I work with search firms to regularly produce thought leadership and content that is aimed at marketing their industry expertise to their clients. One of the most common questions I get asked by search firms and search consultants is:
"How often should I be writing or publishing content? Weekly? Monthly?"
When thinking about a content or a thought leadership strategy for your search firm, it's important to consider and recognize a few key things.
Frequency & Content Fatigue.
Social media allows for you to share your thought leadership across your networks and position yourself as an industry expert. Your social media postings and strategy should be made up of a mix of original thought leadership content and other articles that you source and are relevant to your industry, clients and networks. Typically, I advise search firms and search consultants to publish thought leadership content on a quarterly basis or monthly. This allows for your social media to highlight your expertise over the span of 1-3 months, leaving a healthy mix of your own expert insights and other industry articles. With a weekly blog post frequency, sometimes you are at risk of over-saturating your networks with self-promotion. A good place to start is writing and publishing content on quarterly.
Subject Matter and Planning.
The more content and thought leadership content you are publishing will require more ideas, subjects and topics brainstormed. When writing thought leadership come up with a list of 4-6 industry relevant challenges, issues or trends to write about. These will serve as the framework for your blog articles and content calendar for either the next year or 6 months (4 articles = 1 article per quarter; or 6 articles = 1 per month). When you are an expert, writing about certain topics should come easily and providing your professional opinion or spin on it should not take too much of your time when it comes to monthly or quarterly content. On the other hand if you are trying to produce weekly content you will likely need to A: Have at least 12 topics to cover for one quarter (3 months) and B: Allocate at least 6-12 hours a month just to writing this content.
Value & Variety
Within your thought leadership strategy you have the ability to curate a library of content that is valuable, relevant and varied. Thought leadership content can be produced and delivered in a variety of formats beyond a simple blog post including:
eBooks
White Papers
Podcasts
Case Studies
Videos
Instead of producing a blog article every month or every quarter, change up the format in which you share your leadership expertise and insights. For example, one month write an article, the next month film a short video, and the following interview a colleague or client for a white paper. You may find that one format provides better value and performs better with your target audiences over another and can adjust your content strategy accordingly.
About The Author.
Thaddeus Andres is the Founder of Retaindly. He has been working as a marketing expert serving executive search firms and individual executive recruiters for over 12 years. He has an intricate first-hand knowledge of the executive search process, the value executive search provides and how to position this to clients. He has created websites, implemented lead generation campaigns, driven paid and unpaid social media ad campaigns, curated email nurture campaigns, elevated brands and published over 200 thought leadership content pieces.
Comments