At the risk of stating the obvious, technology has changed everything. It’s changed the way we communicate, the way we buy and sell, and the way we seek information. These changes are impossible to ignore, especially for businesses. As new advances continue to disrupt the workplace and reorder the consumer experience, the most successful businesses are able to adapt and evolve.
Of course, that requires the development of a robust and comprehensive technology strategy. Whether you are running a Florida LLC or a Partnership in California, it’s important to be intentional and visionary in your deployment of technology.
What is a Technology Strategy?
Maybe a good starting point is simply to define our terms. Technology strategy sounds like a perfectly good entrepreneurial buzzword, but does it actually mean anything?
To put it most succinctly, a technology strategy is a concrete, specific, and detailed set of documents that outline a company’s technological goals: What’s your vision for technological deployment? What do you hope to accomplish with your technology, and how will you measure your success?
A good technology strategy will articulate the budget you’ve set aside for IT, the kind of staffing and training you’ll need to deploy technology most effectively, and the operating models you have in place for technology compliance, governance, and security.
Why Does Having a Technology Strategy Matter?
This isn’t documentation for documentation’s sake. On the contrary, there are some specific benefits that growing businesses can gain from having a well-designed technology strategy in place. Those benefits include:
It provides a clear and consistent approach to information-sharing, which can boost efficiency, encourage collaboration, and minimize redundancy.
It provides a holistic approach to cybersecurity and to regulatory compliance.
It supplies you with clear metrics for assessing the success of your technology program.
It defines responsibilities for decision-makers, IT leaders, and other stakeholders within the company.
It provides direction and vision for how tech resources should be allocated.
How to Develop a Technology Strategy
With all of that said, then, what are some practical ways for growing businesses to put technology strategies into place?
1) Start with your business objectives
Technology, when rightly deployed, can have a positive effect on all aspects of your business, including every department and every employee. As such, your technology strategy should never be created in a vacuum, as though IT is simply its own little island.
Instead, your development of a technology strategy should always begin with key stakeholders taking stock of core business objectives: Sales targets, long-term growth plans, marketing goals, and more. Use these objectives to provide some shape and direction for your technology plan.
2) Gather information
It’s also important to bring key decision-makers and stakeholders into the planning process. That means seeking input and gathering information from everyone who will be most directly affected by your tech roll-out (including the IT leaders and department heads who will be spearheading the roll-out).
You might even consider surveys or town hall meetings to get insight from your employees, seeking their opinions about technology goals, hurdles, or pain points.
3) Set a timeline
A good strategy should include measurable goals, as well as a basic timeline. In other words, it’s important for your technology strategy to clearly articulate what you hope to achieve, and at what points you need to be hitting key benchmarks.
Something else to consider: When will you and your IT team pause to review the technology strategy, and to make any necessary additions, revisions, or improvements? The strategy itself should document a basic timeline for audits and reviews.
4) Audit your current technology infrastructure
Speaking of audits, as you develop a technology plan, it’s critical to take stock of the assets and resources you already have in place.
By identifying these assets, you can first determine the technological gaps that must be accounted for. From there, you can develop a strategy for filling those gaps as cost-effectively as possible, and with minimal disruption to your day-to-day operation.
As you conduct this audit, however, you need to be attuned to more than just hardware. Also think about the human factor. Which technologies do your personnel actually use, and which ones are underutilized? Which existing technologies feel essential to the big picture, and which are peripheral?
5) Define your metrics
How will you know whether your technology strategy is actually working? Simply put, you’ll need to define your metrics up front, along with the processes you’ll use for measuring and reporting.
There are a number of metrics to consider when establishing a business technology strategy, including project delivery time, employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, marketing and sales ROI, and more insights from Customer Data Platforms (CDPs). As you think about which metrics are most worth measuring, go back to those core business goals you established in step 1.
