Building on Trends to Drive Thought Leadership

This time of year, trends and pre­dic­tions con­tent is in high demand and can be a gold­mine for your organization’s PR/marketing cam­paigns, exec­u­tive thought lead­er­ship, blog con­tent, social media posts and oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions chan­nels. It’s an ide­al time to reflect on key trends that have impact­ed your busi­ness, indus­try and mar­ket activ­i­ty over the past year.

These insights cou­pled with your organization’s out­look for the new year and any time­ly research can put your organization’s sub­ject mat­ter experts in a proac­tive posi­tion to par­tic­i­pate in rel­e­vant dis­cus­sions, active news cycles, round-up sto­ries and oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties that can ele­vate their role and the company’s brand.

Across our prac­tice groups at Bell­mont Part­ners, we fre­quent­ly work with clients on trends con­tent to fuel their com­mu­ni­ca­tions pipeline dur­ing dif­fer­ent times of the year. While there’s always a push toward the end and the begin­ning of the year, many of our clients align their trends ini­tia­tives with seasons/holidays, weath­er changes, event cir­cuits and oth­er key pulse points that are key to their vertical.

Based on our expe­ri­ence, the fol­low­ing three fac­tors are inte­gral in devel­op­ing and lever­ag­ing ris­ing trends to achieve suc­cess­ful thought lead­er­ship, media rela­tions and oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions deliverables:

The pow­er of knowl­edge­able and invest­ed sub­ject mat­ter experts 

You cer­tain­ly can’t tell a good sto­ry with­out experts who are immersed in their company’s busi­ness, under­stand the wider indus­try land­scape – chal­lenges and growth oppor­tu­ni­ties – and are aligned with orga­ni­za­tion­al objec­tives and goals.

We’ve been for­tu­nate to work with a deep bench of sub­ject mat­ter experts at Trim­ble, a trans­porta­tion tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions com­pa­ny. As a lead­ing com­pa­ny in this space, Trim­ble experts are fre­quent­ly called upon to share infor­ma­tion on every­thing from fleet man­age­ment to main­te­nance and dri­ver safe­ty to AI and autonomous driving.

In late 2023, we worked with Trimble’s for­mer sec­tor VP of strat­e­gy on a top trends list that turned into some of brand’s best-per­form­ing blog and social con­tent of the year and drove sig­nif­i­cant media inter­est. We con­duct­ed a sto­ry min­ing ses­sion, draft­ed a two-part blog series for Trimble’s web­site, sup­port­ed social con­tent with high engage­ment, placed a con­tributed arti­cle with trade pub­li­ca­tion Food Logis­tics and secured oth­er media oppor­tu­ni­ties as a result of the valu­able con­tent from a knowl­edge­able and invest­ed source.

Most recent­ly, we’ve worked with oth­er Trim­ble experts to cre­ate year-end blog con­tent focused on dri­ver safe­ty and main­te­nance trends, as well as fea­tured com­men­tary in a “State of the Indus­try” arti­cle and a trends Q&A by Food Logis­tics magazine.

Using a steady drum­beat of research insights to dri­ve PR content 

In addi­tion to uti­liz­ing strong spokes­peo­ple, equip­ping them with fresh data and research find­ings can go a long way in shap­ing a thought lead­er­ship program.

Mon­rovia, a top grow­er of pre­mi­um plants, trees and shrubs, annu­al­ly con­ducts large-scale con­sumer research with more than 1,400 U.S. home­own­ers who pur­chase out­door plants. The data-dri­ven insights help the com­pa­ny fore­cast what the gar­dens of the future might look like.

On a month­ly basis, Mon­rovia issues mobile-friend­ly sur­veys to gen­er­al plant shop­pers along with its 100,000 email sub­scribers to ask ques­tions about design ideas, sus­tain­able prac­tices and plant col­ors and types. This data, paired with con­nec­tions between gar­den­ing and art, design, cook­ing, fam­i­ly and oth­er lifestyle pur­suits, helped inform Monrovia’s 2025 Design Trend Report.

Based on the find­ings, our agency team devel­oped and dis­trib­uted a press release that high­light­ed some of the most notable gar­den design trends to watch this year. Our team secured cov­er­age in near­ly all of the green indus­try trade pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing Gar­den Cen­ter and Green­house Man­age­ment magazines.

Bell­mont Part­ners also leads a well-attend­ed Mon­rovia webi­nar series. This fall we host­ed a 55-minute episode that detailed some of the top gar­den trends for 2025. To date, the webi­nar has received more than 8,500 views and count­ing between the live audi­ence and ongo­ing YouTube audi­ence. Monrovia’s ded­i­cat­ed research pro­gram pro­vides the company’s mar­ket­ing team with a valu­able well of new sta­tis­tics and insights to lever­age and use through­out the year.

Drilling into trends that align with an organization’s core solu­tions, tar­get audi­ences and sales cycles

Dur­ing our time work­ing with nation­al health ben­e­fits com­pa­ny Gravie, we fre­quent­ly leaned into trends that are both a focal point for the ben­e­fits indus­try and Gravie’s oper­a­tions. Over the past two years, we looked at press­ing indus­try chal­lenges and trends to show how Gravie is cre­at­ing solu­tions that are afford­able and acces­si­ble for employ­ers to offer to their dif­fer­ent pop­u­la­tions of employees.

Lever­ag­ing trends con­tent, we worked with Gravie’s mar­ket­ing team to devel­op and place thought lead­er­ship con­tent dur­ing key points dur­ing the year, includ­ing Nation­al Small Busi­ness Month (May), open enroll­ment sea­son (Novem­ber-Decem­ber) and year-end/new year (Decem­ber-Jan­u­ary).

Using these pulse points as anchors, Bell­mont Part­ners worked to ele­vate Gravie’s voice on two spe­cif­ic health ben­e­fits trends – lev­el-fund­ed plans and Indi­vid­ual Cov­er­age Health Reim­burse­ment Arrange­ments – in 2024. Our team wrote, repur­posed and placed thought lead­er­ship arti­cles in Ben­e­fit­sPRO, Insur­ance­News­Net and Upsize on these topics.

Watch­ing cur­rent trends and ana­lyz­ing how they are impact­ing your orga­ni­za­tion can lead to a robust thought lead­er­ship pro­gram. The secret sauce comes when the lay­ers all fit togeth­er – knowl­edge­able sub­ject mat­ter experts are bought in, research-based data and insights are read­i­ly avail­able, tight mes­sag­ing about core ser­vices and prod­ucts is in place, an edi­to­r­i­al cal­en­dar based on impor­tant pulse points is mapped out and you have the right marketing/PR sup­port to push con­tent through mul­ti­ple chan­nels for max­i­mize engage­ment and reach.