The Genuine Content Advantage: Why Building Content Like Software Wins

[00:00:00] Peter Winick: And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you’re joining me today on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. My guest today is Ghazenfer Mansoor. He is an entrepreneur, an author, and a speaker. He’s also a podcast host.

[00:00:25] He’s an investor, and he’s leading Technology Rivers, a dynamic software development firm, and he’s got a book called Beyond the Download: How to Build Mobile Apps That People Love, Use, and Share Every Day. So welcome aboard today, Ghazenfer. How are you?

[00:00:43] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Pretty good. Thanks, Peter. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:45] Peter Winick: Great. So how did all this happen? You’re a busy guy. You’re running a company, you’re an investor, you’ve got a lot of things going on. When did thought leadership get integrated into part of the portfolio, if you will?

[00:01:02] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I would say it was just a natural transition. I was focusing on growing my business, and as part of growing the business, we started doing different things.

[00:01:12] For example, creating content. Initially, as we were growing the business, it was more relationship-based- meeting people at conferences, referrals. Gradually after COVID, we started writing content, and our inbound started working, working on the SEO.

[00:01:28] Peter Winick: Yeah.

[00:01:28] Ghazenfer Mansoor: All the strategies. As those started working, we realized we needed to dig more into it, and that’s when we started the podcast.

[00:01:40] That’s when I started The Lessons From The Leap, sharing more experiences. The initial thought was more video content, because previously we were missing that..

[00:01:50] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And the book was in parallel- a three-year-long effort. I always wanted to share my experiences on mobile apps because I’ve been involved in mobile for a long time.

[00:01:59] I built so many apps before even starting this business, because I’ve been involved in mobile since 2000.

[00:01:59] So with all those experiences on mobile and growth strategies, the book started as parallel work, then the podcast, then the speaking part- as you’re talking about different experiences on healthcare, mobile, growth strategies, 10X growth, AI, technology, all the topics I’m interested in.

[00:02:23] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Those things naturally started happening because people started asking, “Can you talk about this?”

[00:02:32] Peter Winick: Sure.

[00:02:32] Peter Winick: So let me ask you this. None of that was planned. It just naturally transitioned to-

[00:02:39] No, I like that. So let me ask you this.

[00:02:41] It sounds like there’s the podcast, content you’re writing, and now the book. Those are different formats, different modalities. That doesn’t mean the different ideas have to stay in different modalities; they’re fluid, right?

[00:02:56] You might have an interesting podcast conversation that leads to an article, or leads to pieces in the book. How did that flow through the various formats for you?

[00:03:09] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Those are also part of the learning process. We started creating podcasts, and then you create content out of the podcast that goes to the business side, because the podcast is my personal branding part.

[00:03:23] Ghazenfer Mansoor: That has nothing to do with business. But if the podcast is talking about experiences related to my business, that will also go there- just in a different way.

[00:03:23] How do we repurpose that content out of the podcasts into blogs that go to the website?

[00:03:39] Same concept with the book, because the book is about mobile app growth strategies, and the majority of our work-

[00:03:47] Peter Winick: So the book is a more specific subset of the overarching thought leadership, in its own container, if you will, right?

[00:03:54] Ghazenfer Mansoor: That’s right. And even in the healthcare work we’re doing, mobile is the technology part.

[00:04:01] Healthcare is the vertical part. So if you’re building healthcare and mobile, that’s where we get a lot of traction.

[00:04:01] Our business, if you look at it, is a trio: healthcare, mobile, and AI. These are the three areas that-

[00:04:24] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I talk about. These are the three areas of expertise, and they’re all somewhat related.

[00:04:24] Peter Winick: Got it, got it. Very interesting. So you’ve got all these things, and it starts as a way to elevate the brand and do content marketing. But it sounds like there’s also a relationship development piece.

[00:04:24] When you’re having a conversation with someone on a podcast, or someone’s inviting you to speak, that opens other doors.

[00:04:45] Walk me through how much time you’re spending as a thought leader and how that directly impacts the business, because I’m assuming the payoff is positive, correct?

[00:05:00] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Right. I’d say we’re still at an early stage, so we’re not really-

[00:05:07] -calculating too much. I don’t have exact numbers in terms of ROI.

[00:05:07] Remember, the content part- I started writing the first blog in the early 2000s, right before COVID. There was no blog on our website before that, so it takes time to build.

[00:05:07] I know what we’re doing now is going to have a lot more impact in the coming days. It’s just a process.

[00:05:31] Peter Winick: So stay there a minute, because I think that’s important. When you think like a marketer, you think in terms of a campaign, a call to action, a response rate, an open rate- all those things. When you think like a thought leader using thought leadership to market, those metrics are different, right?

