Hot Take: All the content you created? It’s not thought leadership. At least most of it isn’t, especially if you leave the writing to the AI.
In the eyes of many marketers, including many “experts,” content marketing and thought leadership are the same thing. But while thought leadership can be a pillar of your content strategy, it’s not the only content you create. It has a specific focus.
According to Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media, “Thought leadership is a categorically different type of content. Thought leadership is content that comes from you, that contains personal experiences and is linked to beliefs.”
“I’ll paraphrase Steve (Raison, co-founder of BuzzSumo) and summarize it as ‘strong opinion’ and ‘original research,'” he continues. Research shows: “These are the two formats most likely to achieve 10x performance.”
And when your focus is on the top of the funnel, that performance means greater exposure, greater list growth, and more trust in your content.
Let’s skip the original research for now. In addition to actual research, this also requires time.
Instead, let’s focus on strong opinions. You probably have some after all. And there can be a faster return on content creation. Just don’t ask AI to generate the content for you.
In his recent MarketingProfs webinar, “AI at the Top of the Funnel: 10 Methods for Growing Email Lists and Boosting Content,” Andy conveys that strong thought leadership means “you have to have a perspective.” getting the engagement you crave – and those potential 10x results.
“Chat-GPT can’t do that. Chat-GPT can’t strike, can it? Because it has no point of view. It has no opinions.”
But there’s more to generative AI than doing the writing for you. In this case, “it can help you find provocative topics” to include in your thought leadership creation plan. “People have very strong opinions about very banal things,” so start with what Andy calls a “provocative but banal topic prompt.”
Check out this clip from his presentation where he discusses one of his most banal but controversial videos, which received 250,000 views and over 1,000 comments on YouTube, and how he would use Chat-GPT to discover additional ideas to his Results may need to be repeated:
First, you need a defined persona. “I don’t think we should use AI without training it on our audience.” You can either upload your persona document to Chat-GPT (or the LLM agent of your choice) and train it for a single session; Or you can create a custom GPT and save multiple personas for repeated use.
Next, it’s time to brainstorm. In his presentation, Andy provides ideas for quick start prompts. On his list:
- What questions are people in my industry afraid to answer?
- What false things do people in my industry believe to be true?
- What are the most important topics in my industry that are least often covered in major blogs?
- Which counter-narratives are least discussed by thought leaders?
However, make sure you instruct the AI to refer to your persona when making suggestions.
Some ideas will be great. Other? Terrible. But isn’t that true? human Brainstorming too? It’s about coming up with ideas you wouldn’t have thought of before, based on the mountains of online content that you personally will never have time to sift through. Let AI do the heavy lifting.
You can also ask the AI to provide deeper insight into specific content rather than just general suggestions. Andy recommends: “Another way to use it is to take a big thing,” like a video, an interview, or an original research report, “and look for the little nuggets that are good for promoting that big thing thing are. What’s the most provocative soundbite?”
Then it’s finally time to write. AI can’t do that for you. The idea is great, but this step is approximate your Opinions and voice in relation to your audience. And only you can bring that with you very human Perspective.
Andy tells us: “Seth Godin says thought leadership always creates excitement. It’s about making claims.
So what is your point of view? Are you ready to make a bold, opinionated statement (and achieve bold results)?
If you’d like to delve deeper into Andy’s advice on using AI for provocative, opinionated thought leadership and nine other areas where AI can help, check out Andy’s AI session for Demand Gen Marketers.
If you’d rather explore the original research side of thought leadership, check out Michele Linn’s masterclass, “Using Research for Content and Thought Leadership.”
Additional resources from the AI for Demand Gen Marketers series.
Can AI save you from the marketing inferno?
Using AI throughout the entire customer journey requires coordination across teams
Use AI to build your personas: Don’t lose sight of your real buyers
AI can’t write thought leadership (but it can do something else)
Your AI needs a human editor