What is thought leadership? Many will point to it being influential, sharing knowledge, and creating value. Some see it as an essential block in building a brand, while others think it’s a numbers game.
It’s all that and more. It’s also this: Walking your talk.
When it became clear that the pandemic was going to bring face-to-face Scrum Master training to a halt, Giora Morein, the creative mind behind the ThinkLouder company, did what any savvy agile leader should do – he responded to change, diverted from the plan, and pivoted the business to be a highly successful online training and service company.
The journey to leading player starts with a series of important steps:
Together with Inspired Marketing’s team, ThinkLouder was already delivering value: providing relevant content to their community through their strong online social media presence. The Agile Quick Tips content had been running since 2019 and garnered thousands of views, while website traffic spiked every time a new Thinking Aloud blog was published.
Their authentic approach covered topics such as “Why should you hold your meeting in a parking lot?” and “What does popcorn have to do with scrums?” Their process tips connected to the audience through relatable situations such as: “You’ve seen the football ref pull out a red card during a game, but what would happen if you pulled one out during a meeting?”
All great questions. The blog had the answers. The audience was inspired and wanted more. When the pandemic sent most of the workforce home, going to events and meetups to speak as a thought leader was no longer possible. It was time to evolve the business and transition the company’s thought leadership to recreate the real-world engagement online with the next level of marketing and content.
"When ThinkLouder made the decision to ramp up our marketing efforts to reach a far wider audience, we needed a marketing agency to make our vision to come to life at all the touchpoints – helping us to creating a unique, standout voice on social media, crafting informative blogs, and leveraging PR to position our company as a thought leader in our field. Inspired’s team is a seamless extension of ours — we live and breathe Agile and they get the message across – consistently, powerfully, and creatively".
Giora Morein
CEO & Founder | ThinkLouder
If Agile is a team sport, marketing is all about the plays...
Agile Learning is a team sport and the founder, Giora Morein and the ThinkLouder team, viewed the company’s marketing strategy in much the same way. It needs to be engaging, thought provoking, and fun, as well as practical and seamless to implement. It’s all about how to become faster and more adaptive in today’s rapidly-changing market.
Fast forward to June 2022, when the move to TikTok started showing promising results. Giora was already well versed in the art of the quick and snappy sound bites so the format worked well. The Inspired team’s strategy was simple: to make the audience “fans” by providing educational, inspirational and entertaining content to build awareness and trust.
Thought Leader Topics: It’s what you say and where you say it
The strategy was a mix of evergreen content repurposed from YouTube and Ask G and reformatted for 9:16
Switching careers or getting into tech:
People want a career change in a lucrative industry and becoming a Scrum Master is a viable solution for people with diverse skill sets.
Scrum Master as a career move:
Since a Scrum Master is a position most people haven’t heard about before, they want to learn more, see how they can make a difference, and have more career opportunities.
Leadership and management techniques:
Most of these techniques have broader relevance and apply to anyone who leads a team or works in corporate organizations.
The founder as the brand
On TikTok, Giora Morein is the brand. People want to see a consistent face that they can trust and build a relationship with. Most people follow and subscribe to the account because of him and the value he is providing. They can trust his advice and are always seeking more from him.
PR is a key play when building thought leadership
Public relations has long been a valuable tool to build long-term brand awareness. In 2022, Inspired’s PR team began identifying key industry trends such as quiet quitting and quiet firing and placing topical articles in relevant industry publications such as Training Journal and Scrum Expert.Bringing the ThinkLouder take on current trends is all part of building thought leadership.
It’s about bringing new perspectives to the challenges people are currently facing, and casting the spotlight on how the Agile mindset and core values can help them successfully navigate the bumps and curves that lie ahead.
Did the plays pay off?
We’ll let the numbers do the talking.
Thanks to Inspired’s intensive efforts, during the past two years Giora’s profile reached a half million users, and he became a thought leader in the field.
Today, ThinkLouder’s thought leadership reaches thousands of people, worldwide, on a number of leading social media channels. It’s also sharing timely insights with trainers and Agile adopters in specialized publications.
Did the plays pay off?
Many saw the crisis posed by the pandemic as a threat. ThinkLouder saw it as an opportunity, swiftly building online certification courses and working closely with the Inspired team to devise a set of tactics that would provide even greater value and grow awareness to a wider audience.
The courses attracted diverse participants with a broad skill set, including military veterans, nurses, middle-school teachers and even accountants who were ready to embrace change and saw the accessible and engaging certification courses as the first important step into a new career path. To date, over 25k people have attended the company’s online training.
Conclusion
Ultimately, it’s about keeping pace with trends and responding quickly to market changes. Inspired’s multidisciplinary team is committed to constantly innovating, introducing new technologies, and expanding our services to offer the broadest range of capabilities currently offered in Israel today. Our global team enables us to work with clients all over the world and offer seamless service targeted to local needs.
At the heart of our business is one key principle: viewing our clients as our partners. We see ourselves as an extension of their marketing team, the behind-the-scenes go-getters who set our sights high and do everything we can to achieve our clients’ goals. After all, their success is our success.
Interested in learning how Inspired can help your company get the attention of your customers? Talk to us.