How to Build an Executive Thought Leadership Strategy

Can you define your executive-led marketing strategy in one sentence?

Here’s mine: Position myself as the go-to strategist for tech executives by publishing long-form articles and appearing in reputable media. 

Executives write and speak with authority. Most understand this, but fail to reach their full publishing potential. They either don’t commit to a strategy, don't find their voice, or spread their publishing so thin that it never reaches a real audience.

Today, I want to talk about the core function of executive-led marketing: thought leadership. The core question of thought leadership is this: Are you merely participating in the industry conversation, or are you leading it? 

The business leaders winning today aren’t the ones posting the most. They’re the executives who publish the most original thinking, on the right platforms, with a message that resonates with their intended audience.

Here's the path.

What is executive thought leadership?

Executive thought leadership is a marketing strategy in which one or more members of the executive team use their personal brand to promote the company. The executive becomes the face and voice of the brand.

In the traditional sense, executive thought leadership involved authoring industry books, speaking at conferences, and appearing regularly in newspapers and magazines through PR. 

Today, executive thought leadership encompasses all those aspects and so much more:

• Newsletters

• Social media

• Podcasts

• Blogs

• YouTube videos

The best executive thought leadership strategies don’t incorporate all of these channels. They lean into a few key media that play to the executive’s personal strengths, as well as the business’s core audience. 

You meet your ideal audience where they are with a voice and value that’s relevant to them.

You can think of it like this: Thought Leadership = Thesis × Pillars × Platforms × Cadence × Accountability.

We’ll discuss those five pillars later.

Why CEOs need a thought leadership strategy

What is the real business case for executive thought leadership?

Executives have an unfair communication advantage. Everyone wants to hear from the person at the top. Journalists would rather hear from a CEO than their PR team. Job applicants look to leadership to understand culture and mission. Existing team members understand their role within the context of business leaders. Investors want a window into how executives think. 

Not to mention, executives are often the most effective salespeople in the organization. That’s how they got to the C-suite. They know how to turn influence into sales. 

The problem with an executive is that they can’t be everywhere at once. Everything I just listed represents several departments. 

The power of executive-led marketing (also called executive thought leadership) is that you scale the influence of your CEO or founder to make all of these roles—hiring, fundraising, marketing, sales, and beyond—easier.

The 5 pillars of an executive thought leadership strategy

Every executive thought leadership strategy contains a few non-negotiable elements. Let’s discuss them.

1. Define your thesis (your POV + who you’re for)

Why are you publishing to begin with? A thesis is the strategic reason your voice exists in the market.

I like to put this into an if-then thesis statement. A few examples:

• If I author a book in my industry, then clients will perceive me as the leading expert in my field.

• If I publish regularly in major media, then clients will trust my expertise because of the borrowed authority.

• If I publish a regular newsletter breaking down niche data in my industry, then I’ll become the source for trusted information and build an audience.

You define your thesis. Then decide the messaging pillars that will make that success inevitable.

2. Establish your messaging pillars (your repeatable ideas)

I recently attended a small-business strategy event. My favorite takeaway was a question from the host: 

If you pursued your goals across ten parallel universes, which consistent actions would guarantee success in all of them?

This question is powerful, no matter the angle you take with it. But let’s discuss it within the context of messaging pillars.

What are the topics, if you published about them regularly, would nearly guarantee that you move closer to your business goals?

It depends on your mission.

An executive wanting to raise funding might talk about growth rates, product roadmap, and total addressable market.

An executive looking to hire top talent might publish about their product, company culture, or what it’s like working at their organization.

Anyone wanting to improve sales should talk endlessly about the problem they solve and how they solve it. Share case studies. 

Your message pillars are the guardrails that guide the direction of everything you publish. 

3. Pick your distribution platforms (LinkedIn, op-eds, speeches, and podcast appearances)

Once you know your content pillars, you must decide where to publish. This question boils down to three factors: 

• Where does your intended audience spend time? 

• How do you want to be perceived (your personal brand)?

• What are your publishing strengths (video versus writing, etc.)

I’ve been in the publishing business all my professional life. I’ve experimented with many forms and platforms. I’ve found my strength in writing long form. That’s why most of my clients find me through op-eds, SEO, and newsletters.  

4. Build your publishing cadence and workflow

Now you have your platform, pillars, and thesis. It’s time to get serious. That means defining your publishing cadence and workflow. 

