Thought leadership isn’t just a buzzword or fad that will burn out once most marketers adopt it. If you've been chasing elusive growth hacks that no longer fly on a platform by the time you hear about them, consider a more timeless approach you can build upon for many future years.

By developing a thought leadership video strategy you can quickly establish your brand as experts in a more organic and even cost effective approach than traditional PR. Whether you’re looking at your first thought leadership campaign or to fine-tune your next one, keep in mind the following tips.

Coming Up With Content Ideas

Thought leadership content is typically at the top of the funnel because your potential customer has a pain point and may not necessarily be aware of the solution to their problem- even if the solution is your product. As you develop your campaign you’re going to figure out:

• What are you target audience’s most pressing questions

• What people are actively searching for (what are the big questions and keywords around your industry)

• Where your prospects are already actively looking for solutions (there may be a complimentary brand or influencer you should be working with)

• Where you are publishing your videos (i.e. what social channels, whether you’re sending out to a specific email list, etc.)

Understand the strengths of your product and look for the larger themes that align with it. For instance, if you have a software product where security is a huge deal, consider topics around data management and responses to specific events like newer regulations from the GDPR. In-house subject matter experts are your best resource for informed views on industry issues and emerging trends. They are the ones synthesizing customer feedback and pain points into useful solutions.

Most importantly, avoid the heavy sales talk and temptations to immediately try and drive your audience to convert. Think of thought leadership as a long-term, value-based strategy that’ll help your business over time for high authority and easier referrals, but may not have immediate effects to converting new customers.

Choosing Your On-Screen Talent

Featuring a SME in front of the camera has a few benefits already mentioned including already knowing your customers’ troubles like the back of their hand. But with the person you choose to use on-screen for the campaign, personality and someone passionate about what they’re sharing also plays a huge role in video engagement. If they’re already well known in the circles you are looking to target, even better.

Thought leadership isn’t the time to tippy toe around your point of view. They don’t necessarily have to be profane like Scott Galloway but whomever you feature in your content needs to possess a unique voice. It is inherently more engaging.

Producing Thought Leadership Campaigns

Your SME may not have time to sit down and write dozens of blog posts and white papers, but in the matter of a day you can knock out a ton of video content with them. After you’ve done the keyword research and identified the topics, it’s possible to shoot multiple videos in one day that you can release across months.

Any belief that thought leadership content needs to be a long-form, wordy piece is just a myth. As you create a rough outline for each, 90 seconds to two minutes are generally good for social thought leadership videos on most social platforms. Even if you don't seem immediate conversions your video content will provoke discussion and action if done effectively.

However, you can also cover the same topics in more depth in a broader version of the video and shoot that at the same time. The content of your videos can also be repurposed for blog posts, podcasts, and other mediums.

A relaxed Q&A style interview with any definite points to hit works better for shooting versus a word-for-word script.

Promoting Thought Leadership Videos

Once you’ve produced and edited your content you can publish onto multiple social channels using Wipster. When planning out the promotion strategy for your content keep in mind any influencers you can partner with for distribution and whatever the next step you are hoping for your viewer to take whether it’s subscribe to your channel or visit a specific page for more information. As your video analytics show which though pieces are more engaging to viewers, you can drive even more traffic through ads.

Like any of your other content, it’s an iterative process. Review the video drop-off points and specific pieces that your data shows as more engaging (think play-through rates, comments, etc.). From there, you’ll be able to generate even more trust with your ideal customers by updating your video content and expanding on topics they’s shown to already eagerly be interested in.