The Trust Factor: Building Brand Authority in Healthcare Through Thought Leadership

What the heck is thought lead­er­ship?

That’s the top­ic that Shel­li Lis­sick and I tack­led in our “The Trust Fac­tor: Build­ing Brand Author­i­ty in Health­care Through Thought Lead­er­ship” ses­sion at this year’s Min­neso­ta Health Strat­e­gy and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Net­work (MHSCN) Fall Con­fer­ence.

Thought lead­er­ship – defined by Hub­Spot as “A tac­tic con­tent mar­keters use to build cred­i­bil­i­ty for them­selves or lead­ers in their com­pa­ny. The main goal of thought lead­er­ship is to become rec­og­nized as an expert and used as a go-to resource in your field” – can be a pow­er­ful, effec­tive tool for build­ing trust, no mat­ter what indus­try you do busi­ness in. And the health indus­try is no exception.

A decline in trust

Over time, dis­trust has become Amer­i­cans’ default emo­tion, with a decline in trust report­ed in polling results con­duct­ed by the AAMC Cen­ter for Health Jus­tice from 2021 to 2024 across eight of nine sec­tors, includ­ing phar­ma­cies, hos­pi­tals, social ser­vice agen­cies, fire depart­ments, uni­ver­si­ties, police depart­ments, pub­lic health depart­ments and libraries. Local schools were the excep­tion. And a recent study from Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty found that pub­lic trust in the U.S. health­care sys­tem fell from 71.5% in 2020 to 40.1% in 2024.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Accord­ing to this year’s Edel­man Trust Barom­e­ter, doc­tors con­tin­ue to be among the most trust­ed voic­es. In fact, they are far ahead of lead­ers in any oth­er insti­tu­tion. This is why thought lead­er­ship is more impor­tant than ever – there’s a crit­i­cal oppor­tu­ni­ty for health care lead­ers to step into a more vis­i­ble role to strate­gi­cal­ly bol­ster trust with patients, prospec­tive patients, their fam­i­lies and care­givers, stake­hold­ers and part­ners, employ­ees, prospec­tive employ­ees, the com­mu­ni­ty, media and more

What does thought lead­er­ship look like?

Thought lead­er­ship can take many shapes and forms, including:

• Bylined con­tent: Trade and some busi­ness and con­sumer media out­lets accept con­tributed con­tent or opin­ion pieces about news­wor­thy top­ics or issues, so long as it isn’t bla­tant­ly pro­mot­ing your orga­ni­za­tion, prod­ucts or ser­vices. You can check media out­lets’ web­sites for edi­to­r­i­al oppor­tu­ni­ties and author guidelines.
• Blog posts: Con­sid­er start­ing a blog on your web­site to share your lead­ers’ and sub­ject mat­ter experts’ (SME) insights on top­ics that mat­ter to your orga­ni­za­tion. Or offer to pro­vide con­tent to oth­er exist­ing blogs that reach your tar­get audience(s).
• Pod­casts: Reach out to pod­cast hosts that cov­er the top­ics or issues your SMEs and lead­ers can address. Or con­sid­er start­ing your own!
• Speak­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties: Are you already attend­ing con­fer­ences and trade shows? Many of them include speak­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties that could be a good fit for your SMEs and lead­ers. They often seek out speak­er sub­mis­sions up to a year in advance, so it’s impor­tant to plan ahead.
• Awards: Award oppor­tu­ni­ties abound for both orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als, from local to nation­al. Think through the areas where your orga­ni­za­tion, SMEs and lead­ers excel, and choose award oppor­tu­ni­ties that reward those strengths. When you win, be sure to share the news!
• White papers: White papers or oth­er long-form con­tent can be a great way to show­case meati­er top­ics and issues. Incor­po­rate research and data to sup­port and rein­force your points. White paper con­tent can also be sliced and diced into short­er blog posts, media and bylin­er pitch­es and social media con­tent, too.
• Webi­na­rs: Webi­na­rs are already inher­ent­ly set up to pro­vide a plat­form to edu­cate on every­thing from broad issues to the most niche of top­ics. It’s also a great way to cap­ture infor­ma­tion for lead generation.
• Social media: Share con­tent from all of these thought lead­er­ship activ­i­ties – blog posts, bylined arti­cles, pod­casts, pho­tos from speak­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, announce­ments about award wins, etc. – on your social media plat­forms. And con­sid­er incor­po­rat­ing thought lead­er­ship into your SMEs’ and lead­ers’ LinkedIn pres­ence to build cred­i­bil­i­ty and authority.

All of these thought lead­er­ship tac­tics can play an impor­tant role in dri­ving AI search results, too. AI tools like Chat­G­PT, Microsoft Copi­lot, Per­plex­i­ty and Google Gem­i­ni are shap­ing how orga­ni­za­tions are dis­cov­ered and described, and your dig­i­tal foot­print deter­mines how AI talks about your orga­ni­za­tion. Earned and owned media are key dri­vers of this per­cep­tion. Accord­ing to Hard Num­bers, large lan­guage mod­els (LLMs) rely on edi­to­r­i­al media for 61 per­cent of their con­tent about brand rep­u­ta­tion and owned media (e.g. blog posts, web­site and social media con­tent) for 44 per­cent – anoth­er rea­son to devel­op your organization’s thought lead­er­ship program.

OK, cool, so where do I start?

Maybe thought lead­er­ship is a new con­cept and you’re look­ing for guid­ance on how to jump in. Per­haps imple­ment­ing a thought lead­er­ship pro­gram sounds great but with lim­it­ed resources, it feels out of reach. Or, maybe it all just feels over­whelm­ing and you don’t know where to start. Here are a few tips to meet you where you’re at and help you get started:

• Just try it – progress over per­fec­tion. Pick a top­ic or issue, and iden­ti­fy a sub­ject mat­ter expert that can authen­ti­cal­ly address it. For starters, try writ­ing a blog post or LinkedIn post about it.
• Repur­pose exist­ing con­tent. For exam­ple, if the blog or LinkedIn post per­forms well, use it to draft a media pitch or op-ed.
• Har­ness the pow­er of the brain­storm. Bring in addi­tion­al per­spec­tives from oth­er team members.
• Treat new ini­tia­tives as pilots and know that you can always switch gears or try some­thing dif­fer­ent if you’re not get­ting the results you were hop­ing for.
• If lead­ers or SMEs are hes­i­tant to par­tic­i­pate, find exam­ples of oth­er lead­ers they admire (or com­peti­tors!) who’ve put them­selves out there and how it has ben­e­fit­ed them and their businesses.
• Look beyond your CEOs, VPs, etc., for oth­er sub­ject mat­ter experts and pas­sion­ate spokespeople.
• Remem­ber that you don’t need to take a stance on every­thing – select issues and top­ics that fit and you, and that you can speak to with authenticity.

Inter­est­ed in learn­ing more? We’d love to share more about what we cov­ered in our pre­sen­ta­tion and talk about these ideas, along with how to nav­i­gate com­mon inter­nal chal­lenges and road­blocks. If thought lead­er­ship is some­thing you want to con­sid­er as part of your 2026 mar­ket­ing plans, please get in touch at health@bellmontpartners.com. We’ll be hap­py to pro­vide resources, tips and best prac­tices and/or set up a one-hour com­pli­men­ta­ry thought lead­er­ship brain­storm­ing strat­e­gy session.

P.S. For more about build­ing trust, check out this great blog post writ­ten by Bell­mont Part­ners team mem­ber Sara Gras­mon on the pow­er of focus­ing on the people.