Content Governance to Grow Thought Leadership
A healthcare consulting firm with siloed teams across divisions wanted to create a unified thought leadership program to increase its brand awareness. I created content workflows, set roles and responsibilities, and reference guides to double thought leadership in a year and increase organic traffic by 129%.
The Opportunity
ECG Management Consultants is a healthcare consulting firm with over 250 consultants whose expertise and thought leadership is essential for getting business.
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The consultants came from different divisions, and each had expectations about how they could get help from marketing to post thought leadership. Likewise, every division had different ideas about how thought leadership could, or couldn't, help their brand, the division brand, or the overarching company brand.
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Informational Interviews and Review of
Existing Materials​
I held a series of informational interviews to understand what materials existed.
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I found that:
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There were existing buyer personas.
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Thought leadership creation was tied to consultant promotions.
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Formal thought leadership, like articles in academic journals, needed to go through an executive leadership review board.
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I reviewed and audited the thought leadership on the website. I also learned about the existing thought leadership process where consultants came up with an idea, wrote about it, and expected it to be published.
The thought leadership section of the consulting firm's website.
Though there was an existing process, there was an opportunity for improvements. I started by helping consultants reimagining why they were writing thought leadership in the first place. ​
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Better Content with Users at the Center
Before the new workflow, consultants wrote blog posts or articles to mention it in their performance reviews. Rather than making thought leadership a chore, I framed it as a value-add for potential clients and a way for consultants to build their networks. By reframing why consultants write content, I put our user personas at the center to create more value and engagement for them.
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Internally, I put our consultants' goals into focus too. I showed consultants how thought leadership could help them develop business.
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The first page in the updated thought leadership guide reframed why consultants should develop thought leadership.
Marketing and Content Strategy in the Workflow
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The new blog process kept pieces of the informal workflows that previously existed, but this wouldn't be enough to create engaging content for our potential customers.
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I brought marketing and content strategy into the process and formalized the workflow with a thought leadership process guide. The guide asked writers to begin by defining the buyer persona for the post. The new workflow weaved in determining keywords, branding, and writing more precise headings, calls-to-action, and links.
The updated thought leadership workflow.
New Timeframes and Policies
Our consultants liked the existing process where they quickly wrote content independently without planning, and marketing posted it to the website. They would not be afraid to push back if they didn't have time for an outline or turnaround wasn't fast enough.
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Anticipating this response, I clarified in the guide that planning and outlines were a non-negotiable part of the new workflow. I set expectations that marketing could respond to a thought leadership submission within 1-2 business days. If the topic was time-sensitive, we provided a fast-track option to get content published faster.
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Change Management
New processes take time to adopt. I knew that mandating that consultants change the way they work would not go well. Instead, I collaborated with the Director of Marketing to send out an initial company-wide email introducing our new guide and workflow.
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While some consultants immediately started sending outlines according to the guide, others tried to circumvent the new workflow by submitting complete drafts or going through another department. I met with members of that department and asked them to send consultants to me when they tried to submit completed documents outside of the process. Whenever I got emails with completed documents, I accepted the existing work and edited it at its current stage. I also reminded folks of the process for next time. The Director of Marketing reached out to authors who repeatedly avoided steps in the workflow.
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Double the Content with a Wider Reach
Within the first year of launching the new workflow, we doubled thought leadership from 54 to 111 posts. I launched a weekly "Social Share" email that encouraged all employees to read and share the thought leadership their colleagues had written. This amplified content further, with consultants and operations staff sending LinkedIn posts to their networks.
Results
The Team
Scaling this program wouldn't have been possible without:
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The Document Production Team. They did a second pass editing documents for grammar, so I could focus on brand elements like voice and tone.
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The Marketing Director. He reviewed the guide and helped me gain buy-in across the organization.
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A design vendor. They made the guide visually appealing.
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The Consultants. They adopted the process, wrote the content, and amplified it with their networks.
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The Content
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While consultants usually wrote the content, I had the pleasure of co-writing some of the thought leadership on the site, including this post about Amazon's Haven Healthcare Venture. I also edited, branded, and oversaw the design of articles like this one about the Healthcare System of the Future.
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