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Optimizing Expertise in the Higher Education Sector: Southern Utah University

Higher education institutions are amongst the wealthiest knowledge-based organizations when it comes to expert resources. While many of these organizations acknowledge the value of their in-house experts, they often struggle to harness their expertise and communicate their strengths to external audiences. But when higher education institutions do take steps to market their expertise, the payoff is exponential. Here’s how Southern Utah University (SUU) leveraged expertise marketing to celebrate their staff, grow their digital presence and drive close to a 10x increase in media inquiries. Embracing Expertise SUU has been acknowledged as a leading university in the U.S. Most recently, the U.S. News and World Report’s 2019 Best Colleges list ranked SUU as one of the top Regional Universities in the West and the highest-ranked public school in all of Utah. Southern Utah University President, Scott L. Wyatt, attributes these accolades to the people within his organization: “Our faculty and staff have dedicated themselves to creating the best educational experience at Southern Utah University,” said Wyatt. “This recognition acknowledges their success and the wonderful learning community they have created!” In fact, SUU is so proud of their people that their initial motivation for expertise marketing was to show their experts exactly how much they were valued. SUU’s faculty and staff bring a wealth of expertise in their professional disciplines, but they’re also deeply immersed in the university’s culture and surrounding environment – including the region’s breathtaking national parks. With this in mind, SUU set out to celebrate their experts’ professional and personal achievements through expertise marketing. Optimizing Expert Content While SUU had expert content on their website, they didn’t have a great process for structuring, organizing and publishing. “We had an Expert Directory, but it just didn’t have background structure we needed to nimbly change profiles and deliver up-to-date content,” said Kenzie Lundberg, Internal Communications Specialist at SUU. ExpertFile’s Platform gave SUU the tools they needed to manage their content, but they still needed a bit of help optimizing their expertise marketing program. They reached out to our customer success team to see how they could better leverage the ExpertFile tool and implement best practices for expertise marketing. After auditing their digital presence, we identified three main areas for SUU to focus on: Showcasing Faculty with Relevant Stories: While SUU had some expert content on their website, it wasn’t structured in a user-friendly way. ExpertFile suggested that Spotlight posts would help them make their content more accessible and encourage audiences to get in touch with their organization. Unlike a standard blog post, ExpertFile’s Spotlights enable users to connect with experts or media relation teams directly from the post while simultaneously distributing the post to the Associated Press, Dejero and ExpertFile Search. By using Spotlights in multiple areas of their website, SUU would be able to drastically improve their visibility and gain better traction with media outlets. Highlighting Specialized Areas of Expertise within SUU: SUU used the ExpertFile Platform to organize and attribute areas of expertise in their expert profiles, but our audit revealed that the topics needed to be more specific to garner audience engagement. ExpertFile recommended that SUU add areas of niche expertise to their expert profiles. For example, a biology professor might list topics like “Invertebrate Evolution” or “Cardiovascular Physiology” in addition to the term “biology.” This optimization would make it easier for audiences like journalists and media outlets to find experts on specific topics. Expanding SUU’s Digital Footprint: One of the key advantages of the ExpertFile Platform is how easy it is for organizations to improve their digital presence. For example, the ExpertFile Design Lab allows marketers to quickly create, publish and manage Expert Directories and Spotlights across various pages on their website (click links for examples). To help SUU better utilize this feature, we suggested linking to their Expert Directory and Spotlights directly from the homepage. This would make it easier for audiences to find their expert content and increase opportunities for engagement.  SUU’s Results SUU took the ExpertFile Customer Success team’s advice and their results reflected just how valuable expertise can be to the bottom line. From Q1 in 2018 to Q1 in 2019, SUU went from 3,030 views and 12 media inquiries to 11,949 views and 115 media inquiries. And their success didn’t end there. SUU’s latest analysis of their expertise marketing program revealed some truly impressive results: CALmatters Feature: David Berri, professor of economics, was requested for an interview on equal pay in sports in September 2018. From the interview and stories that followed, SUU received the equivalent of $112,500 in publicity value and 25.3 million unique views. The State Journal Feature: Michael Mower, executive director of SUU Aviation, was asked to be featured in a story highlighting SUU’s partnership with Marshall University in March 2019. The story was published on The State Journal’s website and had the potential to be seen by 800,000 unique visitors. Qualtric’s X4 Conference: Ravi Roy, assistant professor of political science, was asked to join the ranks of the visionaries and leaders behind the world’s most iconic organizations and present at the 2019 X4 conference. Other presenters included President Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Sir Richard Branson. Over 15,000 people attended the conference. “I really enjoy using the ExpertFile Platform,” said Lundberg. “It’s great that I’ve been able to learn about our experts’ backgrounds – we have some really fascinating people. It’s so unique to be able to see all of their talents and to be able to highlight that for them.” Kenzie Lundberg – Internal Communications Specialist SUU The team at ExpertFile is thrilled that SUU has seen so much success from the optimization of their expertise marketing program. