I will not be updating this blog for several months while I am on sabbatical. I am still available for marketing consulting services. Thank you.

Establishing your company as a thought leader provides benefits that no marketing or advertising program can deliver on its own. As a thought leader, your company will gain credibility in the market and become a trusted advisor and partner—not just another vendor. Potential customers will gravitate toward your products and services. Journalists will seek you out for quotes. Analysts will call you. Industry Web sites will link to you.

That’s a compelling list of benefits, but what exactly does it mean to be a thought leader? And how does your company gain a thought leadership position?

Granted, thought leadership is a buzzword. But like many buzzwords, there is relevance behind it. Thought leadership means having a reputation in the market as a company with unique, innovative, and important ideas about your industry, the forces shaping it, the challenges facing it, and the future awaiting it. Any sized company can become a thought leader; you don’t need to be big.

While thought leadership is not a strategic objective on its own, it supports and fulfills other objectives such as lead generation, growth of market share, or increase of share price—or all of these simultaneously.

Thought leadership starts with point of view

To earn the mantle of thought leadership, your company must have a unique point of view on your industry. You can’t simply parrot what others are saying about your industry and market; there’s nothing special or worth paying attention to in that.

Therefore, your first task is to understand your point of view by answering questions such as:

• What does your company believe about your industry that other companies may not?
• What’s your company’s position on how the industry is changing? What new challenges customers will face?
• How is technological innovation shaping your industry? What innovations do you see coming?
• What’s your company’s approach to helping the market understand and overcome the challenges? What differentiates your company’s position from others?

The thing about having a point of view is that it’s yours. Your view may not be unassailable; in fact, it can’t be, otherwise you’re saying the same thing as everyone else. You need an edge, but not an “out there” edge. Your point of view must be respected and you must back it up.

Offer value, spread the word

Once your company understands its point of view, you should articulate it by developing valuable content. This is where your library of articles, white papers, Webcasts, podcasts, blogs, and videos take over to demonstrate your expertise and experience.

This content should be educational in nature—not promotional or sales-like in any way—and should be freely available. For example, white papers or articles whose objective is to establish thought leadership should not be hiding behind Web site registration forms. You want to get this content into as many hands as possible, get as many people reading and viewing as possible. Save the registration forms for lead generation activities.

As far as spreading the word, put your marketing acumen to work. It’s important to use the right media to reach your audience.Start by identifying and getting to know the important editors, blogs, e-newsletters, and Web sites in your industry. Offer to provide articles and other content. Seek out industry events that may offer speaking opportunities and pitch a compelling idea for a presentation. Make your executives available for media interviews. Host executive seminars. Sponsor industry events.

Finally, stick with it and track your progress. Positioning your company as a thought leader requires a long term commitment. It takes time for the word to spread and your reputation to grow. Discover what type of content your audience finds most relevant by tracking downloads and views, and then use this data to help guide future content creation and media choices.

Blurbs are quotes from other writers that the publisher will use to help market and sell your book. Right now, my publisher, agent, and I are on the hunt for authors who will read the novel and provide a comment.

One author I’m approaching is Lorrie Moore, a writer I’ve admired throughout her career. But I also happen to mention her in the novel because she’s one of the characters favorite writers. I wonder if my telling Lorrie this will get her read the novel. It’s such a small passage, in which a few friends are talking about why they chose St. Lawrence University:

The three of them now shared two sinks, Dana in the middle, trying to keep a steady hand with a mascara brush.

“This was my first choice,” she said. “I got the scholarship, plus a writer I like went here and that made me want to come.”

“Who?”

“Lorrie Moore. You probably haven’t heard of her.”

“No,” Heidi said.

In putting Lorrie Moore’s name in the book, I was trying to depict my character’s sensibilities, and I wanted to give a nod to Ms. Moore. But that whole part about the other character not having heard of her … I didn’t mean anything negative by it. We’ll see if I hear back from Lorrie Moore.

In the past year, I’ve probably registered for 30 Webinars, shown up for 12 of them, and lasted to the end for none of them. What could be an effective marketing tactic often falls flat. One of your Webinar selling points—Conveniently attend while in your office at your own computer!—becomes one of your weak points. Listeners get bored, switch to their email, or Word document, or Web browsing, or go out to lunch.

Why are Webinars boring? Three reasons:

1. Content is focused on the presenter/company and not the audience. That’s because from beginning to end, you developed a Webinar based on your agenda. But from beginning to end, your audience has one key question in their minds: “What’s in it for me?” You better spend every minute answering that question.
2. Presenter talks too much. Wait a minute, the presenter has to talk, it’s a Webinar. True, but someone get out the editing pen and shorten the script. Keep the meat, cut out the fat. And please, please rehearse. Speak naturally, conversationally—even if you’re reading the script.
3. Slides that work like sleeping aids. Presenters go to one extreme or the other: they fill their slides with bullet points of text; or, having heard that’s a no-no, they simply use a single picture that has little context to the topic, and leave it on the screen for two minutes. A better way is to use an image and few words on each slide. Use one slide for every key point you make. Maybe you use text-heavy slides so attendees can have them afterward and still retain the gist of your message. Instead, try offering them a white paper or executive brief related to the Webinar topic.

When customers don’t buy from you, they have a reason. Price too high, doubts about your company, weak support policies, product fall short.

Of course, customers don’t always tell you the real reason they’re not ready to buy. That’s why marketing needs to know every possible customer objection in advance and develop messaging and tools that help your sales team overcome each one.

This isn’t the same thing as putting forth your value propositions, which tend to reside on a higher, more strategic plane. This is more tactical. It’s more a “fight fire with fire” mentality.

