For any B2B publisher or event business looking to set up a thought leadership offering, one of the key questions they’ll need to consider is how they’ll resource it - and what skills are needed for different stages of growth. 

But as the offering broadens out, and as the client base expands, there are a range of other resources that quickly become important to consider. 

As you consider who to hire next, a key question to consider is what overall strategy you want to take to resourcing. At one extreme, will you seek to vertically integrate and do everything in-house (much like Tesla in how it builds its electric vehicles)? Or will you seek to provide oversight of the core ideas and quality of output, but essentially outsource everything else (similar to Apple in designing its phones, but using others for manufacturing and assembly)? Or will you take some kind of middle ground, bringing some key roles in-house, but outsourcing or partnering with third parties for other capabilities?

All models can work and various B2B publishers we know have made each of these models work for them, albeit each with some pros and cons. Ultimately the choice comes down to your strategic ambitions for the business, the available free cash flow you have to work with, and the make-up of your existing internal resources. 

‍At the outset, smaller businesses aim to get by with just a couple of people: one is usually an editorial head, who’s comfortable with both storytelling and working with data; the other is typically a commercial lead, working to identify and land clients that could be a good fit. 

There are various categories of expertise you’ll ultimately want to tap into, depending on what kind of thought leadership offering you’re seeking to develop (a side note, but my definition of thought leadership is based on what my colleague Rob shared recently). These categories could include some, many, or all, of the following: 

1. Written content and storytelling skills. This is at the heart of most offerings, and B2B publishers usually already have these editorial capabilities in-house. You should also have a good depth of subject-matter expertise, given your existing publications and content in this space.However, as your proposition grows in sophistication, you’ll likely find that new skills are needed. Particularly important is an ability to present the findings effectively and engagingly, and solid instincts on what story to tell, and how to frame it. Another important skill is around content strategy: smart ways to ensure the planned content makes sense for a client's needs and specific situation. Elsewhere, the typical atomisation of content campaigns - creating a wide range of spin-off smaller content around a core set of insights or report - requires strong social media knowhow. A more basic challenge for publishers is the degree to which existing editorial teams are willing to work on these new branded content propositions: some will be excited about this as a new career pathway, others will do anything they can to avoid it. 
2. Expertise in research and data. This is a big area to cover, potentially ranging from quantitative survey specialists through to expert econometric data wranglers. But for many B2B publishers, a key goal will be to extract and analyse insights from their core audiences. This alone potentially taps a wide range of skills: survey design, survey programming, audience and quota management, email deliverability, assessing data quality, creating data tables and segmentations, and data analysis, among other things. Many of these capabilities can be provided by a third party specialist, but what will matter most here is the ability to design credible and compelling studies, and being able to pull out a story from the underlying data.    
3. Comprehensive multi-format capabilities. As you branch off into other formats, you’ll need to tap into video and/or audio specialists too. If you’re already publishing this content for your existing titles, then you’ll have a natural advantage here. Capabilities here range from good producing skills and solid editing, through to visual effects, lighting, sound design, voiceovers, and a lot more. Most important, though, is someone who can host the content in a way that can hold the attention of your audience. 
4. Smart design for publishing online and offline. Most publishers will have in-house design and production capabilities, from image sourcing through to layout, so this is likely less of a stretch. One core challenge can be designers that are adept at working with data, and able to visualise data in a way that is both compelling and accurate (a risk here is that you can easily get one of those things without the other: beautiful charts that aren’t correct, or highly accurate eyesores). Separately, there’s the online-offline divide: are you designing for a PDF or print publication, or are you tapping into web-ready skills that draw on either front-end development capabilities, or specialist publishing platforms, or something else. On the edges, you may want to tap into niche skills, ranging from animation through to illustration, to help bring it all to life. 
5. Client and project management. Easy to overlook, but essential for successfully scaling up your thought leadership proposition, is the team (or teams) that keep clients informed on progress, get them excited about the next steps (and other propositions), and can act as a port of call when things are not going to plan and the client wants to bend someone’s ear. Good project management skills matter: do not assume that your star editor can keep on top of everything, not least when there are multiple and overlapping dependencies. Separately, commercial account management capabilities are obviously important too, to support the growth of your new proposition. Important to note: the team that sells advertising or subscriptions can often find it a jarring shift to move to what is usually a more consultative sale (this is a huge topic in its own right, and will be a core part of a dedicated ebook that we’re publishing soon).  
6. Amplification and engagement. A wholly different set of skills relate to an issue that marketing clients will be especially interested in knowing about: how do you get this thought leadership content out to your audience? Depending on your offering and organisational capabilities, this can cover a very wide range of skills: from organising and hosting in-person events and online webinars, through to creating and distributing print and online advertising, plus newsletters, branded content, social distribution and more. This is also an area that is typically tightly guarded: publishers care very deeply about what commercial content is distributed to their core audiences, and how it is done. From a client perspective, content strategy skills are crucial here, providing clear recommendations and a blueprint on how a joined-up campaign could run, as are performance analytics and reporting, and nowadays expertise in both SEO and GEO. 

These are some of the skills and capabilities that would likely be needed in building a comprehensive and well-rounded thought leadership capability. The precise make-up of these skills will differ significantly from one publisher or event business to another, depending on whether your thought leadership offering is just a small spin-off item, or a central part of your new client proposition. Many publishers will already have a lot of these capabilities in their teams; the more thorny challenge is how they shift the focus of those teams away from what they were doing before and towards a more client-centric proposition.