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for their organization and their experts. Download the Complete Guide to Expertise Marketing For a comprehensive look at how expertise marketing benefits the entire organization and drives measurable return on investment, follow the link below to download a copy of ExpertFile’s Complete Guide to Expertise Marketing: The Next Wave in Digital Strategy or download one of our tailored Guides for Corporate & Professional Services, Higher Education Institutions, Healthcare Institutions or Association & Not-for-Profits.

7 Tips for Executing Expertise Marketing

Now that you understand the value of expertise and have defined who your experts are, you might find yourselves asking, “What’s next?” Our research with hundreds of organizations reveals that there are major gaps in the way organizations present their expertise and how it impacts the effectiveness of their digital content. The challenge for many marketers is that they don’t know how to approach the creation and publication of expert content, but it starts making a lot more sense when you look at the bigger picture.    Expertise marketing is about evolving our content marketing initiatives to deliver a more engaging experience to audiences. And because it’s so closely related to content marketing, it borrows several of the core principles we already use for our digital channels – but with an expert spin. At the end of the day, we’re simply collaborating with experts to ramp up the credibility, authenticity and integrity of your digital presence.    The Core Principles of Expertise Marketing In the list below, you can see that expertise marketing shares a number of best practices with content marketing. The difference is in how we execute them and the quality of the end product. By following these seven core principles of expertise marketing, you’ll be able to create and deliver the content your audiences are looking for. Discoverable: If you work in the digital space, you know how important search is to your success. Experts produce a wealth of structured information that can be optimized to improve your rank on Google and increase your overall market visibility. Rather than limiting content to an About Us page or corporate intranet, you should make it more discoverable by publishing it across multiple areas of your website. Personal: Expertise marketing takes an inclusive approach to getting expert content mobilized across the organization. But even when we ask our experts to create content, we tend to attribute the outputs to the organization rather than the individual. When showcasing the work of your key employees, it’s important to personally recognize this. It builds trust with your audiences. Remember that people want to deal with people so let your experts be recognized and they will support your growth. Relevant: Organizations often miss opportunities to position their expertise for breaking news and emerging stories. In many cases, you may be an expert in the field, but if your content doesn’t align with current news topics, broadcasters and reporters won’t know to come to you for insights. Your overall readiness to speak to the topics in today’s news cycle greatly impacts customer engagement and your potential for earned media. Credible: Journalists and other audiences looking for expert sources require proof that your employees and their content are trustworthy. It’s not enough to have a headshot and bio on your About Us page. Enhanced profiles should be easy to scan and complete with important fields like education, certifications, research, publications, awards and media/speaking appearances. Visual: If you want interaction, you’ll need to first get your audiences’ attention. Rich media such as video, social media feeds and interactive content are proven to outperform text which can be tedious for audiences to read. It’s now critical to feature multimedia assets in a way that creates a more dynamic presence and maximizes audience engagement. Curated: Audiences are consuming more digital content than ever and it takes a lot of work to feed the content beast. Rather than rushing to market with sub-par content, organizations need to think about how their content serves a range of audiences looking for expertise. Is your content aligned with today’s emerging topics? Is it specialized enough to be relevant? Is it up to date or does it look tired? Audiences are becoming more discerning and even Google is determining search rank based on these factors. Distributed: As specialized third-party search sites grow in popularity, organizations need to ensure that expert content isn’t confined to a single website. This means thinking about social channels, directories, and reputable sites that help get your message out there. By dynamically synchronizing your expert content across internal and third-party sites, you’ll increase your reach, drive more visitor traffic and initiate better digital conversations. Download the Complete Guide to Expertise Marketing For a comprehensive look at how expertise marketing benefits the entire organization and drives measurable return on investment, follow the link below to download a copy of ExpertFile’s Complete Guide to Expertise Marketing: The Next Wave in Digital Strategy or download one of our tailored Guides for Corporate & Professional Services, Higher Education Institutions, Healthcare Institutions or Association & Not-for-Profits.

