Every 4 weeks, I publish deep dives into B2B thought leaders, breaking down the content strategy they used to go from unknown consultant to top tier personality.
A sports pundit watches the same thing we do but sees what we do not.
They're an expert. They played the game.
But not every expert (player) makes a good pundit.
Because good pundits not only know how to play the game – They see what's not obvious and know how to break it down for others who do not (at the professional level).
Each Saturday in the UK, The BBC broadcasts Match of The Day with the weekend’s Premier League highlights. It goes out live.
The show has two pundits, both former professional football players, arriving at the studio late in the morning.
They sit in a room with a row of TVs on the wall. There’s one lunchtime game that both pundits watch together and make their own analysis. At 3 pm, six matches kick off. The pundits each watch one match separately. Then there’s a tea-time kick off, which, again, both pundits watch.
So, three games each. The full 90 minutes.
Then, they each have a few hours before broadcast to revisit certain sections of the games, plan their analysis, work out what they’ll say, and speak with the production team to coordinate the 6-minute edit of the match (the highlights will be).
Notice: The expert studies the raw data (the match). They go to the source.
And they do that regularly, maybe weekly. They don’t start out as great pundits but become them because they start noticing patterns that aren’t immediately obvious. The act of repeatedly observing, thinking, and writing changes the way they see the game.
They don’t draw their opinions from the highlights. They make the highlights.
That’s thought leader content.
Books, articles, and LinkedIn posts from others in your field may be interesting. Maybe it helps to know what your peers are up to.
But those are highlights already curated and cut. You’re not seeing the raw footage. You’re seeing what someone else showed you, which means you’ll likely come to the same conclusions they did.
You’ll never find interesting, unique insights by reading someone else's analysis.
Instead, study the market at play.
Pick your favoured camera angles, make your own cuts, formulate your own unfiltered analysis, and find your own patterns.
Want to become a thought leader?
Every 4 weeks, I publish deep dives into B2B thought leaders, breaking down the content strategy they used to go from unknown consultant to top tier personality.
