I know that the whole concept of thought leadership is overused and slightly annoying but to truly create great content that people will consume and share you must be in the right place at the right time. If your client knows of a new governmental initiative or possibly a new emerging technology that is not widely known about but is about to "blow up", positioning themselves for success by creating great content that is well written by an expert is a fantastic way to gain exposure and to set themselves up as a thought leader for that specific subject.
There are a couple little snags about developing the "best content in the industry" not least of which is that it costs a ton of money. Not only will the piece need to be created by an expert in the field, there will also be a need for professional editing (whether video or literary). Another piece of bad news is that a single piece of content is not enough. Your clients need to be pumping out content that is relevant and most importantly, current. Pure and simple, content is freaking expensive!
Another thing to watch out for is the desire to hurry and push out content without properly vetting sources or editing the piece. I don't know how many times I have read the latest and greatest white paper about a very important subject only to find glaring grammatical errors. Even worse, sometimes the content is just plain wrong. Tell your client to treat any piece of content they pushes out as if they were going to submit it for peer review in a scholarly journal. It needs to be well written and accurate.
I am very fortunate to have a full to writer on my staff and a massive pool of experts to draw on, but even still it is difficult to get people to commit to producing the content in a timely manner. Everyone loves to tell you about how they can create wonderful White Papers, but getting them to produce them sometime in the next decade is hard. You really have to set up deadlines and have people commit to keeping those deadlines.
Good Luck!
