Top 5 Thought Leadership Content Writing Agencies

Thought leadership is challenging to pull off. One must have hands-on experience in the industry to create original content. This is something that most general SEO agencies or Content mills can’t really pull off. An experienced thought leadership writer can only offer a few blogs a month. If you’re planning to scale your publishing of thought leadership formats, it would need a dedicated thought leadership content agency.

We have compiled the top 5 content agencies that specialize in thought leadership content strategy based on:

• Access to experts for creating content
• Content formats supported
• Publication ownership

Key takeaways:

Top 5 Thought Leadership Content Writing Agencies you can explore for your brand:

• Merrative
• ThoughtLDR
• Financial Times – Longitude
• Animalz
• With Content

Why should you outsource thought leadership content creation?

Thought leadership requires subject matter expertise and special skill sets.

It simply doesn’t make sense to hire a dedicated writer full-time. Hiring a writer would be more expensive than hiring an agency. Yet, setting up an internal content team is beneficial if you run a full-scale industry publication. An example of such a publication is Harvard Business Review by Harvard University.

For example, First Round Review by First Round Capital has a dedicated content manager. The manager manages a few writers to achieve a publishing cadence of 3-4 blogs per month. Read more about First Round Review’s content strategy case study in our Media First brand newsletter.

The thought leadership approach to content creation isn’t about mass churning content. Hiring content mills doesn’t make any sense either who will not have writers with the required expertise.

For example, publishing a report requires crafting insights by conducting surveys and speaking with subject matter experts for quotes. For data storytelling, it is beneficial to get an analyst on board. They can conduct original research and visualize the data. This approach provides better quality results than a B2B SaaS writer.

Thus, as a brand, it’s important to figure out how big your thought leadership program needs to be.

1. If it’s 1 report per year – hire freelance talent.
2. If you have a per-month budget, hire a thought leadership agency.
3. If it is a dedicated publication – set up an internal content team.

In our experience, most companies would lie on the 2nd spectrum. They need to test the return on investment of their thought leadership efforts.

Thought leadership content format options to choose from

Saying ‘We want thought leadership’ is not the right ask when approaching any content agency.

Thought leadership requires subject matter expertise. Therefore, quality specialist agencies will not focus on ‘anything and everything’ under the hood. As a brand, you should also zero down on what content formats you want to have for your content library.

Check out our article on identifying content archetypes to help you fix your requirements.

Here are the 5 major types of thought leadership content formats that you can choose from for your strategy and agency search:

Data Storytelling

You conduct original research backed by data here. You then publish it as a whitepaper, research paper, industry analysis, trend report, or case study for your readers. These content pieces usually get cited by other content libraries. They often get backlinks, thus helping you increase domain authority and brand value.

For example, The World Economic Forum has published ‘The Future of Jobs Report 2023‘, which is a data story format. If you scroll down, you can see they have repurposed the full report into smaller content pieces too.

Narratives

In this, you hire a ghostwriter, ideally, who has experience in storytelling. They take insights from your management or business via interviews. They then craft narratives unique to the brand’s voice. Here, the writer conducts journalistic-style interviews and creates a narrative as per the brand’s content guidelines.

For example, StarterStory interviews indie makers and entrepreneurs who have successfully bootstrapped their businesses. Merrative is also featured in this publication. We shared answers about the early days of our community. We also discussed how we plan to grow it further.

Community experiences

Organizing webinars, events, ‘Ask Me Anything’ sessions or panel discussions fall under this thought leadership content format. Organizing such experiences is a one-time effort because you can repurpose them into multiple other content formats. It also helps you tap into video, audio, and social media content formats apart from text.

For example, Niche Pursuits is an authority on building niche businesses. Here, they conduct podcast interviews, which are available in both audio and YouTube video formats. Then, it is converted into an engaging blog post format. They also send a newsletter with every new feature published.