6) Obtain buy-in
Your technology strategy will only be successful if the stakeholders in your business agree to its value and importance. That means getting buy-in with leaders and managers, who can then promote the strategy to the other employees.
Here, clear communication is essential. Be prepared to convey the big picture, avoiding too much technical jargon and instead focusing on the reasons why your technology plan will benefit the company in its day-to-day operations.
7) Seek help as needed
Developing a whole new technology strategy is a major undertaking, and it’s sure to have implications for your entire business operation. It’s normal to feel like you need a little guidance from an external partner, so don’t hesitate to enlist an IT vendor or technology consultant as necessary. Invest in getting your technology plan right, and it should yield major dividends over time.
Take a Strategic Approach to Business Technology
The bottom line: Every growing business benefits from taking a proactive, long-term view of their technology needs. The right strategy can undergird your productivity and align all of your other business goals. Take a careful approach to your technology strategy, and be ready to revisit it regularly as your business grows and changes.
Global data breaches have skyrocketed over the past couple of years. This also led to the rise of account takeovers and ident
As a result, businesses need to find a reliable way to confirm if someone is who they say they are. Doing this quickly and easily without any road bumps is vital to your business’s success.
The Advantages of an Online Identity Verification Solution
The process that’s designed to confirm an individual’s identity by checking using specific credentials is identity verification. It’s one of the most important steps when doing business with another party.
Online identity verification is crucial to the risk management of your company. If you still don’t have a streamlined identity verification system in place, here are the reasons why identity verification is vital for your growing business:
Why Is Identity Verification Important?
Reduces Risk For Your Business
Integrating an online identity verification on your website or mobile app will help prevent fraud. It will also protect consumers’ identity, verifying their identity before they can buy products and services online.
An automated id verification solution helps prevent data theft and reduce the risk of cyberattacks which is one of the threats many organizations face. By verifying your customers’ identities, you’re sure who they are. Having a verification will also prevent fraud and other cyber crimes.
Maintain Your Reputation
Reputation is critical to businesses of all shapes and sizes. In an era of data breaches, customers want to know their data is safe.
If you run identity verification checks, this shows your customers that you want to build trust in an increasingly exposed online world. Trust is the foundation of any relationship, especially in a digital landscape that’s grown increasingly fickle.
Failing to establish trust damages your business’ reputation and eventually hurts your revenue. On the flip side of everything, enhancing your reputation and giving your customers the assurance they’re looking for in what they need to use or continue using your service will work wonders in your overall bottom line.
Prevents Identity Theft
Identity theft is an ever-growing concern as more and more people rely on online services for more sensitive tasks like banking, data storage, and shopping.
Your revenue will also suffer when you lose your customers because of identity theft. If you have the means to protect your business from these situations, your operations can be protected, depending on how severe the damage is. That’s why you need to know what to do to reduce the risks of this situation happening.
Having robust cyber security measures in place with solid identity verification, such as facial recognition log-ins, two-stage authentication, and adequate security protection on sensitive data, is vital.
Prohibits Unauthorized Access to Data
Verifying the user’s identity will ensure only authorized individuals can access your data.
That’s why this is vital for businesses that deal with sensitive customer data like financial and personal information.
Enhances Customer Experience
In this highly digital age, customer experience is everything. People are likely to continue with your service if it’s safe and they feel satisfied. They’re also expected to spread the word about the solutions you offer.
That’s why excellent identity verification is critical to making your customers happy. By verifying users, you can ensure they’re saying who they are and not using someone else’s information. This can decrease frustration from your customers and boosts their overall satisfaction.
Compliance Adherence
It’s also crucial to comply with regulations. In different industries, some laws and regulations will require businesses to verify the identity of their users. Depending on your location, these regulations are imposed by different bodies.
Here are examples of the major AML regulatory bodies around the world:
There might be times when a country has more than one regulator that covers various aspects of fraud or may specialize in a specific industry.
Nevertheless, each country is mandated to prevent fraud and ensure that the businesses within their jurisdiction will adhere to the laws that the government sets out.
