Thoughts on product management… and thought leadership
Who is a thought leader?
Traditionally, thought leaders are seen as subject-matter experts in their respective fields with a certain level of authority, given their status in the company. However, this does not necessarily mean that you have to be of a certain status in an industry to be a thought leader. In other words, anyone has the potential to be a thought leader.
“Decentralised” thought leadership: With social media, it breaks down the barriers to entry for anyone to put forth their thoughts. For example, social media influencers are labelled as “key opinion leaders” or KOL, even though they might not directly be from their affiliate company or sponsor. What this means is that so long as you have a huge following of the intended target audience, what you say has a large influence on followers.
Do some thought leaders write their own articles? It is a long-standing tradition for PR professionals to write on behalf of these thought leaders, for example, a byline in the newspaper under the name of a thought leader is drafted by the PR professional and subsequently vetted by the company before it is published. (ghostwriting) Unfortunately, a person’s personality is being diluted through the process of ghostwriting and “lost in translation”.
Further reading:
- The New York Times — I’m a Ghostwriter for a ‘Thought Leader.’ Boo!: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/business/ghostwriting.html
- Why Ghostwriting Thought Leadership Content Doesn’t Work: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/ghostwriting-thought-leadership-content-ht