[00:05:50] And I like what you’re saying- you’ve got to be patient and play the long game here. It’s not that you posted one podcast and 30 days later this happened. There’s a compounding, flywheel effect that takes time to marinate. Is that what you’re saying?

[00:06:06] Ghazenfer Mansoor: True, true. And the other strategy isn’t bad either. In fact, that’s what we’ve-

[00:06:06] Peter Winick: Sure.

[00:06:06] Ghazenfer Mansoor: -recommended many times, and yes, we should do that- but that’s not how we were doing it.

[00:06:06] Even in our business, from an SEO perspective, we never used an SEO company.

[00:06:27] Peter Winick: Right.

[00:06:27] Ghazenfer Mansoor: We had a couple of pages that were coming up number one on Google for a long time. When you have genuine content, people will come.

[00:06:27] The same thing applies to content. Now, if I ask our customers, “How did you find us?”- they search for “top HIPAA app development company in the US,” and we’re number one on Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT. We didn’t do any specific effort for that.

[00:06:27] It’s that gradually, once you have the right content, you’re talking about the stuff that matters, talking about genuine content, and people- it automatically gets picked up. You need to have all of that.

[00:06:58] Peter Winick: So if somebody was starting on this journey today, what would you advise them to do differently than what you’re doing, and what would you advise them to replicate?

[00:07:12] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I would advise them not to hire a marketer to do any of this. Here’s the reason: nothing against marketers, but when they write the stuff, they’re writing it for multiple people- the depth isn’t there.

[00:07:12] You, as an expert, know exactly your field, whether you’re an athlete, a healthcare professional, or anything. When you talk about your specific stuff, that makes a difference, and that’s what people are interested in.

[00:07:12] If your content is good, if you’re providing value, people will come and listen to you, they will read, they will interact with you- and those conversations automatically get picked up. Then you will have visibility, you will have an ROI.

[00:08:01] Peter Winick: Got it, I love that. It’s easier for people to say, “Let’s just hire somebody to do that,” because they know it. But as you mentioned with the SEO, it needs to be you. It needs to feel like you. It needs to say what you’re saying.

[00:08:01] You’re not going to get expertise by outsourcing copywriting, because this isn’t copywriting. There’s a big difference between copywriting and thought leadership, right?

[00:08:25] Exactly. I think people put them in the same bucket, and they’re very different. So when people approach you now and say, “Hey, I saw what you wrote,” or “that podcast you did,” or “come speak to my organization”- that, to me, speaks to the fact that it’s working.

[00:08:43] They’re like, “Wow, this guy’s smart, he’s got a perspective, he’s got a way of thinking, and I want to bring him over here,” right?

[00:08:50] Ghazenfer Mansoor: True, true.

[00:08:51] Peter Winick: Yeah.

[00:08:52] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And I would also add- when working with a marketer, again nothing against them, but treat it like you’d treat AI. AI can generate content, but if you’re not giving it the right context, it’s just going to produce the same thing for everyone.

[00:09:07] So when working with a marketer, they have to work specifically with you to extract the knowledge out of you. And in order for them to extract that knowledge, the questions have to come accordingly, so they get the right knowledge.

[00:09:26] Peter Winick: Sure.

[00:09:26] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Same with AI. If you’re providing all the detail and AI is just helping you optimize that content- maybe improving the copy part- that’s great. But if AI is just generating the content.

[00:09:39] Peter Winick: Let’s stay here a minute, because the debate not that long ago with AI was, “I’ll never use it, it’s terrible, it writes bad copy,” and so on. What I’m finding now is different thought leaders are using AI differently- anything from a research assistant to a sparring partner to someone to give context.

[00:09:39] Peter Winick: Let’s say it’s a keynote, and you’ve never spoken to that type of audience before. You can say, “Here’s who I am, here’s my work, here’s my typical keynote- how might I make this more relevant to,” I don’t know, “financial services, or CPG people, or whatever?”

[00:09:39] So it sounds like that’s what you’re doing- you’ve figured out where it’s the right resource for you, and also, which is equally important, where not to use it. Could you say more about that? That’s something I think we’re all wrestling with today.

[00:10:32] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah, you have to give your own information. Sometimes I just speak about it- I record it and say, “Well, I want to talk about this thing,” and then I give my own perspective.

[00:10:32] So all of the data still has to come from you. It helped me- if I’m writing in a traditional way, it may take much longer. Now, if I give all the data, I don’t have to think about cleaning it up and organizing it- that’s the part AI does really well.

