Earlier this week I came across a piece on MediaPost that discussed ‘Thought Leadership’ as being the next phase of PR. While the pieces in the article are spot on, from my experiences and reading, this has been going on for some time now. Many organizations want to be the ‘thought leader’ in their respective market or the one people come to looking for the Holy Grail. But in reality, not many people take the time to truly do what it takes to become a thought leader.

I randomly polled some folks here at PAN Communications on the following question: Who do you think is a thought leader in the following markets/industries:

Money/investing/economy

Politics

Personal technology

Football

The answers were rather surprising (as they were right in line with what I had originally thought people would say). Most folks associated thought leaders with media members such as Brian Williams, Jim Cramer, Maria Bartiromo, John Clayton and Walt Mossberg. What is the one thing that all of these folks have in common? They all have a venue for which they can relay information and an audience that is waiting to hear from them.

Now how does this do anything for the group reading this? Well, for who we’re working with, specifically within B2B organizations, you need to take an approach that is extremely similar to these journalists – get a forum for which you can get your message out and where you can provide your commentary on a regular basis. This takes time, I know. But in order to gain your audiences trust and further your reach, you need to take the time to engage with those interested in the service or product you’re providing.

Once you have made it a goal to start this – what’s next? Work with your marketing and public relations agency to formulate content based on what others are saying (as well as your own of course) to your target audience(s). In order to make this worth your time and effort, it needs to be hitting the right constituents so that you’re not wasting your time putting information out to a group that has no clue what your talking about. Take your time, build your followers and those that you follow, alert your audience that you welcome feedback and commentary and that you will be sharing your open and honest thoughts and feedback to better your organization and your customers experience.

Once you have taken these early steps, you’ll find that your now being looked at in a different light – heck maybe even like a thought leader….