Pair the substance of your thought leadership with the right format to maximize its reach and resonance.
It’s 11:30 a.m., and you’ve been hit by a moment of inspiration. You just had a genuinely interesting thought about a recent development in your practice area.
But now you’re stuck on a surprisingly annoying question: What exactly do you do with that idea?
Do you write a LinkedIn post about it? Maybe a 500-word blog post? Or do you write a 1,500-word bylined article and pitch it to a legal industry publication?
Most people choose a thought-leadership format based on a gut feeling.
Don’t be “most people.” Instead, answer these three questions to decide what form your thought leadership should take.
Question #1: What’s the shelf life of the topic or angle that you want to cover?
The form your thought leadership should take depends on how perishable your topic/angle is. Is it tied to a moment in time? Or does it have some staying power and will be just as relevant six months from now?
Let’s say that you’re a labor and employment attorney. You want to discuss a recent National Labor Relations Board decision that changes a common employment policy.
That’s an idea with a limited shelf life. It’s important today, and will stay important for the next week or two. But soon after, it’s going to get stale. Equally importantly, there’s only so much to say about it. You can explain what the NLRB said and provide some takeaways within a few hundred words.
This is the kind of development where speed prevails over depth, lending itself to a LinkedIn post or a blog post.
On the other hand, if you think the NLRB’s decision is just the latest sign that the balance between employers and workers has been shifting for the past five to 10 years, that’s an angle that will almost certainly be as true six or nine months from now as it is today. Because this is a more evergreen topic that you can dig into, it’s likely worth your while to invest more time—or in the hiring of a ghostwriter—to produce a bylined article that will be pitched to and hopefully published in an industry publication that members of your target audience will discover.
Question #2: Who am I trying to reach and why?
As you would expect, the form of your thought leadership should also be shaped by who you want to consume it.
Let’s say you’re a data privacy attorney, and a new state law just created a compliance obligation that most organizations aren’t equipped to comply with, and won’t be for some time.
If you want to give a heads-up to your professional network because you want to stay visible to the people in it, you likely only need to publish a short but sweet LinkedIn post along the lines of: “XYZ just passed a new data security statute. Here’s what organizations that do business in XYZ need to do now.”
If you want to reach general counsel at organizations you want to do business with and individuals who don’t know you but may research the statute because they want to learn what it says and what they need to do, you’d likely want to publish a blog post summarizing the law that’s designed to be found by people like them.
If you have a lot to say about the statute and what organizations should do because of it, and you want to write a deep dive into it that targets general counsel and others who may not already know you, and makes them say to themselves, “I need to keep this attorney’s name handy because they obviously know what they’re talking about,” you’d probably want to opt for a bylined article in a publication that the individual regularly reads and trusts.
Question #3: How deep will I be diving into the topic or angle?
Some insights are a single observation that can be expressed in a few hundred words. Others need 1,800 words to develop and explain.
This final factor will guide your decision as to your content form. But how will you know how deep to dive into a topic or angle?
Try to explain the idea in three sentences.
Let’s say you’re a patent litigator and you have a reaction to a recent Federal Circuit ruling. If three sentences could capture the whole idea that you want to communicate: “The court tightened the standard. Here’s the practical effect . . . . Here’s what organizations need to do in light of it . . . .” That’s probably a LinkedIn post.
But if you can’t capture everything that you want to say in merely three sentences, and you’ll have to do a lot of explaining to readers so they understand the “So what?” and the “Now what?” of the legal development, you’re leaning toward at least a blog post and probably a bylined article.
One word of caution here: Be thoughtful about how deep you go on a topic or idea, and how that relates to the form of content it will take.
You don’t want to shrink a detailed thought piece to a 150- or 200-word LinkedIn post that doesn’t do the idea justice. But you also don’t want to expand a single thought into an 1,800-word bylined article that’s going to be repetitive and full of fluff.
“D.”: All of the above
Despite what I just said, there will be times when the answer to what format your thought leadership should take is “LinkedIn post, blog post, AND bylined article.” That’s not surprising, since an interesting topic or angle can be contracted or expanded like an accordion.
Imagine you’re an M&A partner who observes that regulators have quietly changed what kills deals on antitrust grounds. That’s not a little idea. It’s a big one that can be adapted to fit multiple forms of content.
The bylined article will be the fully argued position: “How Antitrust Enforcement is Reshaping Deal Structure.” The article will be pitched to publications that general counsel read, and will take hours for you (or a ghostwriter) to research and write. But it is a worthwhile endeavor because it could capture the attention of general counsel, referral sources, and others, and it could support your business development efforts when it’s published by giving you an excuse to reach out to contacts you haven’t spoken to recently.
You could take that same idea and put it into a blog post with a narrower focus: “Three deal terms that now draw regulator attention for antitrust concerns.” There’d be a fair amount of substance in there that’s relevant to your target audience, but it wouldn’t be as in-depth as a bylined article.
Then, you could shrink your thoughts down even further to a LinkedIn post, written in a way that’s provocative to force people to stop scrolling and like and/or comment on the post to expand its reach within your network and your network’s network. Perhaps you would open your post with two catchy sentences like, “The government just changed the standard for approving deals with antitrust concerns. Most dealmakers don’t know what to do now.”
A strategic approach to the form your thought leadership will take
The next time you’re struck by inspiration to create thought leadership content about a topic or angle relevant to your target audience, think strategically about what form or forms of content should be the vehicles for what you have to say.
Ask yourself:
“What’s the shelf life of the topic or angle?”
“Who am I trying to reach and why?”
“How deep will I be diving into the topic or angle?”
The answers will help you determine what you’ll produce and how much time you’ll need to invest in doing so.