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What is thought leadership? Is another buzzword bulking up your content marketing mission? An elusive term we’d all like to think we’re masters of? Becoming a thought leader in your industry means that people respect you (and come to you) as an authority on your subject matter.
If you’re looking for true thought leadership inspiration, look no further than SaaS (Software as a Service). The SaaS industry has produced some of the most influential best-practice business blogs ever. We dissect two of our favorite SaaS content marketing strategies below and examine the unique elements that make them true thought leadership material.
Rather than emulating what other people are writing and teaching, learn how to position your brand as the go-to expert in your industry.
What is Intercom & Why Visit The Blog
Intercom is contextual communication at its best. It’s an all-in-one software solution that helps every team in a business communicate with customers personally at scale. Businesses can filter for specific actions their customers take on their website and app to help them segment lists and create personalized messages that reach customers at the right point of the life cycle.
Visit the Inside Intercom Blog for fresh thinking about customer service, personalized and contextual messaging, growing a company (specifically a SaaS company), hiring differently, designing and conceptualizing better products, increasing conversion rates, thinking independently, and more.
What Makes Intercom a Thought Leader? Best Practice Tips from Intercom Experts
The Inside Intercom Blog does exactly what it says: it provides an inside look at Intercom’s inner workings, learnings, and thoughts. Everyone in the company is encouraged to become a thought leader in their area and to blog about their experience, learnings, and opinions. That means that some of the best product experts in the world teach people how to make better products, and master marketers show people how to create messages that convert, etc. The blog includes case studies of how businesses have succeeded with the Intercom product, inspiring businesses, and best-practice tips.
Controversial Posts That Test Industry Assumptions
You can look forward to the kind of insight that comes with experience – the Intercom staff don’t merely look at other blogs for inspiration; they look inside their own heads and back at their mistakes and successes. They’re not scared to be controversial either, and if they think a product can be improved upon, they say it, providing well-thought-out explanations and alternatives.
Inspiration for Innovation & Independent Thinking
Inside Intercom helps product designers, marketers, customer support staff, and engineers challenge industry assumptions and look at their best-loved products in a new light. However, the most inspirational thing about the Intercom blog is that it helps practitioners think for themselves. It reminds professionals and aspiring professionals that the most innovative work happens when you challenge assumptions and think, ‘How can that be different, better, more helpful?’
Industry Events & Educational Videos
Thought leadership at Intercom extends far beyond the blog. Staff are encouraged to become thought leaders in their areas of expertise, and many speak at industry events, including Intercom’s events. Intercom provides a range of short instructional and educational videos to help people use its product and create better and more personalized messages. As part of its lead generation efforts, Intercom has also written a book, ‘Intercom on Product Management’ to help product managers make better business decisions.
Examples of Thought Leadership Posts
One of their most popular posts (great for its controversial nature, yet honesty): Growth Hacking is Bull****
An inside (and alternative) look at how Intercom hires for culture fit: How We Hire Engineers, Part 2: Culture Contribution.
How a staff member would change Google Analytics for the Better: Four Things I Wish Every Chart Did
An inside look at Intercom’s content strategy: Doubling Down on Content
How to Think Like Intercom
Don’t be scared to be controversial (if you can back up your argument with solid reason).
Ask yourself how to think fresh – before researching other people’s content, play with the ideas in your head.
If you have talented people working for you, let them blog about their areas of expertise and what they’ve learned.
Extend your thought leadership beyond your blog – consider webinars, industry events, lead-generating ebooks, etc.
Encourage and inspire professionals to think for themselves.
Give away your best ideas – you’ll get rewarded with traffic and loyal customers who become emotionally invested in your brand.
Blog as you learn.
HubSpot: Marketing Blog
HubSpot is an inbound marketing software platform that helps businesses attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. Businesses can create optimized blog posts with strong CTAs, run lead generation campaigns, and analyze their results from one platform. HubSpot coined the term inbound marketing to revolutionize marketing through attraction rather than interruption.
Visit the HubSpot Marketing Blog to read actionable how-to posts about all elements of inbound marketing. You can look forward to infographics containing recent studies, digital marketing psychology posts, self-conducted marketing studies, survey information, and a fun and light-hearted tone. Topics include content marketing, SEO, Google Analytics, company culture, and more.
What Makes HubSpot a Thought Leader? Self-Conducted Studies & Industry Surveys
The HubSpot Marketing Blog teaches businesses how to do inbound marketing as HubSpot does. The staff test various inbound industry assumptions (for example, shorter headlines perform better in terms of clicks and shares) and publish their findings to help people become better inbound marketers. HubSpot also creates regular industry surveys on the state of inbound marketing, collating an array of inbound stats that digital marketers can quickly consult to inform their own inbound marketing decisions or include in their articles.
Useful Tools & Influential Guest Contributions
The expert staff (many of them inbound marketers themselves) publish consistent conversational and fun content that’s light in tone yet heavy on actionable advice. However, HubSpot doesn’t just utilize its internal knowledge – the blog is open to a community of inbound marketing experts, allowing external submissions yet upholding very strict quality guest blogging guidelines. HubSpot creates helpful (and free) industry tools to help businesses become better inbound marketers, viewing helpful tools as content.
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