Enhances Your Customer’s Trust
Identity verification enhances the trust between a business and its customers.
Having these verification precautions in place, you can protect your company’s data and show customers that you’re taking security seriously while safeguarding their personal information. This helps you improve customer relationships and overall trust in your business.
Avoid Hefty Chargebacks
Credit card fraud takes up a large portion of the total identity fraud cases yearly. When businesses allow their customers to use credit cards for online purchases, committing fraud is easier because most of these transactions fall under the “card not present” category.
Thus, people use credit cards fraudulently that aren’t theirs to buy goods online, and once the actual owner finds out, they will cancel the transaction. A business must identify and trace the original fraudster to avoid being liable to pay back the money.
In the finance world, this is known as a chargeback. Unfortunately, this can be costly for companies that accept credit card payments. By revising the identity verification protocols for card-not-present transactions, identity verification lets you avoid costly chargebacks. Using stricter verification methods also stops “friendly fraud” in its tracks.
What’s Next For Identity Verification?
Technologies that enhance identity verification are being developed every single day. There’s also a possibility of blockchain-enabled decentralized identity for everyone on the internet in the future.
The motivation behind this is that it gives people more control over their personal information. Furthermore, businesses can take a backseat in managing identity documents and what has been a very hands-on verification process before.
Over To You
Data breaches scare many customers. To alleviate these fears and avoid incurring costly fines and any money laundering issues, as a business, you need to create a smooth identity verification process that’s not only customer friendly but also adheres to an organization’s guidelines.
In today’s digital day and age, clout is currency—the more you have it, you’ll get more people to trust and do business with you. Industry leadership is the paramount reason why thought leadership is important for businesses, new and old.
Hence, integrating it into your digital marketing strategies is critical to ensure that you acquiring and retaining customers. Through expertly executed thought leadership practices, your growth isn’t limited to search engine optimization. Ultimately, it strengthens your brand presence and asserts your business value in an authoritative, authentic, and trustworthy way.
And, in a digital landscape that has grown tired of half-baked tips, this trust becomes the fuel for accelerating and generating sustainable growth.
Benefits Of Being A Thought Leader
To paint you a better picture of why thought leadership is important, here are some benefits you can look forward to as a growing business owner:
1. Allows you to share your expertise in your field
As a thought leader, you’re given the chance to show how knowledgeable you are in your industry. Then, when you apply your knowledge into must-have solutions for your audience, it becomes a buy-in for customers and encourages them to come back to you for more.
That’s added reach for and better-quality business, all for the effort of a few expert thoughts. So be sure to find every possible opportunity to give value to your audience such as writing guest blogs, guest-speaking at events, and more.
2. It creates an avenue to present your unique way of thinking
Thought leadership is a process of sharing new ideas. Hence, growing business owners like yourself who have a new take on providing relevant solutions can surpass even larger corporations.
There’s no one company that offers the best-fit solutions for each customer. And if you’re coming into the playing field offering something different, then the best way to ring it in is through thought leadership.
People are always looking for new solutions to old problems in their niche. When you show that you can deliver these, you become authoritative, carving a new path that’s easily recognizable in your industry.
3. Puts a spotlight on your business and unique brand value
By creating thought leadership content, you brand your business as an authority, telling audiences “My brand is exactly what you need.”
As a result, more people will start valuing your work and, eventually, what your business is selling. If you continue doing so, you’ll soon find yourself not just the owner of a growing business, but a successful and influential one, too.
4. Allows you to foster connections with industry peers
Collaboration is a key facet of marketing that opens doors for all constituents. For thought leadership, in particular, it is necessary to build relationships with industry peers.
Because the digital public relations process requires reaching out and, in turn, being open to outreach efforts you are able to build and nurture connections in your field. This fosters trust through the act of creating beneficial guest content for one another and, incidentally, each other’s audiences.
