As an influencer, Forrest Gump would be a sought-after thought leader. Sure, he’s more of an accidental thought leader, but imagine his influencer status if he had lived an Instagram life. Content marketers would run three years, two months, 14 days and 16 hours for that kind of owned media. Nike. Dr. Pepper. The entire chocolate industry.

Today’s thought leaders are people with an influential voice. They offer expertise on a particular subject and give above-the-scroll insights on trends. Thought leaders are innovators who draw on past experiences to spur creative and seasoned points
of view.

That makes thought leaders ideal influencers, which is why thought leaders and content marketing go hand-in-hand. You want content with muscle? Find a thought leader. They’ll deliver owned content on steroids.

So, where does Gump fit into all this? Here are his thoughts on thought leadership …

Creating content that screams thought leadership.
“Stupid is as stupid does.” In this case, when it comes to content marketing and owned media, being a thought leader means crafting content that is judged by its effect – by what it does. Meaning, if you’re a thought leader, your content should reflect that.

The value of loyal customers.
“Bubba was my best good friend. And even I know that ain’t something you can find just around the corner.” In order to have good friends, you need to be a good friend. Good friends, good customers. You don’t find good ones just around the corner, so treat your loyal consumers well.

Finding new customers.
“I didn’t know I was supposed to be looking for him, sir.” (Forrest Gump’s answer to whether not he had found Jesus.) In other words, all the time you invest in creating amazing content is only worth it if your audience can find it. How do you do that? Dan can offer some advice on the matter.

Now you just have to figure out how you want to serve your content, which is just as versatile as shrimp. There’s blog content … social media content … email content … podcast content … video content … website content … 

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How to Maximize Your Content’s Reach

by Dan Cooper, Creative Director

You know that content you just invested a lot of time and money into creating? It’s only worth it if your audience is finding it. To help ensure the visibility of your content, here’s a simple step that will help maximize your content’s reach: Implement pillar pages and topic clusters.

Pillar pages are pages that completely encapsulate all there is to know about a specific service or product that you have to offer. These pages are sometimes referred to as “10x pages” because they’re seen as being 10 times more effective than the next best piece of content that’s out there. While it’s important to have a keyword strategy going into this process, it’s even more important to focus on the overall content’s worth, conciseness and meaning. With more and more optimizations being made toward search engines’ natural-language algorithms, rigging the system by haphazardly stuffing keywords into your content is one of the easiest ways to lower your search rankings.

Topic clusters are multiple pages full of content that relate back to a previously identified pillar page. The goal is to show search engines your relative mastery of a specific topic through an assortment of content, increasing your search rankings and ensuring that your content is seen by more people in your audience. Multiple pages of content around a specific topic highlight your brand’s authority on any given subject, increasing the likelihood that your content will be discovered.