3 Steps to Earn Local News Coverage

“HOW DO WE GET OUR COMPANY FEATURED POSITIVELY IN THE LOCAL NEWS?” This is the question I get asked the most as a public relations professional, media coach and as a former long-time journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC): how do we get in the local news? The question usually comes from a small, independently-owned business owner — a company or organization that doesn’t have anyone doing marketing or communications. They are looking for LOCAL media coverage primarily — but they don’t even know where to start. It’s understandable for them to ask this question. Earned media is the holy grail of building credibility and reputation — having your executives featured in the news media as experts on a subject. Those stories then get shared on social media and it becomes the gift that keeps on giving, living on in perpetuity on the Internet, helping your search engine optimization. I can tell you this — the local media wants your story pitches. That doesn’t guarantee you’ll get covered. However, local media has been cutback so much and is forced to do so much work in such little time now, that they appreciate a good story idea landing on their desk for consideration — especially during a slow news cycle — and especially if it’s not coming from a slick PR agency voice on the other end of the line. They want authenticity. So, how do you get there? Here are 3 simple tips based on my experiences. In no way am I saying this is the only way to do it — but I’ve seen others have success with it and hopefully you will as well: #1 – Do NOT Hire An Agency Yup. I just said that. And, yes, I do realize I am a public relations professional. However, based on experience, I can tell you the majority of small, independent businesses aren’t going to be able to afford PR firms to get local news. I reiterate we are talking about getting local news coverage — not national news. So, if they’re not going to pay for it anyways, why not give them a hand? I believe in karma. With a little bit of guidance on this blog, you’ll be able to do it yourself. In the past, I’ve helped small companies, pro-bono, get in the media (hoping they make it big and hire me later). In the future, I’ll just send them the link for this blog and save me some time. You can do this. Just stick to the basics. #2 – Prepare A Newsworthy Pitch This is important. And, it can be as complicated and detailed as you want — but for the sake of this blog, I recommend keeping it very simple and keeping it authentic. Answer these questions to decide whether the story you want the media to cover is actually newsworthy from the reporter’s perspective — because they are the people who assess the newsworthiness of a pitch. What is the story? You should be able to summarize the story in less than 30 seconds. Just like a good pitch deck for potential investors, a good media pitch typically involves the identification of a problem or a trend and coming up with a solution for it or insightful analysis in the case of a media story. This is simplified but you get the picture. Why should people care about this story? A good reporter wants stories that appeal broadly to their audience, the public. So, be prepared to proactively explain why people will care about this? Is it timely? Does it impact a broad group of people? Does it solve a problem that’s been impacting society? Who is driving this story? Is it you? Is it one of your employees? Who will be the main interview for the reporter and why them? (FOR TV) What are the visuals? If it’s television, what are some strong visuals the news crew will be able to capture on video? What can viewers expect to see in this story? It will help your TV pitch if you can illustrate a visual image for them ahead of time. #3 – Pick Up The Phone Pick one media outlet you want to pitch your story to and make the call. First decide what news media is good for your story? Is it a story with very strong visuals? Perhaps TV is the way to go. Is it a story that requires a more fulsome conversation? Maybe public radio is the best option. Newspaper is the best if you’re a nervous person and worried about being on TV or radio. Newspaper is the least intrusive of the media. Once you’ve decided what outlet, decide which reporter specifically. No emails at first in my opinion. It’s too impersonal for local news and you risk getting lost in the inbox shuffle. Doing it by phone also allows the reporter to ask any clarification questions they may have, right then and there. Now, if you call the general media outlet phone number, you can end up in phone transfer Hell or end up getting an editor or producer who is putting out six fires and juggling 4 balls. So, you are better to call an individual reporter (perhaps your favourite one). Do this in the first part of the morning before they get too busy. If they’re not there, leave a message