This collaborative process in thought leadership affords you opportunities to:
publish on various platforms
access a wider, newer audience
establish your brand as a pillar in the industry
But collaboration doesn’t just end in the creation of content. Once your peers recognize the value of your business and perspectives, it can potentially open the floodgates for higher-value and meaningful partnerships.
How To Build A Successful Thought Leadership Strategy
Now that you know the benefits of being a thought leader, these steps will help you become one today:
1. Set clear and realistic goals
Success is attained through small, consistent steps every day – not one giant leap forward. That’s why you have to create goals that impact your business, but are still doable with the available resources at hand.
In the case of thought leadership, you can pin down the following goals as a measure of success:
Reach. Is the amount of people you are able to talk to through your content – on websites, or others. Publishing these outside of your website and on the websites of peers and/or media helps you boost this metric not just in quantity but in quality, as well.
Traffic. Is fundamental to generating conversions and improving search rankings. Unlike reach, traffic is closer to an engagement metric as audiences click and find their way to your website.
Improving this through thought leadership is a trust signal to search engines and gives you more opportunities to capture leads.
Domain authority. Is a metric that signals the strength and authoritativeness of your websites. Measure through Moz’s MozBar, it’s a rough estimate of how trustworthy your website is.
This metric improves the more you contribute guest blogs to high-authority websites which, in turn, helps you rank better on search engines.
Engagement. Engagement tracking means you’re looking for people interacting with your content. If your audience continuously reacts, comments, or shares your content, then it means you delivered something useful for them.
Conversion. Finally, conversions mean if your audience does exactly what you want them to do.
Conversions could mean a lot of things such as buying your product or service or downloading your e-book. Whatever the case, conversions show that all your efforts have convinced your audience to take a chance on your brand.
With these metrics tracked, you can better understand how well (or not) your thought leadership efforts are faring from different angles – something impossible to do when only viewing success as one whole picture.
2. Establish a powerful brand message
With your goals pinned down, it’s time to communicate and achieve them. To create a unique brand voice for your content, focus on creating content that speaks directly to the target audience’s needs and aspirations.
By doing so, you’ll learn how to ensure every piece of content you publish makes your audience feel heard. After all, your main goal is to give them solutions that can help them with their ongoing struggles.
Once you do this, watch as ordinary visitors transform into life-long fans of your content and brand.
3. Conduct thorough keyword research
Finding the keywords and publications your target audiences use allows you to make your business’ presence be known – increasing your chances of finding more avid supporters.
To conduct keyword research, be sure to follow these steps:
List down keywords related to your brand and business.
Identify matching terms and related keywords you want to write content about.
Establish which websites are linking to content produced around these keywords.
Determine which websites are linking to content produced around these keywords.
Develop topics based on the target website you want to pitch to, and the content gap identified for their audiences.
Now that you know how to do keyword research, you’re now ready to pitch your content.
4. Ready your pitches
Prepare suggested outlines and titles for the content you want to offer your targeted website publishers. By doing so, you’re effectively selling your content to the publisher, increasing the content’s chance of getting posted on the website.
Make sure your content is also valuable to your host publisher by following this step-by-step process:
Offer something unique that the publisher’s many writers haven’t addressed in their content yet.
Provide the editor with a list of topics you want to write about to make their selection process easier.
Be professional whenever you’re communicating to the publisher by being brief with your emails. However, ensure that these emails have all the essential details about your pitch.
Have a clear CTA at the end of your message that encourages the editor to respond to your pitches.
Email as many publishers as you can to increase your chances of getting a guest content spot – this is still a numbers game, after all.
By following these steps, you can create guest content that resonates that would surely catch the publisher’s eye.
5. Devise an outreach strategy
Good thought leaders devise outreach strategies that know how to effectively catch the attention of publishers and experts.
Here’s how you do it:
Ready an outreach list of the websites you want to get featured on.
Reach out as an authority by expressing interest to contribute to the website as a leader in your organization.
