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Dear reader,

I know the question “aren't you tired of always being sold to” gets thrown around frivolously, so allow me to rephrase: Don't you value organizations more when the people they hire and support have worthy ideas to teach you? 

Inspiration is not enough for me. Each one of us has our qualities and experiences, stories of courage and strife, that others can garner hope and insights from. But when a company focuses on being inspirational at the detriment of being useful, it can very quickly fall into the trap of emptiness. Empty actions, empty words. And I feel sorry for those among us that value words for their ability to evoke understanding, for they are often thrown around aimlessly and in large quantities as if we, the people, won't notice that there are no practical actions backing them up.

“To give is to gain.”
As true in branding as it is in life.

I envision a world of content that is inspirational in its ability to give. In its transparency and selflessness. Imagine a company that supports its employees in the divulgation of their thoughts, knowledge, and wisdom. (Those three are not all the same thing, mind you.) This company would not only be beloved by internal folks that have chosen to align their impressionable names with the brand, it would also be valued externally for willingly—and without any immediate sense of return—giving its priceless steps to leadership.

This company would never:

• Be considered manipulative or money-hungry–two concepts that have plagued our industry from back when branding, marketing, and advertising were all considered the same thing.

• Spend its resources fleetingly for the sake of a trend, platform, or algorithm.

• Be disowned or debunked for saying something it didn't mean, intend, or live by.

Communications teams would no longer be flooded with crisis after crisis, constantly in defense mode. They'd be able to go back to what they love most: communicating naturally with people by sending positive vibes and brilliant content into the world.

Brand leadership is thought leadership.

Go ahead, call me a romantic. The truth is that every organization can benefit from the effects of creation—just like every person can. It's dumbfounding to me how B2C and B2B organizations alike can look externally for the solution. They want influencers and their popularity, when they already have an incredible source of that internally in their own people. I didn't research how many times "your people are your greatest asset" comes up in business and branding books, but I bet you it's close to all.

People are, in fact, your greatest asset. In branding, this is self-evident (at least you’d think it would be). You can architect the best identity and strategy with your leaders and agencies, but if your people don't understand or live by them, you've got nothing. Sure, you can fake it for a while, but it will always come back to bite you in the ass. And if it hasn't happened yet, just think about moments in your personal life when you've tried (and irrevocably failed).

With narrative, with content, with language, it's the same. Not only must everyone understand and apply your tactics, guidelines, and values, they must expand upon them. Make it a little bit their own, for how can it be authentic otherwise? That's the beauty of tapping into that which is human experience and building your content strategy around it: You can generate the repetition you so desperately desire without it remaining the only thing that blesses your brand with recognition. You have the human element, as well. Each content creator, each thought leader, will take the parameters of your strategy and paint within them a reflection of themselves in relation to those guardrails. Authenticity and consistency all in one. A transformational clash of the new and the old leading to the something better.

The (inner) beauty of non-branded content

People say non-branded content (another way of saying pure thought leadership) only works at high-value contact points such as events, webinars, and other areas of conversation. I disagree. I've seen it work from internal to external, website to social, recruiting to sales—pretty much across all channels. The important part that is often missed is to build it into a proper content ecosystem, one that allows you to weave it entirely or partially into various parts of your comms.

The sample content ecosystem below is one that I’ve used to explain what being quality-driven means to my clients, which are most often very large B2B organizations hesitant to change. I like it because it helps me home in on a key differentiator between editorial marketing and the marketing being done today: It’s heavily based on people.

More often than not, the visible efficacy of the approach causes brand leaders to conclude that while editorial marketing may be a medium-to-long term strategy, it also drives medium-to-long term results. They quickly realize it’s not as elusive as SEO maximalists make it sound. Just look at the content sources in the ecosystem below. All of them can be associated with a person’s reflections, thoughts, and experiences in some way.

Now, the idea isn't to have only non-branded content, which is often the misconception. Remember that non-branded content is considered part of "brand comms" for a reason. That brand comms label applies to everything from email marketing and social media to presentations and sales materials, which lo and behold, all have your brand on them.

This overabundance of branding means you have to begin placing humans front and center long before reaching the point of product marketing and sales meetings. Thought leadership puts purpose, propositions, and personality first, and product second. The crux is usually an identifiable author, which is much more powerful than a faceless brand.

Editorial thinking often comes down to scope and the context of what you're creating in relation to your brand and its best brains. How else does it differ from the marketing you're already doing?

1. It stems from a content strategy that is more specific and intentional in its positioning and subsequent narrative. (I depicted how to achieve this in my last newsletter.)

2. It leads less with content about your ONE brand and more with the individual brands of your people. Personal branding, therefore, becomes essential training material for everyone involved.

3. It doesn’t consider logo placement and immediate recognition to be the most important goal, nor does ignoring them feel like “a missed opportunity”.

4. It manifests a giving nature that makes audiences feel like their gain is most important, thereby building the ultimate (dare I say unbreakable) trust.

5. It completely aligns internal and external comms, which increases everyone’s satisfaction and loyalty, making those emotions easier to maintain.

Or you can continue doing what’s currently being done, but my opinion is that it doesn’t bode very well for your brand’s resources or durability. Here’s a clip of me explaining more in a training session:

Quick note: If you’re interested in training your team to think editorial, then reply to this email and let me know. I have a full program available.

Unfortunately, content marketers aren't helping the situation, sitting there spending more time talking about whether “thought leadership” is still a relevant term than applying the values they proclaim onto themselves. (For the record, thought leadership means exactly what it sounds like: leading with thought.) Many are more focused on how to better prompt a generative AI than hone their craft—extrapolating the same filler trend that's gotten us into this branded content mess onto a new (not improved) canvas. Those random marketing communications serving one campaign and nothing else? That's doubling, tripling, quadrupling, you name it, in a quarter of the time. Sounds good? It's not.

Editorial marketing is not only doable; it's scalable and profitable. Asking your internal employees to create thought leadership—and teaching them how to do it—beckons them to think even more about who they're speaking to, what they have to say, and how it's truly different. They'll have to structure their thoughts into a cursive path that makes sense, a message that is clear and to the point. They'll have to go into previous experience and make connections, drawing upon years of patterns and case studies—both of which can be packaged to serve the target audience well.

This way, thought leadership is no longer a reactive process. It’s no longer something that happens only when a brand ambassador is asked to respond. No, it becomes proactive instead. It's something that's being consciously crafted and tailored by the internal representative at hand, giving both branding and marketing a boost. That conscious attention can make all the difference and is a core element of approaching content with an editorial mindset.

Stay human,

Flavia Barbat