Social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and others, offer a fast, convenient, and cost-effective way to connect with audiences around the world. This provides marketers with a ready-made, easily accessible channel to establish their thought leadership on social media and beyond. Harnessing the power of thought leadership marketing also builds credibility and authority in your niche.
The challenge, though, is that these channels are crowded. Marketers need to understand how to stand out in a crowded space to build their thought leadership with key audiences.
A number of companies are excelling at using video to build thought leadership, like the standout example SimilarWeb. The web analytics services firm uses video effectively across a wide array of channels to connect with businesses of all sizes across a myriad of industries. Here we look at how to demonstrate thought leadership through video.
Video to the rescue
Already well established as a thought leader through the use of infographics and other rich data visualizations, SimilarWeb’s marketing team knew they had to step up their game. They recognized the even broader potential that video could have for sharing their messages in a compelling and visual way.
Video, and Wibbitz’ platform specifically, proved to be a perfect solution for the SimilarWeb marketing team, led by Ethan Chernofsky, for a number of reasons:
- They were able to maintain creative control.
- They were able to produce high-quality content cost-effectively.
- They could produce and share content quickly. As Chernofsky says: “We can identify a story in our data and turn it into a video in a few hours.”
- They could share their video content across multiple platforms. Chernofsky says: “Wibbitz is channel-agnostic.”
- They could tell compelling stories through visual images, sound, and motion, which is really at the heart of the power that video can offer.
SimilarWeb’s use of video has paid dividends in terms of boosted viewership.
Achieving real results
SimilarWeb boosted its average monthly video views on LinkedIn by an impressive 10k+ and has seen a 200%+ increase in monthly videos published across all platforms. Video views overall have grown quarterly by more than 10 times.
One of the things driving these results is the shareability of video. As Chernofsky says: “People are really excited to see the content we’re able to produce on such a high level.” That, he says, has resulted in sharing by customers and inquiries from other marketers wanting to learn more about how they’re using video to engage.
Check out this video SimilarWeb’s team created with Wibbitz to share travel industry predictions from some of the top leaders in the field, including TripAdvisor and Amazon. By providing industry forecasts from these travel titans, SimilarWeb positions themselves among trusted names and reaffirms themselves as a reliable source for insights on market trends. Their call-to-action brings home their message — companies can be bolder and make better predictions by using SimilarWeb’s tools.
Here’s a look at some other thought leadership examples of companies that have leveraged video (and the Wibbitz platform) to bring their stories, and their expertise, to life.
S&P Global
S&P Global provides credit ratings, benchmarks and analytics in the global capital and commodity markets. They successfully used video to raise awareness of the effects that COVID-19 has had on increasing vulnerability for borrowers.
Dr. Oz
Dr. Oz is well established as a thought leader in the health and wellness space. He effectively uses video to visually promote both physical fitness and healthy eating in an upbeat way that captures and keeps his viewers’ attention.
Tony Robbins
Tony Robbins has been sharing valued information with his followers for a number of years. It’s clear he recognizes the power of video to help him reach a broader audience instead of relying exclusively on his live presentations. Video works to showcase his thought leadership, motivational speaking skills and high energy.
Hanover Insurance Group
One critical best practice for building thought leadership is to focus on providing valuable information and not on blatantly promoting your goods and services. That’s exactly what Hanover Insurance Group does. Here they’ve used video to share information about the top insurance claims submitted by homeowners, and offer advice to others on how to prevent these claims.
Shearman & Sterling
Shearman & Sterling knows what’s important to its multinational clients. The firm uses video to help convey that knowledge around issues of critical importance across the industries it serves—antitrust is one key example. They use video to share information on two key developments shaping worldwide antitrust activities.
In a crowded online environment, companies know that they need to be creative and strategic in standing out and building thought leadership. Video offers an accessible, cost effective and visually impactful way to do just that.
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