and be prepared to call back later. Reporters are busy and may forget to call you back. Don’t take it personally. If you reach them, thank them for taking your call and make your pitch. Get to the point. A few minutes tops for the pitch. If they like it, they’ll tell you. If they don’t like it — again — don’t take it personally and don’t burn any bridges. Thank them for their time. When you get off the phone, contact a reporter with a different media outlet and do it again. Shop that story around and you’re likely to get a nibble. Final Thoughts: This isn’t a science. There are no guarantees. This process is just my personal opinion based on experience. Just be yourself. Be genuine. The reporters will like that as opposed to dealing with professional PR people or communications officers. They may find it refreshing to deal with a “real person” who isn’t trying to spin them. Beyond the initial pitch, whether it’s successful or not, offer yourself as a research resource to them on issues related to your industry — even if it means you won’t be in the story. This is how you build a relationship with a reporter and it may bode well for you in the future. Good luck. Let me know how it goes.

EXPERT PITCHING 101: The Power of Spotlights

Of all the angles and perspectives, when pitching your experts, you need to figure out how yours stands out amongst the rest. How are you getting the perspectives of your subject matter experts out there? Have you figured out your 'bench strength' to know who can comment on what and how? Do you have a good way to get your people out there to the public? Sadly, when asked these questions, most PR and Marketing professionals struggle to give you a straight answer with confidence on how they get their people to comment on certain storylines. With a defeated tone, I often hear, “Well – we have our resident rock star, Professor Jones, who does most of our media interviews” often followed by, “but he’s not always the best person for the story.” Although, most organizations have a list of subject matter experts, they are often over-reliant on the same ‘go-to’ people. Here’s why: First, these people are tried and true. For media, it’s a big deal when contacting an expert for comment - especially if the interview will be conducted on camera. So, why risk the chance of speaking with someone new? The second thing, it’s time consuming. It’s easy to find a previous expert pitch in an email and forward it on to someone new. However, gathering this content for each new person every time an individual is being pitched is very time consuming and difficult to manage. Especially, when this content is strewn across the web and you need to add links for videos on YouTube, books on Amazon, articles on ResearchGate, presentations on SlideShare etc. Once you’ve found the right person for the story, and you’ve aggregated the necessary background content to send, you must tie the loose ends and make the person contextual and relevant. Why is this person the best individual to comment on the story? What angle is this person going to provide? What sort of background qualifies this person to being the subject matter expert on the topic? Don’t worry, help is on the way At ExpertFile, we’ve heard the stories about organizations missing out on opportunities to get national or international media coverage because of their small team. These understaffed teams don’t have enough bandwidth to continuously pitch their people and comment on storylines. Their websites don’t paint a full picture of their experts’ abilities and knowledge. So, we got together with these PR, Marketing and Comms people, and looked to develop a solution. Then we created “Spotlight” - putting all of the necessary tools into the hands of PR, Marketing and Communications teams. Spotlight allows you to contextualize the relevance of your expert with a the story. Write your expert pitch to explain why that person is the best to comment on that topic, and the angle they’d be able to provide. Combine that with rich media profiles created by the ExpertFile team, you now have a central home for all of your experts’ content, and it provides a more engaging representation. So, when the media are vetting, they can now watch a video of that individual speaking in front of a camera, see their latest Media Appearances to know they have experience talking to reporters, and a Contact button for the quickest way to reach that individual, while simultaneously routing to any other internal stakeholders. This last part is important to consider as every story has many angles. Take the recent United Airlines debacle, where a passenger was viciously pulled out of his seat due to the plane being overbooked. Aside from the traumatic events from the video that surfaced of the incident, after the dust settled media are left scrambling to find out more on the protocol for overbooked flights, the