Hot take: All that content you've been creating? It's not thought leadership. Or at least most of it isn't, especially if you leave the writing to AI.
In many marketers' eyes, including many "experts," content marketing and thought leadership are the same. But although 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 Orbit Media's Andy Crestodina, "Thought leadership is a categorically different type of content. Thought leadership is content that comes from you, that has personal experience, that ties to beliefs."
"I'll paraphrase Steve [Raison, cofounder of BuzzSumo] and summarize it as 'strong opinion' and 'original research,'" he continues. Research shows "these are the two formats most likely to get 10x performance."
And if your focus is the top of the funnel, that performance means improved awareness, greater list growth, and more trust in your content.
Let's skip original research for now. That takes time, as well as actual research.
Instead, let's focus on strong opinions. You probably have some, after all. And it can be a quicker content-creation win. 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 Email List Growth and Content Promotion," Andy conveys that strong-opinion thought leadership means "you have to have a perspective" to get the engagement you crave—and those potential 10x results.
"Chat-GPT can't do that. Chat-GPT can't throw a punch, right? 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 add to your thought leadership creation plan. "People have very strong opinions about very mundane things," so start with what Andy calls a "provocative-but-mundane topic prompt."
Check out this clip from his presentation, where he discusses one of his most mundane but divisive videos, which received 250,000 views and over 1,000 comments on YouTube, and how he'd use Chat-GPT to uncover additional ideas to potentially repeat his results:
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 your LLM agent of choice) and train it for a single session; or you can create a custom GPT and store multiple personas for repeated use.
Next, it's brainstorming time. 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 think are true?
- What are the most important topics in my industry that are the least likely to be covered by the big blogs?
- What counternarratives are least likely to be discussed by thought leaders?
Just be sure you instruct the AI to reference your persona when making its suggestions.
Some ideas will be great. Others? Terrible. But isn't that true of human brainstorming, too? The point is to come up with ideas you wouldn't have thought of before based on the mountains of online content you will never have time to sift through personally. Let AI do that heavy lifting.
You can also ask AI to drill down into specific content, not just give general suggestions. Andy recommends, "Another way to use it is to take a big thing," like a video, interview, or an original research report, "and look for the little nuggets that will be good for promoting that big thing. What's the most provocative soundbite?"
Then, it's finally time to write. AI can't do that for you. Ideation is great, but this step is about your opinions and voice as it relates to your audience. And only you can bring that very human perspective.
Andy tells us, "Seth Godin says that thought leadership always creates tension. It's about making assertions. You have to be willing to be wrong. In other words, if you can't disagree with it, it's not thought leadership."
So, what's your point of view? Are you ready to make a bold, opinionated statement (and get bold results)?
If you want to dig 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 for Demand Gen Marketers session.
If you'd rather explore the original research side of thought leadership, check out Michele Linn's Master Class, "Using Research for Content and Thought Leadership."
More Resources From the AI for Demand Gen Marketers Series
Can AI Save You From Marketing Inferno?
AI Use Across the Customer Journey Means Aligning Across Teams
Using AI to Build Your Personas: Don't Lose Sight of Your Real-World Buyers
AI Can't Write Thought Leadership (But It Can Do Something Else)
