Playbook: Thought Leadership

Olivia O’Sullivan

Introduction

The goal of thought leadership is to make sales easier. Whether you’re selling your product to a potential customer, your vision to an investor, or your company to a potential candidate - a strong personal brand can make a big difference!

Thought leadership is especially valuable for early-stage startups because early sales are really difficult. Established companies, likeMicrosoft & IBM, have strong brand awareness, trust, and credibility which make it easier for them to sell their products, services, and vision.

As a founder, you have an incredible opportunity to become the face of your company.

In this playbook, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step guide on how to identify your founder brand and start executing on a simple, but effective, thought-leadership strategy

“Founder brand is an incredible way to build a business.Today, people want to buy from people. We want to work with people we know, like, and trust. I believe the clearest path to successful brand awareness is to start with the founder. A founder with a brand gives your lead generation and marketing efforts superpowers. A founder brand builds trust, creates lasting relationships, and conveys expertise, leadership, content, and personality.”-David Gerhardt, Author Brand: Turn Your Story into Your Competitive Advantage

Step 1: Start Small

As an early-stage startup, you’re likely strapped for resources and time. It can be intimidating when you see other larger companies pumping out blog posts, podcasts, research, and conference keynotes.

Be okay with starting small - a few posts a week, or a bi-monthly webinar or trade show. Remember, you don’t need to have a marketing team yet or dedicated content resources to kickstart your thought leadership.

Step 2: Understand your Audience

The audience for your thought leadership will be similar to your ICP. Thought leadership enables you to build an audience by consistently sharing valuable insights and thought-provoking perspectives.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself when thinking about your audience:

What motivates or inspires your audience?
What questions are they asking?
What does your audience enjoy learning about?
What are their pain points?

Once you’ve built an engaged audience, it’s easier to sell your product to this audience and attract new look-a-like customers. If you’re not entirely sure who your ICP is yet - get clarity there - and in the meantime you can prioritize the industry/sector.

You’ll also need to understand where your audience spends their time. It might be on social channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, or TikTok. It might be at industry trade shows or in peer groups. Wherever it is, that’s where you need to show up!

Step 3: Commit to Consistency

To really reap the benefits of thought leadership, consistency is key. According to Hubspot, posting 9-15 times a month can increase inbound leads and website traffic significantly. But consistency isn’t just important for your audience, it’s important for you too.

Carve out some time on your calendar to write. If you’re just getting started, try blocking 60 minutes every week. It can be early in the morning, or later in the evening, whenever you feel most energized and creative. During this time you’ll be able to think through ideas, flush them out, and arrive at clarity.

Depending on your experience, and style, you might need more or less dedicated writing time. The good news - after a few weeks of consistency, you’ll figure out what works best for you.

At the start, commit to posting 2-3x a week. Just like starting a new habit, you’re more likely to be successful by committing to small steps vs. going 0-to-100. The good news is that most social platforms, like LinkedIn or Twitter, allow you to schedule posts ahead of time. We’ll also give you a template in Step 6 to get these posts started via Chat GPT.

If your audience doesn’t spend time on social media, the frequency of your posting may decrease. Although sharing your founding story online may still be helpful in recruiting employees and pique the interest of investors, you’ll need to build credibility and trust with your audience elsewhere. That might be through educational content you share at trade shows, or partnering with industry groups to distribute.

Step 4: The Founder Story & Other Topics

People want to buy from people! A great place to start is the founding story about why you started your company. Here are a few questions to you started:

What is your backstory? How did you get here?
What’s the problem your business exists to solve?
Who or what is the villain your customers are facing?
What is life like before and after using your product?

In addition to your founding story, you might also want to select 1-2 other topics that will be part of your thought-leadership arsenal. The topics you select should resonate with your audience and relate to your startup.

For example, if I’m the founder of a B2B SaaS startup that helps Community Managers extract product insights from their communities, I might decide to write about:

My founder story
Community building best-practices
Community-led growth

We have a few founders in the Forum portfolio who have leaned into thought leadership and seen it move the needle for their startup. By leaning into topics that provide value and insight for their IPC, they’re reaping the benefits. Things like: more inbound leads, an easier time closing customers, and more organic referrals. For additional inspiration, check out their LinkedIn and social profiles.

Kait Stephens, Co-Founder & CEO of Brij

Thought-Leadership Topics:

Her founding story
Omni-channel marketing
Being an entrepreneur and mom

Anthony Kennada, Co-Founder & CEO of AudiencePlus

Thought-Leadership Topics:

His founding story
B2B Marketing & Audience Development
What he learned as the CMO of Gainsight, Hopin, and Front

Chris Herd, Co-Founder & CEO of Firstbase

Thought-Leadership Topics:

His founding story
Future of Work & Remote Work

Here are a few examples outside of the Forum portfolio:

Step 5: Test, Measure, Scale

Iteration will be key to the long-term success of your thought leadership. Test everything! The channels you distribute your thought-leadership,
what you post about, when you post, etc.

Once you have content published, or webinars scheduled, it’s time to measure the results. It’s up to you to determine the metrics you care most about, but to start, think about the metrics that indicate your thought leadership is resonating.

This might include:

New Followers
Engagement
Discovery Calls Booked
Website Traffic

Once you have an idea of what you’d like to measure, your customers will tell you what to scale. Once you see a channel, like LinkedIn, working, double down there. The same goes for content types or formats. Don’t worry about posting similar, or even the exact same content again and again. If it’s working and resonating - keep going.

Step 6: Getting Started

All you need is 60 minutes this weekend and ChatGPT to get 30 days of thought-leadership content ready to go. To keep things simple, we’ll start with 2 topics: