Thought Leadership Marketing

Some of my clients and results:

+ Community Director at Content Hacker: 
Planned and launched a paid community in Circle.so for marketers and small business owners.

+ Product Marketing and Success at Content at Scale
Created product videos, knowledge base articles, tutorials, and conducted live product trainings.

+ Head of Content at RevGenius
Relaunched RevGenius Magazine as a thought leadership publication for revenue professionals and acted as the Managing Editor, publishing 17 articles. Wrote original thought leadership articles about community-led growth.

+ Thought leadership writer at Clari

+ Ghostwriter at Category Pirates

+ Content strategy consultant at Pandago


Services:

- Book Coaching & Ghostwriting 
- Thought Leadership Content 
- Research Reports 
- Not Boring SEO

Marketing Strategy Consultant

Okanagan College

Teach digital marketing, search marketing, and marketing research at the Okanagan School of Business.

Professor

Category Thinkers

Category Thinkers is the free community that brings category designers together. Whether you're already an expert or just "category curious," you're welcome to join the hundreds of others who strive to be radically different. Ambassadors are an invite-only group who are dedicated to growing and fostering the community.

Ambassador

StackAdapt

Editorial Content Manager, B2B

Dooly

- Designed and launched three lead generation campaigns with online quizzes (scorecards), bringing in more than 1,000 leads.
- Published original research reports and other data-driven assets.
- Wrote/Edited and optimized dozens of blog articles, including a library of Sales Templates.
- Launched a Thought Leadership motion, creating original content with the CEO and the VP of Revenue. 
- Launched The Sidekick, Dooly’s newsletter.


- Planned and executed Thought Leadership strategies and content with internal and external SMEs.
- Managed and built partnerships with sales organizations and influencers (Pavilion, JB Sales, Sales Assembly, Kevin Dorsey, 30 Minutes to President's Club)
- Wireframed and wrote landing page copy.
- Assigned articles to freelancers and edited and published final pieces.
- Wrote a bi-weekly email newsletter.
- Created video assets for social media.
- Supported the team with the promotion and planning of events, email campaigns, and website updates.

Community & Content Marketing Manager

Rhema e-School

Rhema e-School is an online alternative education program focused on technology, entrepreneurship, the arts and mindfulness. We develop the abilities of each student while they enjoy learning about themselves and the world.

At the launch of this startup, I was in charge of overseeing all the marketing activities and our go to market strategy.

- Website creation
- Social Media marketing campaigns
- Facebook Ads and A/B testing
- Demand generation campaigns
- Content creation: blogs, videos, info graphics, landing pages.
- Product Marketing
- Email marketing

Co-Founder & Advisor

Apollo

+ Created and executed SEO and Content strategies to increase traffic and conversions.
+ Developed and oversaw the Social Media Strategy - Increased LinkedIn followers from 6k to 14k+
+ Launched the Apollo blog and published 30+ articles
+ Led a team of one freelance writer and one social media manager

Content Marketing Manager

Author

Don’t just be better than the competition. Be the only one.

Becoming the go-to expert in your field is not easy, but quite possible — if you follow the right path. This book decodes the secrets that successful entrepreneurs have used to become thought leaders and make a lasting impact in their industries.

The Solo Thought Leader will show you how to:

- Charge higher prices as the expert in your niche
- Innovate and rise above the competition
- Sell more by building a community of loyal fans
- Set industry trends as the voice people listen to in social media
- Leave a legacy with visibility, authority, and credibility
- Create a business that runs by itself and frees you to do what you love

Building upon his experience as a business consultant and B2B marketer, and numerous interviews with business practitioners, Diego Pineda lays out the strategies and tactics you need to climb to the top of your domain.

Author: The Solo Thought Leader

Vengreso | Prospect Better. Sell More.

+ Increased website traffic 5x in 7 months
+ Positioned top 50 keywords on page #1 of Google
+ Developed email campaigns with CTR of 30%
+ Increased SQLs by 250%

In this role I oversaw the Digital Marketing and Content Marketing departments (including graphic and video design), providing SEO and content strategy, and helping in its implementation. I also wrote long-form content for vengreso.com.

Director of Digital and Content Marketing

As the Content Marketing Manager at Vengreso, I was at the helm of driving the strategy to generate qualified leads for our sales team.  This strategy included:

+ Digital Marketing (SEO, SEM)
+ Content Plan (blogs, videos, podcasts, publications, webinars)
+ PPC and retargeting strategy
+ Social Media Marketing Strategy
+ Lead Nurturing and Email Campaigns

Leadership: Managed the marketing team as the Acting Director of Marketing for 45 days. Also acted as hiring manager in the recruitment process of members for the marketing team in conjunction with the HR department and the CEO.

Tools used: MarketMuse, SEM Rush, Google Analytics, Keyword Finder, Yoast SEO.

As the Senior Content Writer, I created original blog content, guides, e-books, case studies, press releases, and other long-form content. I also supported the social media marketing strategy, writing social posts for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and editing videos and optimizing them for YouTube. Aditionally, I edited and prepared audio files and show notes for two podcasts: The Modern Sales Podcast and the Modern Marketing Engine podcast.

ABOUT VENGRESO

Vengreso is the first company to deliver a full suite of digital sales training and consulting services helping B2B sales teams create more conversations with qualified buyers through three solutions:

1.	Content for Sales Enablement
2.	LinkedIn Profile Makeovers 
3.	Digital Sales Training and Coaching

Senior Content Writer

Video editing projects for various clients, including Growth Genie, FrontSpin and BeMo Academic Consulting.

Final Cut Pro | Adobe Creative Suite

Freelance Video Editor

WRITER: I am the author of four novels, 10 non-fiction books, and hundreds of articles and blogs as a science writer, a business writer, and a sales and marketing writer.

PUBLISHER: In 2007, I founded a publishing company with a fiction and a non-fiction imprint, selling thousands of copies for authors across America. I sold the company in 2012.

BUSINESS CONSULTANT: In 2013, I worked as a business consultant with the Crankset Group. As such, I offered consulting services for business owners, helping them make more money in less time, get off the treadmill, and get back to the passion that brought them into business in the first place.

SOLOPRENEUR: I’ve founded, grown, and sold two businesses. Most recently, I co-founded with my wife an online school for children in Latin America to teach them about technology, entrepreneurship, arts, and mindfulness.

Most people don't care about privacy invasion.

Three attitudes explain why:

1. Ignorance is bliss
A significant portion of the population isn't fully aware of the extent to which their privacy is compromised.

They may not understand how their data is being collected, used, or shared by tech companies and governments.

Without a clear understanding of what's at stake, it's challenging for people to care or take action.

Keep your head in the sand and don’t ask questions about data breaches, identity theft, disinformation and manipulation campaigns, government spying….

2. Convenience rules
For many, the immediate gratification and usefulness of free services outweigh the abstract and often invisible risks associated with privacy invasion.

As long as they don’t dig deeper and consider the implications of misuse of private data, they’ll feel fine about trading off their digital footprints for the convenience of free apps and tools.

3. "There’s nothing I can do about it"
There’s also this sentiment often referred to as "privacy resignation," where users believe they just cannot protect their privacy against the capabilities of large tech companies and governments, so they accept the invasion as an inevitable part of modern life.

Yes, reading data collection notices before clicking ‘I accept’, declining and clearing cookies, browsing in incognito mode or using a VPN, and taking other steps to protect your privacy online is a tad inconvenient.

But doing what feels inconvenient now can result in great benefits down the road.

It’s all about your attitudes.

And your decisions.

If we just keep falling prey to willful ignorance, convenience trade-offs, and/or resignation, we'll keep feeding the beast of misinformation, manipulation, and despotic surveillance.

Happy Monday!

diego pineda

Hyper-personalization is creepy and a blatant invasion of privacy. 

Do you honestly trust a brand more when its ads feel as if they have been listening to your conversations?

Do you respond positively to an ad that mentions your year of birth or your city? (yes, I’ve seen those a lot)

Isn’t the best marketing based on “universal truths” and values that resonate with the most basic human desires?

In fact, that’s how I think about thought leadership—not in terms of personalization, but ideas that transcend individual preferences.

Here’s why thought leaders should not care about personalization…

diegopineda.substack.com • 4 min read

Personalization is overrated

Ethics is the ugly duckling at tech companies.

Especially when it comes to AI.

The The New York Times just published a revealing article about "How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I."

Privacy invasion and copyright infringement issues are simply ignored by decision-makers.

Take these two excerpts from the article, for example:

"[Meta] also talked about how they had summarized books, essays and other works from the internet without permission and discussed sucking up more, even if that meant facing lawsuits. One lawyer warned of “ethical” concerns around taking intellectual property from artists but was met with silence, according to the recordings." 

"At least two employees raised concerns about using intellectual property and not paying authors and other artists fairly or at all, according to the recordings. One employee recounted a separate discussion about copyrighted data with senior executives including Chris Cox, Meta’s chief product officer, and said no one in that meeting considered the ethics of using people’s creative works."

Meta has a long history of putting profits over people.

But it's not just Meta. 

OpenAI has used copyrighted material and Google keeps secretly changing its data use policies to be able to use user data for training AI models.

In this race for dominance in the AI industry, ethics is the first casualty.

And where there are no ethical or moral guardrails, anything goes.

Unfortunately, applying point solutions like regulations, ethical review boards, or the threat of lawsuits, won't work.

We need a systems solution that looks at the purpose of building AI solutions beyond profit.

As a 2004 article in the Journal of Business Ethics asks, "How can a business institution function as an ethical institution within a wider system if the context of the wider system is inherently unethical?"

In other words, it doesn't matter if a company wants to be ethical if the market won't allow it to stay in business unless it makes unethical decisions.

We'd need a systems-wide solution, where all the bug tech companies agree to uphold ethical standards and put humans first.

Is it too late for that?

I hope not.

You need strong opinions about the main issues in your industry or business field.

Whether your style is polarizing and aggressive or subtle and thought-provoking, it’s up to you.

The truth is that just presenting the pros and cons of every issue, won’t cut it.

Reporters do that. Millions of bloggers do that.

While content creators let the readers decide, thought leaders say what they think and back it up with arguments.

Thought leaders don’t shy away from controversy because they have thought through their frameworks and done their research.

Take your strongest opinion about an issue in your industry and ask yourself whether that opinion comes from:

- Intuition (what you think is true)
- Anecdotal evidence (what someone said or experienced)
- Authority (what an expert thinks)
- Reason (what seems logical)
- Data (what the research shows)

Once you identify the source or sources of your opinion, apply some critical thinking:

- What evidence (data, research) supports my opinion?
- How reliable is the evidence (trustworthy source, good research methods)?
- Do I (or the authority I rely on) have a potential bias (cultural, political, religious, etc.)?
- Have I evaluated the evidence for other points of view and weighed them fairly against mine?

This exercise may require you to do a bunch of reading before you get to write. So if you’re up for it, here you go:

- Write down your current position about the topic.
- Then, find other people’s positions and write a heading for each one of them.
- Make bullet points under each heading with the evidence you found for them.
- Analyze the strength of the evidence and the reliability of the sources.

Ask yourself: What is the most likely conclusion based on the evidence?

Then write your conclusion in the best way possible.

#thoughtleadership

Data-driven marketing is a myth.

Not because it can't be done, but because it's rarely applied.

In most companies I’ve worked for, marketing decisions were educated guesses passed down from the CEO or a rehash of what worked before for the VP in turn (they don’t last long).

Even in companies with strong Marketing Ops, data tracking and reporting are great, but the scientific method is rarely (if ever) applied.

The scientific method?

Yes, that's the true way to execute data-driven marketing.

Here’s how I'd apply it to a thought leadership article.

1. Ask a Question
Something that challenges conventional wisdom in your industry, a new trend, or an unaddressed issue.

For example, "How can AI transform traditional marketing strategies?"

2. Do Background Research (literature review)
This research will help you understand what has been explored and where there might be gaps in knowledge.

3. Formulate a Hypothesis
Based on your research, come up with a hypothesis—a tentative answer to your question.

For instance, "Integrating AI into content marketing can significantly increase engagement by personalizing user experiences."

4. Test with an Experiment
You could test your hypothesis by implementing a new strategy, running a pilot project, or analyzing case studies that support or refute your hypothesis.

For example, you might experiment with AI tools in your content marketing to see if they increase engagement.

5. Analyze Data and Draw Conclusions
Collect and examine the data from your experiment to see if it supports your hypothesis.

This could involve qualitative analysis, like feedback from your audience, or quantitative data, like engagement metrics. 

6. Communicate Results
Share your findings with your audience through your newsletter, blog, or other content channels.

Explain your methodology, the rationale behind your hypothesis, the outcome of your experiment, and what these results mean for your field.

7. Iterate Based on Feedback
Once you share your findings, listen to the feedback from your audience.

Use their insights, questions, and criticisms to refine your hypothesis or to ask new questions.

Applying the scientific method ensures your marketing is grounded in data (evidence) and real-world testing.

It’s a no-brainer, but it’s also harder than writing obvious content or following guru-approved templates.

Happy Tuesday!

AI Doomers fall into some logical fallacies:

Slippery Slope: Suggesting that introducing AI in one area of society will inevitably lead to widespread job losses across all sectors without mitigation.

Appeal to Fear: Doomers focus heavily on the worst-case scenarios, such as AI leading to the destruction of humanity.

Overgeneralization: Doomers take specific instances where AI has gone wrong (like biased decision-making) and generalize that all AI developments will inherently lead to negative outcomes, ignoring cases of beneficial AI.

But AI Optimists are also guilty of logical fallacies:

Wishful Thinking: They assume that AI will solve complex global issues like climate change or health crises just because it has the potential to do so.

Technological Determinism: They assume that technology development follows a natural progression that benefits humanity and is inevitable and unstoppable. Optimists underestimate AI’s social, political, and ethical implications and focus on its capabilities and potential.

It may be tempting to jump on the bandwagon of one of the extremist views on AI, simply because smart people like Elon Musk or Marc Andreessen embrace those views.

We all have logical fallacies. They are impossible to shake off completely.

But the least we can do is to take a rationalist approach, not just about AI but about every issue we take a stand on.

Rationalists rely on existing data and historical precedents to understand and predict behavior and impact.

Rationalists always consider ethical dilemmas and act accordingly.

Rationalists don’t swing to extremes without a balanced assessment of risks and benefits.

Rationalists use scenario planning to prepare for a range of possible futures.

Rationalists acknowledge that their understanding of complex issues and their implications evolve over time.

Are you a rationalist?

Taplio

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