Ask for a word cloud on thought leadership content and these words should definitely be in it: engaging, credible, and authentic; insights, data, and research; expertise, knowledge, and vision. And there's more: timely, relevant, and trends, analysis; solutions, sharing, and perspective; quality, innovation, and impact.

Senior execs spend an average of four hours a week consuming thought leadership content. Some people, more than 25%, spend even longer each week, clocking up five hours or more. 

"That's a lot of people, often with very busy diaries and not enough hours in the day, committing a lot of time each week to thought leadership," points out content marketer and head of content at Insights Media, Roisin Woolnough. "They must really think it's worth it. And it is worth it, 100%, but only when it's good quality, high impact content. There's so much thought leadership being churned out, all the time, and the quality varies hugely. Half the time it isn't real thought leadership at all - it's opinion masquerading as thought leadership."

Given that our organisation is called Insights Media, it should come as no surprise that we are big on insights," adds Woolnough. "When creating thought leadership for organisations and individuals, we dig deep, using four sources of insights to inform the content we produce."