What’s Eating Content?
Hear the phrase “eating content” in 2024, and you’re likely expecting a screed against AI. But that’s not it. Whether AI replaces human creators or not, the whole notion of content and content creators is being aggressively undermined and hollowed out by forces that have been accumulating for many years. Although I’m primarily speaking about […]
May Inspiration Bloom
Note: I’m adding a new format to Ideas-Led Growth in between my longer messages. I’m already doing the stay-inside-and-think “idea” part of Ideas-Led Growth twice a month. What I’m adding is the go-outside-and-play “sled” part. Highbrow and pop, fringe and mainstream. It’s a curated collection of things to read, hear, or see, presented through the […]
Three Ownerships
Establishing self-sovereignty as a thought-leading individual is essential if you want to say what you mean and make anything meaningful happen because of it. You need to maintain integrity between your intentions and their implications. What you say as a thought leader helps make that integrity happen. In today’s content climate, your integrity and impact […]
The Lure of Thoughtertainment
Thoughtertainment is my word for content that looks like thought leadership on the surface but, in fact, serves other ends. As the word suggests, some of it may even be entertaining to read and think about. But the deeper you dig, the more you realize that it just doesn’t have a lot of substance. What’s […]
Marketing Outside the Cage
What happens when you leave behind the desperation-jacking and toxic incentives of content marketing? Content platforms exist for you to fill with content. They will do everything possible to supply their feeds—obligatory reverse foie gras production. Just keep stuffing those ducks. You’re as deprived of freedom as they are. The Choice But there’s one essential […]
The Ultimate Content Algorithm Hack
1 The ultimate algorithm hack is “so what?” “So what?” means extracting yourself from dependency on playing a game whose rules you don’t control. 1.1 Think, write, and publish as if algorithms were irrelevant. Because for thought leadership, what matters is getting your ideas in front of the right people, not the largest number of […]
Growth Mindsets and Thought Leadership
One of the reasons I stress that thought leadership goes beyond marketing is that it gives individuals and organizations a growth mindset. Those who can create change based on ideas often do so by advocating for those ideas effectively. Ideas promoted via thought leadership typically foster individual thought leaders’ professional development and industry influence. They […]
How to Generate Ideas
Generating ideas is the first element of the GRACE model for ideas-led growth. New ideas are the seeds of organizational change and thought leadership. The problem is that few idea-generation methods are up to the task of generating them, let alone in a viable or sustainable way. Even further, most notions of an idea are […]
Beyond Thought Leadership
Something has been bothering me about thought leadership for a little while now. It has turned into a content marketing cliche. Its importance has become inflated. Ideas-Led Growth: Going Beyond Thought Leadership In reality, thought leadership content is simply one tool among many to do something bigger, which is to advocate for change and rally […]
What’s Your Thought Leader Persona?
Who are you as a thought leader? There are many ways to take a stance on a particular topic. Choosing a persona can be a useful technique for creating consistency. Adopting specific personas can shape both individual pieces of thought leadership and their overarching brand. The What and Why of Personas Think of it this […]