global impact (there was a big uproar in China due to initial reporting that he was of Chinese descent), and the economic impact on the company. Which means, you don’t need to limit yourself to an aviation expert in order to comment on an aviation story. Every story has multiple angles - this lets you offer up a unique perspective, pitch a concept others are not covering and insert your expert into an already crowded narrative. Spotlight helps you grow those invisible experts into great sources, and it helps you efficiently pitch when you have resource constraints. Spotlights in Action Since the launch of the ExpertFile News Digest service, we’ve seen some significant results for our customers. We've only been with ExpertFile a short time. We've been using Spotlights from the News Digest and have noticed a lot more attention from media. They're easy to request - and the turnaround is fast. We recently were asked to comment on the Supreme Court nominee and booked a radio show thanks to a Spotlight. It’s been a great way to get additional exposure for Augusta University. We've only been with ExpertFile a short time. We've been using Spotlights from the News Digest and have noticed a lot more attention from media. They're easy to request - and the turnaround is fast. We recently were asked to comment on the Supreme Court nominee and booked a radio show thanks to a Spotlight. It’s been a great way to get additional exposure for Augusta University. -Kelly Jasper Senior Digital Media Coordinator - Augusta University With Spotlights we are seeing immediate pick-up of the stories we want to be part of. It’s letting us tell the Cambrian College story to a wide audience. As well, we’re noticing one Spotlight generates multiple media contacts. Once one outlet sees or reads our expert weighing in on a trending topic - the others follow. It’s an earned media coup. -Shawn Poland Associate Vice President, College Advancement - Cambrian College Once I integrated my Spotlights onto the Emory University business school website, it was so simple for me to have the ExpertFile Newsroom team whip up a pitch and publish it. Especially with limited resource on my team, it’s been a huge help to get my people out there in a more efficient manner. -J. Michael Moore Senior Communications Manager, Emory University - Goizueta School of Business Want to see an example of how to pitch your expert? Send your storyline to success@expertifle.com and we will have our Newsroom team send you a draft Spotlight ASAP. Is there anything that I missed? I’d love to hear what’s worked for you to get your people speaking with the media.

Countering Fake News with Credible Experts: 5 trends you need to focus on to build trust with your content.

With 2018 in full swing there’s no sign that the issue of fake news is going away.  In fact, it continues to plague major social platforms such as Facebook as well as the traditional media players.  This erosion of trust begs the question – how can we ensure the right experts on important topics are at the center of the conversation?  If your organization has experts, there is a silver lining. There has never been a more important time for experts – the real ones – not the “fake it till you make it” collection of posers and promoters that have read a blog on personal branding.  We’re talking about the people who have put in their 10,000 hours of researching, building and publishing. Presenting your top people in a more visible, engaging and approachable way presents huge opportunities for you to build trust and deepen relationships with a variety of audiences, including customers and partners – not just the media.  However, to really capitalize, you have to look closely at how audiences interact with your expert content. Based on our work with thousands of experts and their organizations, we’ve prepared a list of key trends and predictions you need to watch if you’re a communications and digital media professional. Trend 1: Organizations are measuring their “Internal Bench Strength”. The power behind any organization is its people, but many organizations fall short in taking stock of their roster of experts who are capable of building voice and reputation with key audiences. Communicators are increasingly turning to internal pulse surveys and annual assessments that better identify competencies, professional interests and attitudes across the organization.  Smart organizations are using surveys to create an efficient roster of internal experts and match them to the news cycle. Identifying a “core group” of go-to experts who will best benefit from programs such as media training and carefully mapping key topics to experts will ensure the organization is aligned to support communications objectives – both for proactive story development and responding quickly to breaking news opportunities. Trend 2: Organizations are starting to function more like newsrooms. As newsrooms in the print and broadcast world continue to be streamlined and downsized, organizations can play a key role in helping journalists by making relevant content and credible sources more accessible. Incorporating better search features that allow journalists to quickly find experts using simple keyword searches is an important starting point.  