In the previous issue, we made the case that thought leadership is built through a pattern of consistent perspective, not through individual pieces of content. The practical question that follows is: how do you maintain that pattern when the organization keeps interrupting it?
The answer, in our experience, is a publishing philosophy: a clear, written articulation of what your brand believes, what it’s trying to help its audience understand, and what kinds of content serve that purpose. It is more fundamental than a content calendar or a brand voice guide. It is a set of principles that governs what you produce and why.
Content teams without one bend to the loudest voice in the room. Content teams with one have a basis for the conversations that actually determine whether thought leadership gets built.
What a content publishing philosophy is and what it isn’t
A publishing philosophy is not a mission statement, a list of content pillars, or a style guide. These are all useful things, but none of them answer the question a content team faces when a senior leader asks for a thought leadership piece on a topic that has nothing to do with what the team has been building: why does this serve our audience, and does it serve what we’re trying to build?
A publishing philosophy answers that question. It gives the team a principled basis for decisions rather than a political one.
What should a content publishing philosophy include
A useful publishing philosophy for a financial services content team has three parts.
The first is a clear statement of the audience problem the brand is trying to help solve. The audience’s problem, specifically, is that financial marketers who work for investment firms, banks, fintechs, and insurance companies all have audiences navigating genuine complexity: market uncertainty, regulatory change, product decisions with long-term consequences. The publishing philosophy names the specific problem the brand is positioned to help with and commits to that problem consistently.
The second is a point of view: a genuine perspective on the problem rather than a neutral summary of it. This is where most financial brands stop short. The instinct to hedge everything produces content that takes no position and builds no authority. The publishing philosophy articulates what the brand actually believes about the problem its audience is navigating, and that belief becomes the thread running through everything the team produces.
The third is a set of content principles that follow from the point of view. These are practical: what the brand will and won’t publish, what formats serve the audience best, what standards the content needs to meet before it goes out. Clear enough criteria that a team member can apply them without asking for a decision on every piece, but not so rigid that the team can’t adapt.
How to build a publishing philosophy
The best publishing philosophies come from conversations, not documents.
Start with the audience problem
Talk to the people who know the audience best — the sales team, the relationship managers, the customer success function — and ask them what questions the audience asks most often, what misconceptions they encounter repeatedly, and what would make their conversations easier if the content team could address it. From those conversations, identify the recurring problem your brand is best positioned to help solve. That problem becomes the anchor of the publishing philosophy.
PRO TIP: This info can also help you build the FAQ of your website.
Find the genuine point of view
Ask what the brand actually believes about that problem. What the people who built the organization and serve its clients genuinely think, not what marketing wants to say about it. That belief, expressed consistently over time, is what builds authority.
Write it down and keep it short
A publishing philosophy that runs to ten pages won’t get used. A single page that the team can refer to when a decision needs to be made is more valuable than a comprehensive document nobody reads.
How to use a publishing philosophy to manage content requests
When a senior leader asks for a thought leadership piece on a topic outside the established direction, the publishing philosophy gives you a basis for the response that goes beyond “that’s not in the plan.” The conversation becomes: here’s what we’re building, here’s why it serves the audience, here’s how this request fits or doesn’t fit that direction.
The friction usually comes from having no agreed framework, which means every request gets evaluated in isolation and the loudest voice wins. The publishing philosophy changes the basis on which it gets resolved.
Why leadership buy-in is essential for a publishing philosophy to work
A publishing philosophy only works if the people who make content requests have agreed to it. A content team can write an excellent publishing philosophy and still lose the argument every time if leadership never agreed to it in the first place.
Develop it with input from the people whose requests you’ll eventually need to redirect. Their ownership of it makes it usable — a thought leadership strategy that leadership helped build is one they’ll defend when the requests start arriving.
We know how busy executives and leadership teams are
That’s why we developed our 360 workshops.
360 workshops are streamlined, guided modular discussions that help develop robust, business-driven marketing and communications plans, and messaging.
Potential exercises include:
- Business, sales and marketing goals mapping
- Sales obstacles and ideas
- Current vs desired perception
- Mission, vision, values
- Target audiences
- Persona mapping
- Competitive differentiators
- Brand personality
- Golden circle exercise
- Creative campaign brainstorm