• Your potential customer objects: “We don’t really know your company that well.” You overcome: “Some of our other customers felt that way before they purchased from us. Here, check out these testimonials and case studies from them.”
• Your potential customer objects: “Your product will be too hard to implement.” You overcome: “Did you see this brochure on our five-step plan we use to get all our customers up an running within 30 days?”
• Your potential customer objects: “Your price is too high.” You overcome: “Let’s use this ROI calculator to demonstrate the true value and return on investment our product will deliver over the next five years.”
• Your potential customer objects: “I hate change. I like doing things the same way I’ve always done them.” Okay, this can be the immovable object. Still, you must overcome: “Let me share with you these industry statistics that show the increasing rate of adoption of this technology. Within a year, most of your competitors will be moving in this direction. Without it, you may lose your competitive advantage and even market share.”

When planning your marketing content and sales tools, ask: What objections do your potential customers raise? How will you overcome them?

I’ve set up accounts and tried most of the top social media sites: Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, YouTube, LinkedIn. My purpose is either to advise clients on using these platforms to gain a business benefit, or to work for the benefit of my own consulting and writing business.

The social platform I’m really starting to like is LinkedIn. I’ve been on LinkedIn for years , but am just now starting to take advantage of it. The reason it’s working now is that LinkedIn has finally given me a satisfying answer to the most essential question:

“What’s in it for me?”

Here’s a few ways LinkedIn showed value to me:

• For some research I’m conducting, I needed to find a true specialist: a former NYPD detective who worked in the city’s Real Time Crime Center and understood the technology and software that made it run. While using a search engine (Google), one of the search results was a LinkedIn profile of just the person I wanted to meet. I wasn’t connected to this person, but LinkedIn showed me that a connection of mine was connected to someone who was connected to the former detective. I asked for an introduction via these professionals on the LinkedIn network and within a few days I was interviewing the exact expert I needed to find. That would not have happened without LinkedIn.
• I joined several groups that are relevant to the business some of my clients are in. I’ve been able to start new discussions and participate in others and in this way communicate in an educational and professional way with target customers. That’s valuable.

LinkedIn is working for me. What social platforms work best for you?

I received an email campaign from Eloqua, a company that makes marketing automation software. It’s a top-notch campaign. The email, rather than trying to sell me on Eloqua’s software, pitched its “fun” video on marketing automation. Below is an image and link to the campaign landing page.

A couple of things I really like about this landing page:

• It’s completely focused on the video. There’s no other navigation to Eloqua’s web site.
• The promotional copy sells the video: “award-winning”, “fun”, “entertain & educate”.
• Social media nicely integrated with links to Tweet about or share the video on Facebook.
• The video itself delivers as promised (although it’s much too long; that’s my one issue).
• There are plenty of opportunities within the video to connect with Eloqua and engage with a salesperson.

While conducting research for another project, I came across a YouTube video about the NYPD Real Time Crime Center. It was created by the BBC. This video serves many communication purposes, from the recruitment of new police officers, to educating other law enforcement agencies, to … and this is the one that piqued my interest the most: a deterrent to criminals.

I hope so. YouTube reports to be the fourth most-visited site on the Internet, with over 90 million unique monthly visitors. There’s bound to be a few shady characters in that group.

If you’re creating videos for your organization, start by defining your communication objectives.

Websites, Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds. Television, video games, texting. Does anyone still reads books? I’m about to find out—and perhaps face the biggest marketing challenge of my career.

Broadway Books will be publishing my novel, STASH, in July 2010. This is how they describe it in promotional material:

Set in an affluent suburb in upstate New York, STASH centers around the series of ever escalating problems that follow in the aftermath of a single wrong choice. After Gwen Raine, a wife and mom respected in her community, buys a small bag of marijuana from an old flame who runs a popular restaurant in town, she gets into an automobile accident that involves a fatality. The local police-eager to crack down on drugs in the town-throw the book at Gwen. At the same time, her husband, a pharmaceutical executive, is embroiled in a dilemma over his company’s marketing of a drug for off-label use. This rich and ambitious novel probes our society’s ambivalent and often hypocritical attitude toward all manner of mood-altering substances, legal or illegal. Paced by psychological suspense and multidimensional characters, STASH is ultimately about the conflicts that surface when one’s commitment to an accountable life collides head-on with human fallibility and desire.

Good summer read, right?

Who is Broadway Books? Get this: Broadway Books is an imprint of the Crowne Publishing Group, which is a division of Random House, which is a division of Bertelsmann AG. Lots of consolidation going on in publishing and media the past few years!

I had a conversation with a business owner who wanted advice on building his company’s brand. Brand is an elusive concept that can have many meanings. Maybe that’s because each brand has its own unique meaning in the market. If your goal is brand building, you are after three things:

1. You want your company to be recognized by your target customers. It’s too easy for potential customers to ignore a brand they don’t recognize.
2. You want positive associations in the form of promises and brand attributes to accompany that recognition. “They make those savory nuts I love.” Or: “They are leader in sales management software.” Or: “They have really responsive customer service.”
3. You want the recognition and positive associations to combine to create trust and instill a propensity to buy in the customer.

You have a lot more direct control over Number 1 above than you do Numbers 2&3. A strong marketing program precisely targeted at your major customer segment will build brand recognition for your company and products. The positive associations and propensity to buy must come from the customers themselves—based your company’s ability to meet and surpass customer needs.

Some companies do such a powerful job at brand building that they become synonymous with a single word or phrase, or even an entire category. They are strong companies because they have carved out a market space for their brand, and just as importantly have let go of other market spaces so as not to dilute themselves. For example:

• Volvo=safety (not excitement)
• Blackberry=Smartphone (not cell phone)
• Oracle=databases (Will that change with their purchase of Sun Microsystems?)
• Under Armour=performance (not comfort)
• Walmart=cheap (not luxurious)
• Your company name=What is your brand? What is it not?