Thanks for the comment. You raise some great issues. The need for internal expertise shakes out two ways. 1. Do you need to have the internal expertise in marketing to create and distribute thought leadership? It certainly helps, but really all internal marketers need to be able to do is to recognize real thought leadership when they see it and to drive their external providers to do it well. 2. Do you need internal subject matter experts to create the ideas behind the thought leadership? Again, it helps, but here too, marketers can get help from the outside. Examples would include working with analysts, journalists, academics, and other influencers that cover the industry or the processes affected by your product or service. You could hire a research firm to do custom research about the industry or processes. The key is to focus on areas that would have direct benefit for customers.
That brings me to your second issue, which is whether any company can do thought leadership. I think they can. If you think about the explosion of trade magazines in industries that most of us would consider devoid of creativity–coin-operated laundromats, for example–in the 1960s through the 1980s, you realize that within most industries, there is a constant demand for information about how to improve processes, save money, and grow. So in your stationery buying example, I could see a paper company coming up with ways that office managers could reduce the costs of storing and distributing stationery, ways to recycle it with less effort, etc.

We (I work for a marcomms agency) have a number of clients who want to achieve thought leadership through social media. This is a task we can handle very competently, because we have not only social media technical knowledge in the agency, but we also have writers who are well-versed in the client’s business areas. This means we are well-placed to address the time-paucity issue Will raises above. If we manage the process carefully, the agency writer and the in-house client experts should be able to work together. The end result is a lot of excellent, expert content produced without taking up too much time.

A more tricky issue is whether thought leadership is possible when that internal expertise is not available – or indeed when the client brand sells a simple product, with no real issues to talk about bar the product itself. For example, how much thought leadership can a paper supplier provide to office managers buying stationery?

Would you see this as a lost cause – as far as thought leadership is concerned – or do you believe there is always a way?

For example, one of the vehicles we use is a blog and we have five internal contributors (all experts in their field) that offered to write 1-2 posts a month.

For the first few months, no problem. However, a year down the line and it’s like getting blood from a stone. At the end of the day, it eats away at time they could be spending doing other tasks and so gets shoved to the bottom of their ‘to do’ list.

Any suggestions on how to keep thought leaders engaged and enthused?