Thought Leadership is a term thrown around enough times by enough people that it tends to lose face value. So it is great when we have some concrete examples of thought leadership.
Steve Rubel gives us the first example over at Micropersuasion. Steve has gone well beyond the blog to evangelize his interests, taking his thoughts to the dais and industry influencers, publishing in other formats and garnering some highly visible national coverage in print and radio.
The end result is thought leadership in action as veteran bloggers watched Steve build a following in a few months time. I tip my hat to his efforts. It is a perfect example of the building effects of promotion. If you charted the evolution of Micropersuasion, I’m sure that each new opportunity was created in part by the last. Not to mention plain old sweat equity.
The next example comes from Elizabeth Albrycht. Elizabeth stepped up during Global PR Blog Week offering tech support and organizational guidance to a globally dispersed group. She is now turning the virtual pow wow into a real world conference: New Communications Forum 2005. While PRSA’s technology section offered a teleseminar on blogging recently, it is great to see someone take action in response to the need for communications-focused programming around blogs.
Elizabeth also gets snaps for making the event global. The end result for Elizabeth is the opportunity to create a unique, global perspective of best practices in this emerging field.
Now while some may consider this post navel-gazing, I am willing to bet those same people do not have any examples of their own to point to. Drop me a line if I am mistaken.
Kevin Dugan is the author of the popular Strategic Public Relations blog. Kevin is Director of Marketing Communications for FRCH Design Worldwide.
Visit Kevin’s blog: Strategic Public Relations.