Develop a decision-making process for which pitches to pursue or drop (see the image below).
6. Create the content
To be a true thought leader, you must master various content creation skills like writing, doing research, public speaking, and more. You’ll develop these skills when you follow this flowchart:
When you consistently follow this flowchart, you’re slowly building your skillset towards that of an effective thought leader – so keep on practicing!
7. Choose your platforms
The great thing about the internet is that there are endless possibilities to share your brand’s message. Whether it’s a blog through your own site, TikTok or YouTube videos, or through tweets, your message can reach so many people today.
To help you get the best results, here are some ideas you could use for different social media platforms:
Twitter. A great way to be a thought leader on this platform is by leveraging Twitter Spaces or creating concise threads detailing a specific topic. These efforts would result in more eyes on your Twitter page since you’re giving so much content.
YouTube/video-capable social media platforms. For YouTube or any other platforms with video, such as Facebook, you may opt to create long or short-form webinars. This works because these platforms’ users learn while watching.
Instagram. Instagram, on the other hand, encourages you to create must-know industry infographics so that your target audience are always on the loop on the latest trends.
TikTok. A great way to get eyes on TikTok as a thought leader is by getting the highlights from your best-performing videos and uploading them on the platform. Doing so allows you to whet TikTok user’s appetite for your content as you give them something short and sweet.
8. Measure and monitor your content performance
With your strong brand message now shared throughout different online platforms, it’s time to see if any of your plans worked.
Here are some must-have tools to do this:
Referral traffic. Using Google Analytics, you can view how effective your guest blogs are at acquiring audiences by looking at referral traffic. High referral traffic from sites you knowingly submitted articles is a good sign that your content has resonated with your collaborator’s audience.
Backlinks. This specific metric can be viewed through Ahrefs’ Backlink Audit feature. It allows you to perform an analysis of the links that lead back to your website. Don’t just look at the number of links you acquire, but look at the quality, too.
Low-quality links (usually under 30 in domain rating) can pull down your domain authority and website health versus higher quality ones (domain rating of 30 and above).
Monitoring these metrics accordingly will help you better understand what works and what doesn’t for your thought leadership efforts.
Thought Leadership in Action
Now that you know the facts, it’s time you knew what effective thought leadership looked like in action:
Propelrr. We at Propelrr dabble in writing guest blogs to help us become an authoritative digital marketing company. In this article, we talk about how impactful doing survey experiments to achieve a brand’s bottom line.
Additionally, we’ve done guest blogging for big media like Rappler, did guesting in podcasts like ‘A Better Normal’ by PumaPodcast, and other blog publications of related businesses. These efforts resulted in higher referral traffic to our site.
Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty is a life coach who shares many of his teachings through his YouTube channel, podcast, live guest speaking, and several books he authored.
As a result, his YouTube channel has 4.67 million subscribers, his podcast, On Purpose, has 937,000 listeners, and his book, Think Like a Monk, is a constant bestseller.
Deloitte. Professional services firm, Deloitte, shares its tech expertise and more on a free podcast called On Cloud.
Because of the podcast’s accessibility, it’s one of the most highly rated tech podcasts out there, receiving a 4.7 out of 5 reviews on Apple Podcasts, and currently, has a 216-episode count.
Key Takeaways
To be a true thought leader, you must develop a voice that can never be drowned by others in today’s saturated digital landscape. With it, you’d become an authoritative presence among thousands in your industry.
To do so, remember the lessons:
Be unique. Read, watch, or listen to as much business-related content as possible so you can offer unique insights to your audience.
Try different approaches. Take part in different activities like podcasting and guest blogging to build authority and reputation among multiple channels.
Keep on improving yourself. Improve your knowledge and skills to give your audience relevant solutions to their current problems.
Finding the will to overcome the many challenges of being a thought leader is no easy feat. When you do, however, you’d be rewarded with the attention of your growing audience base.