Showcasing experts in the context of key news events in a content hub with interesting story angles are increasing in popularity Trend 3: Next generation newsroom platforms will change how media find expert sources. Journalists have a challenging role today amidst a backdrop of fake news and increasing cynicism about the credibility and sources of information.  They still have the same day deadlines, but with an increased responsibility to get the story right, so reliable sources are critical to their success.  So it’s not surprising that journalists, television bookers and producers are gravitating to solutions that make it easier for them to discover, evaluate and connect with expert sources. We recently integrated our ExpertFile global directory into the Associated Press newsroom software which is used by thousands of print, broadcast and digital newsrooms around the world.  The AP, as the world’s leading news organization, recognizes the pressures that publishers and broadcasters are under. They are committed to technology advances that help news organizations.  Few journalists have the time to rummage around in poorly designed corporate websites and university faculty directories looking for the best expert. And if you think it’s just junior reporters using these online tools think again. We’re seeing seasoned journalists from top media outlets including The New York Times, CNN, Time Magazine, NBC, The Washington Post, the BBC, NPR Radio and the CBC making regular use of the ExpertFile platform. The bottom line: If you aren’t thinking about broader distribution of your expert content beyond your website you are missing out. Trend 4: New search technologies are helping organizations cut through the content clutter. Searching for the right person based on attributes such as key topics, publications, or geography inside an organization remains a challenge – even for those organizations that have invested heavily in content management solutions and intranet platforms.  The organic and onsite search user experience has become a top issue for marketing and IT teams. Audiences who have been spoiled by “Google-like simplicity” expect to find relevant information, or they’re gone within seconds. That’s why many organizations are investing in new search technologies powered by machine learning to provide faster discovery and connections with their subject-matter experts.  Last year we built Elasticsearch features right into our platform to save our clients the time and money of doing this for themselves. Search remains one of the biggest opportunities to quickly drive more market attention and audience engagement, as well as to improve internal collaboration between experts. Trend 5: Video will continue to outperform all other forms of content. There’s nothing quite like video to drive the value of owned content.  But remember that video is becoming essential to boosting earned media. We’re continually impressed by the new research that continues to emerge on the power of video content.   Last fall, LinkedIn reported audience engagement numbers for its new video feed feature that showed 20 times more engagement for video vs. all other forms of content on its platform. As more audiences demand video content, so does the demand in television newsrooms for broadcast-ready experts.  That’s why we also partnered with Dejero to help broadcasters who use their platform to search for experts suitable for interviews.   If you are looking to get more television coverage, then you have to invest some of your budget on video to showcase your experts.  We predict that the most successful organizations will adopt a video-centric approach to storytelling, creating snackable multimedia content that connects with a range of audiences.  Many marketers are overthinking video as something requiring a massive production with a big annual shoot”. That doesn’t work for audiences such as journalists who are feeding a real-time news cycle.  Our simple advice – look carefully at your video strategy and identify opportunities to use video across your digital properties in areas such as your homepage, media room and even landing pages. We’re interested to hear how your organization is capitalizing on these trends to better promote your experts to key audiences.  For more information on how ExpertFile can help your organization incorporate the latest software and services innovations into your thought leadership and expert marketing strategies please drop us a line at dtaenzer@expertfile.com.

