What makes a company worth listening to? Alter Agents Chief Strategy Officer Devora Rogers has spent a lot of time thinking about that question, in part because thought leadership has played a role in how Alter Agents has built its own business.

In a new article for MarketingProfs, Devora shares what she has learned about using research and expertise to develop ideas people will actually want to read, hear about and discuss. Her advice covers choosing topics, conducting original research, finding the story in the data and getting that work in front of people.

She also makes the case for giving the research away.

Research gives you something of your own to talk about

Plenty of companies publish opinions about the issues affecting their industries. Original research adds information to the conversation that wasn’t there before.

Devora recommends starting with questions clients and prospective clients are already asking. Conversations with customers, sales teams and advisory boards can point to subjects people are trying to figure out, including areas where existing information falls short.

Research can then put some evidence behind those conversations. The findings might confirm what people have been seeing, challenge an assumption or uncover a behavior that deserves a closer look. From there, the job is to figure out which parts of the research are worth spending more time on and how they connect with the decisions people are making.

What we’ve done with our Consumer Sentiment Study

Devora uses our Consumer Sentiment Study as an example in the article. We’ve been conducting the study for several years, tracking Americans’ attitudes about the economy along with changes in shopping and consumer behavior.

Our latest wave explores what we’ve called the “trust recession,” including how consumers decide which sources and institutions to believe and how that uncertainty shows up in their shopping behavior.

We’ve done a lot with the research over the years. Findings have appeared in reports and white papers, media coverage and contributed articles. We’ve presented the data in webinars, used it in client presentations and brought individual findings into social and email content. Sometimes a subset of the data has turned into its own piece of work because there was more to examine.

The fact that the study continues also means older findings can take on new relevance. We can go back to questions we asked years ago and see whether people are answering them differently now. That recently happened with our research into how easy shopping feels. The question had produced fairly consistent results for years, but the latest wave showed a change that led us to look more closely at what may be making shopping feel like more work.

There will be another wave, too, which gives us another chance to see what has moved and what hasn’t.

Don’t save all the good stuff for the sales deck

Devora’s article also gets into a decision companies sometimes struggle with: how much research should you make public?

Her recommendation is to share it. Alter Agents has made reports and findings available without requiring people to become clients first, while still using the research in private presentations and client conversations. A single dataset can support both.

There’s a practical benefit to publishing it widely. A journalist may see a finding that fits a story. A conference organizer may see the basis for a session. A client may come across a result that raises a question about their own customers. Someone who has never heard of your company may simply find the research useful and remember who produced it.

Devora gets into the full approach, including how to choose a topic, budget for research, develop the story around the findings and keep using the work after the initial release.

Read her full article, “From Insights to Impact: Using Thought Leadership to Lead,” on MarketingProfs.