Robert Buday of Hopkinton has released his second book, “Competing on Thought Leadership: How Great B2B Companies Turn Expertise Into Revenue.”

Hopkinton resident Robert Buday had a productive COVID year. Drawing on his over three decades of helping large and small companies market themselves, he spent the last months writing and publishing his second book, “Competing on Thought Leadership: How Great B2B Companies Turn Expertise Into Revenue.”

“Thought leadership is not rocket science, but it is not easy, either,” said Buday. He explained it is getting companies to think about what they really do, how it addresses the needs of their customers and then expressing those ideas or philosophy in informative opinion pieces, articles, blogs, etc. Buday notes it is a way for businesses to market themselves, so clients feel confident in approaching and then engaging the firms.

As a marketing tool, thought leadership has become very popular with large companies or B2B (business to business) firms, but it can be successfully used by almost any size service company. “It is a concept that could be used by consultants, attorneys, medical professionals, financial advisers, social workers and many more,” said Buday. “As an example, if I were looking for a dentist and he or she had written articles about the philosophy of their practice, I would be more likely to choose the dentist whose philosophy I buy into.” He added, “It is a different way of putting a business out there in the market.”

Buday’s book covers the principals of the concept and offers specific tools on how it can work for individual businesses. As Amazon reviewer Philip Morgan wrote, “It offers useful definitions of thought leadership, and there are specific parts of the book, like where the author defines ‘the six elements of a persuasive argument,’ that are print-it-out-and-put-it-on-the-wall-worthy.”

In many ways, the book is a culmination of Buday’s career. A former business journalist with the Orange County Register in Southern California, InformationWeek and Miramar Publications, the New Jersey native earned a bachelor of arts in communication studies from Penn State. In 1987, he began his thought leadership marketing career, spending a decade with CSC Index, a management consulting firm, where he helped bring the concept of business reengineering to prominence.

A decade later, he co-founded Bloom Group, which provided thought leadership strategy, content development and marketing services to large companies like Microsoft plus smaller B2B firms. In 2020, he went on to form Buday Thought Leadership Partners, where he advises clients on developing thought leadership strategies and creating compelling content that attracts large audiences. Buday also was the lead researcher on six thought leadership marketing studies and since 2016 has co-produced an annual conference, “Profiting from Thought Leadership.”

He has helped a half-dozen clients develop and publish books and helped others write more than 50 Harvard Business Review articles and many opinion pieces for additional business publications. In 2008, he was lead author of the book “Thoughts on Thought Leadership,” a compendium of Bloom Group’s writings from 1998 to 2008.

A resident of Massachusetts for over three decades, first in Upton and then Hopkinton since 1993, Buday had some homegrown talent assist him with his latest book. His wife, Cathy, a writer and editor (whose work has been published in the Hopkinton Independent), helped edit his book.

“Competing on Thought Leadership: How Great B2B Companies Turn Expertise Into Revenue” was released by Ideapress Publishing as an e-book in early December and as a print book in January. Both versions are available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble or by visiting BudayTLP.com.