Books

Books are also a form of narrative content type. Achieving a bestseller published under your brand is the God level of industry authority. One can start with branded eBooks about industry concepts. You can gradually level up by publishing the company’s story or founder’s journey.

For example, 37Signals is a perfect example of branded book publishing. They have published bestsellers in the field of remote work. This is an industry where their core products, Basecamp and Hey, belong.

Your company can choose any combination from the above formats as per its available resources.

At Merrative – we help you start small to test the waters. Contact us to know more details about our Starter Package – Book a call

Explore the top 5 thought leadership content writing services to choose from

You now have an introduction to various thought leadership content formats. This makes it easy to prospect an agency that delivers them. They are not in any specific order.

Merrative

We have curated the best authors, journalists, and research scholars. We also have professional writers who can craft thought leadership for any individual and brand.

At Merrative, we have collaborated with think tanks, educational institutions, and publishers. We aim to bring the best literature piece into the world. We focus only on the thought leadership space. We have built a community of 4200+ professionals who appreciate this industry.

We understand that thought leadership content aims to build a community. This community will trust your brand. Since we ourselves are a community and run 3 publications, we know what it takes to pull it off.

Why Merrative:

• We are a community of 4200+ readers, writers, journalists and research scholars. We have handpicked the top 5% of creators. They form our talent pool of thought leaders. They are available to craft original content for your brand.
• We help with all 4 thought leadership content format types mentioned.
• Apart from helping hire talent, we help with thought leadership content strategy and scaling your current content team.

Book a call to know about how we work with our clients.

ThoughtLDR

ThoughtLDR is an agency that focuses on thought leadership content strategy – but predominantly in US and UK markets. They also take care of PR and personal branding for business leaders. Their team consists of designers, experts, writers, PR networkers, etc who help craft thought leadership content. You can check out the ThoughtLDR website to know more about their services.

FT Longitude

Longitude is a service by the Financial Times Group and is specifically into B2B thought leadership. Their promise as per the website is to make create engaging B2B content. With an impressive clientele, Longitude is a great choice for B2B brands. Being primarily a reputed media company also helps with their authority. Although they might be limited in their approach to B2C brands and smaller B2B companies. Check out FT Longitude‘s website to know more about their service.

Animalz

Animalz is a content marketing agency with a focus on B2B SaaS, venture capital, and enterprise industries. As per their website, they help create whitepapers, eBooks, articles, and much more. They also help with SEO consulting and link-building campaigns. You can check their existing case studies and blog to understand how they work with clients. Check out Animalz‘s website to know more about their services.

With Content

With Content is a thought leadership agency that focuses on the Southeast Asian markets. As per their website, they provide services across content strategy, creation and repurposing. Formats they support include articles, whitepapers, infographics, and case studies. Check out With Content‘s website to know more about their services.

How to choose the right thought leadership writing agency?

One chooses an agency to scale their content marketing efforts. For this, it is very important to know what your business requires. Moreover, thought leadership is an expensive exercise to carry out, especially if you plan on running an active publication.

While making a decision, here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Do you plan to scale your thought leadership efforts? If yes, you may want to choose a thought leadership agency that has the bandwidth to scale with the business.
• What is your budget per month? Thought leadership content formats can get more expensive than usual. This is because general writers or AI writing tools can’t deliver the required results.
• What are your timelines for where you want to be? Choosing a small or new thought leadership agency takes more time. It prolongs reaching the desired outcomes from the content creation efforts. Also, making smaller agencies rush to scale efforts may result in a compromise in delivered quality.

Prepare a content agency choice checklist which are non-negotiables for your business. When running down with the agency’s sales teams, use the checklist to keep the meeting short and focused.

At Merrative, we are a community-led marketplace for the thought leadership space. This means, our services are scalable with a genuine subject matter expert talent pool. 

Know more if we are a fit for your business – book a call. Happy to read what you’ve been doing with your content and how we can help you.