Hi there – had some really interesting responses to Tuesday's email where I encouraged everyone to set the bar high in terms of thought leadership.

I got lots of “you're so right” responses form many people who clearly share my dislike of mediocre content.

But I also got some very sensible warnings too: because the downside of setting the bar high for thought leadership is that it can overwhelm you and become a barrier to creating great content rather than a help.

Here's the thing: I was making a point about aiming to create something insightful and super valuable as a counterpoint to the flood of mediocre articles, blog posts and emails we typically have to put up with.

But I'm not saying that 100% of what you produce has to be earth-shattering, nobel prize-winning material.

Firstly, not everyone needs to be a thought leader. Far from it. Most service providers are good, solid, results-getters rather than absolute leaders in their field.

If that's you, then the content marketing you do is more to establish yourself as a solid deliverer than an innovative thinker. I'd still try to put your own spin and stories on things rather than using the same simple tips as everyone else; but you don't need new, ground breaking content. 

Secondly, you can be a leader in a small market. I use big names like Michael Porter, Tom Peters and Seth Godin because many people will know them. But in a smaller field you don't have to pitch quite so high.

And because different ideas and strategies get adopted by different sectors, countries and types of people at different rates, sometimes thought leadership for your market is more about how some of the new techniques from other sectors can be applied rather than completely original thinking.

Finally, you don't have to produce completely new, original, ground-breaking material all the time.

If you read articles or books or watch videos from leading experts you'll see that 80% of what they say is basic common sense. It's the 20% that sets them apart.

If you really do want to be seen as a leading thinker in your field then you need one or two concepts or ideas or ways of looking at the world you can call your own. Things that, in your field, are recognisable as being yours.

But that doesn't mean you have to sit for hours agonising over every article you write or video you make.

Sometimes you can just expand or give examples of your “big ideas”.

Other times you can talk about how to implement them. Or how they work in different situations.

But most of the time you'll just be writing good, useful information that your potential clients will find helpful.

Make sure it's not the boring mediocre stuff that's on a million websites already. Put your own spin on it. Give examples from your experience. Tie it to something happening in the news. Enliven it somehow.

But don't get bogged down aiming for a nobel prize every time :)