So far in this series, we have established that thought leadership articles are a great way to stand out in the competition and reach out to audiences but, if done right, these articles can also be excellent for brand building.

In fact, a 2020 survey conducted by Edelman and LinkedIn found that nearly half of B2B decision-makers believe thought leadership influences their purchase decisions. However, it is important to remember that there is a fine line between brand building and hard selling. 

Here’s how you can leverage the e27 Contributor Programme for free to use well-written thought leadership articles for brand building without sounding like a salesman on the door from the 90s.

Pick stories that will help establish and strengthen your brand

Thought leadership allows you to utilise your trailblazing ideas to position your brand as an authority but knowing what stories can help establish and strengthen your brand value is important.

Luckily, there is no dearth of choices for writing thought leadership articles for the e27 Contributor Programme.

You can write about almost anything that is of importance to your brand: your founding journey, the challenges you faced, how you overcame those challenges, your main inspirations, a new product launch and the story behind its inception and so on.  

You can also share lessons that you may have learnt in your entrepreneurial or investment career so far, team management techniques, recruitment tips, fundraising dos and don’ts, productivity hacks and even your opinions on any ongoing current trends in the Southeast Asian startup ecosystem.

By giving your audience an insight into how your brand has evolved in line with a specific topic through thought leadership, you add a layer of credibility, which is often hard to achieve any other way.

Also Read: How to become a thought leader with the e27 Contributor Programme

Thus, any story that establishes and reinforces the ethos of your company while engaging and informing readers is not only a great thought leadership piece but also an excellent way for brand building. 

Hard selling will not help your brand

Another key thing to remember when approaching thought leadership with the intent of brand building is to stray away from hard selling. Thought leadership articles are about value-add (the reader and the writer) on both sides and not about aggressive selling.

It is very important to be careful with how you present your story. For example,  if you are talking about a product, focus on aspects like what went behind the ideation and development of the product or what are some of the key challenges that it helps address; you can also share some use cases to show how the said product has helped a client address the gaps and succeed; instead of simply listing the product features. 

Remember, thought leadership articles help you establish yourself as a subject matter expert and people continue to read your contributions 

• to learn from your experience
• to understand your brand and product better
• to solve their problems 

If you try to make your readers clients before you have had a chance to develop a relationship with them in which they have come to trust you and consider you an expert in your industry, the chances of that relationship lasting are way too slim.

Building credibility is critical to the long term success of your business, and you can easily do that through well-written thought leadership articles that do not focus on selling but on connecting.

Use the company profile page for branding

The e27 Contributor Programme has a range of tools and features that help authors establish themselves as industry thought leaders. One such feature is the company profile page and author profile page.

These are effective branding tools that essentially provide you with the scope and space to tell the audience more about your company.

You can give audiences an insight into your interests and experiences by utilising the author profile page, they can see how active you publish plus your key areas of interest; and with the company page, you can tell them what your tech startup or business is about, what solutions do you offer to what industries, investment stages and more.

The best part, once you create a company page on e27, it will always appear alongside your contributed article thus providing additional visibility for your brand.

Also Read: Write, connect, grow: What motivates us to run the e27 Contributor Programme

Here’s some inspiration to get you started

From a great hire to a public mistake and an unexpected IPO to a regional expansion, use the contributor programme to share your growth story without bragging. The key rule to keep in mind is ‘show, don’t tell’. Show the ready how you did it, why you did it, what you learned, etc. instead of simply saying you expanded to a new market.

For example, in this thought leadership article on FastCompany, Stu Sjouwerman illustrates his personal experience of hiring an infamous hacker and how that went for his company.

This is a thought-provoking, interesting piece for the audience that basically discusses why hiring a hacker might be a good idea for a business but also touches on second chances and redemption. 

Another excellent example of thought leadership is this e27 article by Rajesh Jain where he discusses his founding journey while sharing his failures and explaining how they’ve been an integral part of where he is today.

This is an engaging article that teaches audiences about the struggles of a founder and his journey as a leader. These personal insights allow readers to see beyond the surface. It humanises the brand thus fostering a deep relationship of the readers with the company.

If you are a startup founder, VC, journalist, entrepreneur, industry expert, government official, student and/or anyone with a relevant story looking to stand out and build a brand through thought leadership articles, get started on your first draft and submit it here.

Through the e27 Contributor Programme, you get a chance to be featured on e27.co and noticed by more than two million readers and 50k+ newsletter subscribers in the region. So, get started today!

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

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