Executives are busy. I’ll talk more about this later: The easiest way to stay consistent is to outsource this responsibility to a point person on your team. Who is responsible for keeping the executive accountable for their thought leadership efforts?

If executive thought leadership is a business priority, then it should be treated like one. There should be clear KPIs, and someone responsible for hitting them. 

Speaking of…

5. Measure influence, not vanity metrics

Let’s return to the initial thesis. 

The point of the thesis is to have a clear if-then scenario. It’s testable. If you put in the effort, then there should be a clear, measurable outcome on the other side. It could improve hiring. It could increase sales. The executive could build an audience or receive invitations to speak or publish. 

Setting the right metrics keeps you serious. It’s easy for publishing to turn into a last-minute, careless activity. The best teams treat it like any other key marketing component. They spend serious effort on creation. They measure the results. 

If the results don’t match the thesis, it might be time to reconsider the strategy. Run the next thesis experiment.

How CEOs can generate content ideas consistently

This is one of my favorite topics because ideas are everywhere.

Here are some of my favorite places to find topic ideas:

• Talk to your sales team about the most common pushback they receive

• Talk to customer support about the challenges and questions existing customers face

• Survey or speak to existing customers to hear how they use your product

• Find news about your industry and give your interpretation of it

• Read social media and forums in your industry

• Keep a running notebook where you jot down recurring questions from colleagues, customers, and employees

The useful thing about publishing is that it's a muscle. At first, it can seem like ideas are rare. The more you publish, the easier it is to find good stories and topics.

Every executive needs their point person

One of the primary reasons executives fail to implement a consistent executive-led marketing strategy is ownership. Executives simply have too much on their plates. When they’re busy, publishing falls to the wayside. 

I recommend that anyone serious about executive thought leadership should find a point person on their team. It’s this person’s responsibility to make publishing easy. This means conducting research, fielding opportunities, creating publishing calendars, pitching the media, and even ghostwriting for the executive. 

As an executive-led marketing strategist, this role usually falls on me. I work directly with executives to ensure their thought leadership efforts are tied to real business goals. I help executives find their voice and topics, as well as define a strategy for publishing and building a brand. 

My clients come to me with every type of business goal. I’ve helped accelerate hiring, drive leads, raise startup investment, earn major publicity, and more.  

There are advantages to working with in-house team members (such as daily proximity to leadership). But working with a dedicated external partner is more often better:

• Executives can't scale themselves. Publishing consistently isn’t a matter of willpower. It requires a strategy, a workflow, and someone responsible for driving it forward. Accountability alone won’t get a CEO’s ideas into the market. A true thought leadership function requires an expert operator.

• Companies lack a thought leadership operator. More executives are now hiring full-time partners—Heads of CEO Content, Chiefs of Staff for Comms, executive brand strategists—because they’ve realized thought leadership isn’t “hit publish and hope.” Winning requires someone who owns the function, not a random assortment of ad-hoc posts.

• Internal teams struggle to turn executive ideas into publishable content. Even great marketing teams rarely have the time or the voice-matching ability to translate raw ideas into polished, on-brand executive content. This work has two sides: clarifying the leader’s message and pairing it with a writer who can accurately capture their unique tone and perspective.

Overcoming the fear of publishing (and the easiest way to start)

Many founders avoid publishing online. 

It’s not for lack of ideas. It’s not because they don’t believe in executive-led marketing. 

They avoid publishing online because they’re afraid of losing credibility. No senior business leader wants to look like an internet guru who spends all day posting.

If that’s what's holding you back, here’s the most stripped-down, anti-fluff approach to executive social media. 

Every week, just cover two topics:

• Talk about your customer’s pain points.

• Tell stories of how you helped customers.

Writing clearly about a problem is an act of positioning. You demonstrate that you understand your client’s situation at a fundamental level.

Telling real customer stories is proof, even when done anonymously. It's hard to argue with a case study.

Publish those two topics every week. You’ll be light-years ahead of peers who are still trying to hack algorithms and go viral.

Executive thought leadership remains one of the most undervalued marketing levers today. As AI-generated content floods every channel, audiences gravitate toward real people with real perspectives. And no voice carries more weight or more trust than the one at the top of the organization.

If you want help defining or operationalizing your executive-led marketing strategy, schedule a call with me here.