What's your view of "thought leadership" that promotes a vendors or consultants product or service?

In this increasingly social world, I believe people can smell a rat and actually react accordingly (typically by moving on). Marketing departments will eventually pick this up and the faux thought leader will go away.

I believe this conversation is not just about thought leadership, but the conversation is about content as well. The question is: Can you create helpful, credible, trusted content? Many organizations can't resist selling in their content and IT SHOWS. It's funny too because marketers have been educated more than anyone else on this topic and for whatever reason, it's hard to understand.

Sorry, I rant. To answer your questions:
Does the message get lost in the self-promotion? Yes. You kill your argument if you self-promote.
Is it ok to put links back to the consultants/vendors site, product etc. if the article or answer was designed to be thought leadership? That one is hard. My rule is that is ok if the content backs up the content at hand or the discussion at hand. In other words, you are talking about an issue and you happened to blog about it last week, you should probably link. If it's a link to a landing page or something salesly, you have failed.

One of the marketing and demand generation operations I respect the most is Citrix. In their webinars, they do not talk about their product at all. They bring outside thought leaders to speak and don't do any selling -- nothing sneaky. That is modern content.

Hi Carlos! One of the best things Focus did was provide the Write a Post capability. People who want to demonstrate “thought leadership” can do it there. Many of us have done so.

But whether at Write a Post or in standard responses, the very transparency of the Focus system calls immediate and negative attention to obvious ads, pitches, hype, and “set-up” responses. The message does, indeed, become less noticeable and influential when surrounded by self-promotion.

A link is OK by me, as it enables an easy next-step for readers so inclined. But if the intent is “thought leadership,” then as the saying goes, “it’s the thought that counts” … not the commercial.

BTW: it would be very cool if Focus would add a “Reply Privately” function.

To all those who've already posted along the lines of "Thought leadership isn't a pitch", hear hear!
Thought leadership can lead to great products and services, and it should point the way to better understanding, increased knowledge, forward movement. My experience has been that thought leadership -- by making me think, reevaluate, reanalyze, recomprehend -- steers me to the source, never away, and is promotional in that way.
But a direct pitch? No, sorry, not for me...or those I know.

Here are some thought leadership guidelines that I try to remember:

1. Always start with the assumption that promotion generally gets in the way of creating value for prospects and customers. This is especially true in a social, peer powered world where customers are looking for authentic, objective, and varied perspectives before making a purchasing decision. That's why "Always be Helping" is the new always be closing.

2. We should try to abide by a thought leadership daisy chain which works something like: thought leader creates/distributes media -- audience consumes and says "this person is smart" and is therefore a thought leader -- audience then wants to learn more about said thought leader -- audience then proactively seeks more information about thought leader, including what that person's business has to offer or sell. This is a long winded way of saying good thought leaders are engaged in long lifecycle inbound marketing.

3. It is useful to distinguish between your own corporate and/or personal blog, site, Facebook page etc., and third party versions of those things. You can do whatever you want in the former domain, although it may not serve you well. But when it comes to promotion in the latter domain, you must respect the spirit of the community and audience particularly when it comes to promotion.

4. Disclosure is important. If you are going to promote your products and services, it's critical to disclose your relationship to the company and explain your rationale for choosing to promote it. This includes the linking use case you cite in your question. It's important to note that saying something like "our product could help you" is not a rationale - that's a claim. Rationales have facts and proof points.

5. The most important point is that a steady stream of good thought leadership will win you 10x more business than an infinite amount of promotion. This is especially true in business markets where considered purchases and long sales and marketing cycles rule the day.

Why not remove phrases that contain http, www, .com, etc with a popup that says you're being naughty.

There is such a huge push for active selling and making social media (or another other media) generate some profit/benefit/ROI, that some people will undoubtedly turn to selling or pushing a product at the most inopportune times.

At the same time, so many people are tired of being sold to outside of a certain context, that they instantly respond -- often adversely -- to being sold out of turn.

Personally, I don't see that there is much need to sell to people directly in a place like Focus.com or LinkedIn.com when answering a question. Everything you want to tell me about yourself should be in your profile, and if your answer is good enough, I'm going to click on your profile to see who you are.

If your answer annoys, however...

Scott's point #5 is well stated, but clearly not understood by all too many... :)

It is self-promo spam and should be deleted. I would not tolerate it on my LinkedIn Groups. The message and the poster would be deleted without notice.

What these people don't understand is that this kind of content is "push" marketing, made utterly obsolete and counter-productive in the Internet era, which is based on "pull". And getting somebody to visit your blog post does not qualify as "pull" either. It is akin to kidnapping the prospect.

Frank,
I've noticed an increase in the use of LinkedIn for advertising purposes and am with you there. I've notified a few group managers when I think a post is pure promo v informational.
I also believe there's a slippery slope between networking and making others aware of your offering(s).
LinkedIn is (or was) a network of business professionals and I can allow for lots of leeway in "fair business exchange" because (again, my opinion here) a major reason for networking with other business professionals is to make them aware of your offering(s) (notice that I didn't use "self-promote"?).
Also, I do list blog posts I've written when I believe the content adds value to the discussion (and am willing to be told I'm a bore, should people feel that's the case).
I'd appreciate your thoughts and look forward to continuing this discussion with you.
Joseph