, but it is to do the following:
- present insights that are directly derived from your unique position and advantages
- achieve clarity on your thoughts by writing about them
- generate discussion with other industry leaders to move the idea forward (if its a good one)
- build your personal brand via your blog
Now of course traffic and readership are a large part of the success of any blog. However, what I'm advocating is that by being a thought-leader you main purpose is to put across one concrete, tangible idea to move your industry forward. And you can certainly do that in a few minutes of audio time.