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After working in thought leadership for many years across multiple sectors, writing about it, researching it and speaking to a wide variety of people across a spectrum of industries, I believe the key challenges facing thought leaders or the campaign boils down to three things: 1. Thought leadership Engagement - are your senior leaders/executives engaged in your point of view? If not you will have a problem as the campaign is bound to be short-lived.

After working in thought leadership for many years across multiple sectors, writing about it, researching it and speaking to a wide variety of people across a spectrum of industries, I believe the key challenges facing thought leaders or the campaign boils down to three things:

1. Thought leadership Engagement - are your senior leaders/executives engaged in your point of view?

If not you will have a problem as the campaign is bound to be short-lived. Thought leadership needs the support and commitment of senior management otherwise it runs the risk of losing the gravitas of senior commitment internally and externally and it will be a struggle to excite the target audiences for whom the campaign is intended. Without it you will struggle to make limited inroads into making it part of the culture of your organisation and you will battle to convince your executives about the efficacy of the campaign as a client and new business engagement strategy.

2. Thought leadership Connectivity - is your campaign enabling your key client-facing people to connect with their clients and prospects? Did you include them in the journey? Do they feel part of this campaign or is it content that is thrust upon them at the last minute and they have to make use of it?

The risk to all of these questions that you can run the risk of your thought leadership material being perceived by your own people as ineffectual in helping them connect with your client or prospects resulting in them merely paying lip service to it at best and at worst not using it at all or dismissing it.

3. Thought leadership Packaging - are you maximising the opportunity to leverage your content as much as possible across every possible client or new business touch point? Have you researched your target audiences in terms of where they source their information, how they like to receive it, what they read, where they go online, whether they like face-to-face, etc?

These are critical questions that will guide you in deciding how you cut and dice your content for maximum effect.

Furthermore, companies should be examining very closely how content is packaged for use online not only for search engine optimisation but importantly in formats that people feel inclined to pass around and share.

Content should be viewed much like a publisher would view it i.e. proper planning around what content is produced when, how, by whom and which channels will be used for distribution - always bearing in mind the audience and where and how they access information.

Craig Badings is the author of Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership and the blog http://www.thoughtleadershipstrategy.net/

You can follow him on twitter @thoughtstrategy

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