Working with Faculty Experts to Build Reputation and Market Visibility

The Baylor University Playbook Featured in CASE Currents Magazine PHOTO CREDIT: BAYLOR UNIVERSITY MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS As traditional and social media organizations such as Facebook race to expose and disrupt the onslaught of “fake news”, a major opportunity exists for higher education institutions to more prominently feature their research and expert opinion to quell this steady flow of misinformation. We know that the gold standard of news reports and social media posts are substantiated with expert research and opinion. What gets in the way of comprehensive reporting and dialogue? It’s often the lack of input from great institutions and their experts. More than ever, traditional media organizations need to provide a steady flow of credible information to trump the influx of unsubstantiated content. But the media (from local mainstream editors to award-winning international investigative journalists) struggle with big challenges: growing editorial demands, small budgets, little time, limits to accessing information – all restricting their ability to pursue new research, data and expertise.  So how do they get around this and cut through the clutter? A lot of the responsibility falls on organizations to be more approachable to journalists to help them with expert sources.  Schools doing this well are already boosting their reputation with media and other key audiences by showing the relevance of their institution and faculty. In this month’s CASE Currents magazine, a feature article titled “Are Your Professors Ready for Their Close-Up?” Eric Eckert, Baylor University’s Assistant Director of Media Communications and Faculty Development, shares with other institutions the process his team took to prepare its faculty experts for the media spotlight with an in-house training program and the necessary tools to succeed. the Baylor playbook is a great read for any organization looking to boost media coverage and build reputation. Eckert, whose list of responsibilities at the university includes “Faculty Experts”, notes: “We demonstrate our commitment to this program by investing in tools that spread awareness of our researchers’ work. In addition to the time we devote to training and promoting our faculty members, in 2017 our office started using ExpertFile, a content marketing platform that includes the capability to create dynamic faculty profiles that expose our professors to a wider audience of journalists. We can also manage media inquiries through the platform. The software has reduced the time we spend updating faculty profiles. We can quickly add photos, videos, and links to an expert’s media hits and create faculty spotlights—a feature that helps us rapidly promote a professor’s expertise to take advantage of breaking news.” ExpertFile worked with Baylor to develop a searchable platform and content placements for their experts integrated into the Baylor website. To extend the reach beyond the website, Its experts are now also synchronized with the ExpertFile global experts directory and are also visible to thousands of newsrooms throughout the world through our partnerships with the Associated Press and Dejero. Eckert goes on to explain his organization’s use and success with ExpertFile Spotlight.  Spotlight is a unique content hub solution that is growing in popularity with marketing teams looking to quickly feature their experts in the context of breaking news, emerging stories, valuable research and newsworthy events. Virtually all of our clients are seeing the importance of providing relevant story angles that can be produced to help journalists on same day deadlines. Eckert goes on to speak of his experience with Spotlights:  “In September 2017, we created a spotlight to distribute a Baylor law professor’s comments on President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw authorization for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. A media inquiry received through ExpertFile resulted in a guest appearance on a nationally syndicated radio program in Canada.”  Other coverage generated recently by the Baylor team includes: Are you ‘phubbing’ right now? What it is and why science says it’s bad for your relationships The Washington Post You might be cheating on your spouse with your smartphone The Toronto Star Four bad habits that executives should nix The Economist Can ‘bedtime’ teas really help you fall asleep faster? Women’s Health The better way to take a break Fast Company The profile that experts develop through thought out programs such as Baylor’s can extend well beyond media to other key stakeholders, including potential research partners, funders, event organizers,  student enrollment and employee recruitment. How are your marketing, communications and media relations’ teams working with your experts across the campus to build market visibility and reputation for your institution?   We’d like to know. For more information on how ExpertFile Spotlight works or to read more success stories please drop me a line at Deanne Taenzer at dtaenzer@expertfile.com

Showcase Your Experts to Generate Media Attention and Grow Business

