Successful Thought Leadership Examples

Thought leadership can be an excellent way to reinforce your brand and enhance your content marketing strategy, allowing you to leverage your expertise and build trust with your audience.

A big misconception is that thought leadership means content. Although content can be a big component, thought leadership is everything from being “in the know”, being active on social media, consistently furthering your knowledge and sharing with others, and creating and sharing content with your audience.

Thought Leadership Examples

The beauty of thought leadership is that truly anyone can be a thought leader in their field of expertise. Successful thought leaders have naturally strong opinions, a good amount of experience, knowledge, and the desire to share it all with others. If you feel passionate about your specific area of expertise, share it with the world! We can’t all be experts on everything, that is why thought leadership is so powerful.

Here are some examples of thought leaders, both individuals and companies/organizations, and how they found success:

1. Daniel Pink 

Daniel Pink is a thought leader who discusses work, life, and human behavior. Pink has spent his career focusing on social and behavioral science and he uses his platform to share helpful life hacks in quick videos clips. He also hosts an informational podcast covering topics like such as self-talk and job satisfaction. By using his knowledge to educate the masses, he is considered a true thought leader in his space.

2. Verne Harnish

Verne Harnish is another great example of someone who utilizes thought leadership marketing. Harnish is most commonly known as “Growth Guy” and over the past three decades, he has helped countless companies scale up. He has channeled his thought leadership into several bestselling books (Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up). His expertise and how he shares it with his audience is what makes Harnish a true thought leader.

3. Optimizely

Optimizely is an example of a company that would be considered a thought leader in their space. Optimizely built their Insights platform with the main goal of educating their customer to “Know More.” and “Do More.” Optimizely has a consistently engaged community and they strive to help every individual in their community improve.

4. The Center for Sales Strategy and LeadG2

Both CSS and LeadG2 have their very own YouTube live casts — Sell Smart. Sell Faster. and Improving Sales Performance. Both live casts were created to help customers learn and grow by bringing different guests on weekly and interviewing them. Live casts are a great example of thought leadership.

There are countless benefits of thought leadership. The most important part of becoming a thought leader is providing content, opinions, advice, and information on important topics for others to consume. The first step is starting. Start to think about what you are passionate about and teach others how they can achieve success in that area.

If you are wanting to learn more about the different types of thought leadership, check out this article.