[00:11:02] But the data still has to come from me, otherwise it’s going to be generic data that everybody knows- whether it’s healthcare-related, email content, or anything about your business. The knowledge has to come from you.

[00:11:17] Peter Winick: So it sounds like we’re almost back to garbage in, garbage out, right?

[00:11:21] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah.

[00:11:22] Peter Winick: Yeah.

[00:11:22] Ghazenfer Mansoor: But the variation of “garbage in, garbage out” that I heard a couple days ago from a friend is: garbage in, garbage out; great in, great out. Whatever you put in, you get.

[00:11:36] Peter Winick: Yeah, no, that’s exactly right. Talk to me about the process of writing the book- what you enjoyed, and what was more difficult than expected in terms of getting it done.

[00:11:52] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Two things happened. One, we wanted to write an e-book on the mobile app playbook. That’s how we started- as a small e-book. It got bigger, and got to 35 pages. We realized it was too big for an e-book.

[00:12:11] Peter Winick: Okay.

[00:12:11] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Let’s trim the e-book to a smaller version. But now, we already had this one- why don’t we expand it into a book?

[00:12:20] Peter Winick: Okay.

[00:12:20] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Around the same time, or maybe before, I wrote multiple blogs on this topic. In fact, the blog topic was also “Beyond the Download.” Not the same subtitle, but about how to build mobile apps where people get more insights, more predictive value, more retention.

[00:12:43] There was a series of three blogs I wrote before even writing this book. I said, “These are really good blogs. Along with this playbook, maybe we could put together a book.”

[00:12:43] And then additional parts came in- there’s a chapter on AI, how to use AI to do that.

[00:13:01] Peter Winick: So you didn’t start with a blank slate of, “I’m going to write a book, it’s got to be 60,000 words,” et cetera. You had components you knew were already going to be core, foundational pieces to build around.

[00:13:01] I think that’s one of the beautiful things about thought leadership- “I wrote these 50 blogs, and I know these 15 really resonated most.” That’s intelligence: stick to what works, and it’s already written. You can expand on that idea. That’s kind of how you did it?

[00:13:38] Ghazenfer Mansoor: That’s exactly it.

[00:13:40] Peter Winick: Yeah. So that’s interesting, because the classic way to write a book- and I don’t believe it’s correct anymore- is come up with the hypothesis, research it, write it, get it out there, and pray for the best in terms of receptivity.

[00:13:40] But we live in a world now where I think you have an obligation to put something out- LinkedIn, a video, whatever- and see where it sticks, and to whom.

[00:13:40] We’re really bad at judging our own ideas in terms of what will stick, and I think you have to have the courage to put it out there. Sometimes thought leaders are afraid to put out something that’s not great, or might not be perceived as great. How did you deal with that? Not everything you put out is stellar- some is better than others. How do you deal with that?

[00:14:28] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I think once you start looking at what’s great and what’s not, you’re chasing a perfection that never gets found. I don’t care too much about that. All I care about is, “This is what I believe in, this is the right thing.” So we started writing that content, and that’s how the book took shape.

[00:14:49] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Because if we’d started figuring out whether people would use it, whether it’s perfect or not, that would’ve put us on a totally different path, I’d say.

[00:14:59] Peter Winick: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. Cool. Any other non-obvious benefits that have come to you from writing the book, doing the podcast, and everything you do as a thought leader?

[00:15:14] Ghazenfer Mansoor: There are many benefits, and different people use it for different reasons. Some people are just after monetization. Our goal is more about sharing my experience- whatever I’ve learned along the way in my career.

[00:15:14] Sharing that experience gradually, automatically became thought leadership. So the bigger benefit I see now is, as we talk to customers and share the book with them, it builds credibility.

[00:15:47] Because if you’re writing a book, it’s shared based on real experiences. It’s not like another company that just says, “Oh, we can build a mobile app.” This is sharing all those experiences. Once people see the strategies that came out of that- those resonate a lot. So that helps a lot.

[00:16:09] Peter Winick: And there’s probably an expectation from the people who follow you that if you’re putting something out there, it’s thoughtful, on point, relevant.

[00:16:09] When I think about why people follow different thought leaders- there’s trust, curation, consistency, and quality. Those are also great elements of your brand, as well as the organization’s brand. That’s why we keep doing this.

[00:16:09] This has been awesome. I appreciate your time, and thank you for sharing your journey with us today. I appreciate it.

[00:16:39] Ghazenfer Mansoor: No problem. Thanks for having me.

[00:16:41] Peter Winick: To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at [email protected]. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.