This blog was initially posted by our friend David Meerman Scott on his blog, read it here Some of your most important assets for securing interest in the media as well as educating your buyers are the experts who work at your organization. As a part of a virtual newsroom or other appropriate place on your site and blog, highlighting your employees is a great way to generate attention. When reporters are looking to quote someone in a story, having a name, photo, bio, and examples of content makes it much more likely they will want to conduct an interview. This is especially true when you are newsjacking. Similarly, when buyers are exposed to the smart people employed at your company, they will be more likely to trust and want to do business with you. Yet most companies feature only the senior management team on the site, not those with particular and interesting expertise. University of Ontario Institute of Technology shines spotlight on faculty researchers For example, the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), a public research university located in Oshawa, just outside Toronto, was founded in 2002. That makes it one of Canada’s newest universities. With an enrollment of more than 10,000 students, UOIT offers a range of undergraduate programs, plus graduate programs in science, engineering, health, and information technology. But because it is such a new institution, the marketers and public affairs people at UOIT have to work extra hard to make sure that potential students, donors, partners, and other constituents know about the school. Unlike other universities, UOIT cannot rely on decades of families that send their children and grandchildren to the institution and support it with financial contributions. So one way the school reaches out to new audiences is by promoting with the media the many faculty experts who teach and do research at UOIT. “We focus on the experts within the institution,” John MacMillan, director of communications and marketing at UOIT told me. “We have very few resources, but we have a lot of really interesting people who are focused on very exciting things, like using big data and looking at issues of disability and how it relates to the insurance industry, among other things. We are able to reach the media and people who are organizing conferences or booking speaking engagements.” MacMillan uses the ExpertFile software platform as a way to easily showcase UOIT thought leaders in what they call their Expert Centre. He publishes, promotes, and measures the expert content as a tool to engage business prospects, media, and conference organizers. “We needed to have a way of getting out those important stories that we know are of interest to media, to producers, to editors, but also in many ways to partners, to institutions that might be interested in working with us,” MacMillan says. “And we needed to have a way that did a better job of telling our story to those various groups.” MacMillan started with 26 profiles for faculty in the Expert Centre, and is steadily expanding to a planned goal of 200 profiles. He says that an ideal expert is one who is already comfortable with digital technology. “We’re amplifying the presence of each of those faculty members—whether they are involved in multimedia, whether they have their own websites, or whether they have their own followings—and presenting them in a way that gets some response. Part of their success as faculty members lies in establishing their bona fides with granting authorities or with the government or with others. The Expert Centre augments their legitimacy.” Adding credibility to your newsjacking efforts Having profiles available to the media also helps your newsjacking efforts. When you comment on something that’s newsworthy and a reporter finds it via search, they often want to know biographical information on the person before they quote them. Having a link to the bio of the author of that timely blog post is a great way to add credibility and to increase the liklihood of being quoted. As an example of the action that can come from an Expert Centre profile, MacMillan cites Dr. Isabel Pedersen, an associate professor at UOIT and Canada research chair in Digital Life, Media, and Culture. “She focuses on a sociological perspective of wearable computing devices,” he says. “Her research looks into questions like: ‘When we wear gadgets on our body, how will that shift the reality for us? How will it change the way we interact with other people? How will it allow us to participate in digital culture?’ She is one of the early profiles that we created because she is one of our Canada Research chairs, a distinguished researcher who is working on an area of particular national and international importance.” Dr. Pedersen’s Expert Centre profile contains her bio, photo, links to her Twitter and Google Plus feeds, and a list of past speaking engagements, as well as video content, previews of her book Ready to Wear, and articles she has published. The profile attracted the attention of a reporter from IEEE Spectrum magazine, the publication of the world’s largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence. “They were working on a story about wearable technology, and they wanted to interview her,” MacMillan says. “That’s a magazine from the U.S. that has a much broader readership than anything we’d be able to position her for, and it came along as a result of somebody seeing her profile and deciding that they wanted to speak with her. That’s an example of where we’ve been able to use our resources in a very efficient way, in a manner that gets a story out well beyond our own physical boundaries and that tells about the uniqueness of the work that’s going on at this university.” A lesson learned from the early days of the UOIT Expert Centre was the importance of having the profiles appear in a consistent voice. “When we started out, our assumption was that the individual faculty members or individual experts would develop their own profiles,” MacMillan says. “We realized that would result in a lack of consistency, so we hired a writer, and her job was specifically to interview our experts and to create a story for each of those experts so that when someone does look at this, they’re looking at a consistent story, a consistent tone, and a consistent brand for the university. I’ve learned from creating our Expert Centre that I share some one of the same challenges as faculty members: if you don’t manage your digital presence actively, someone will do it for you. I like to think that our Expert Centre has helped our faculty to curate their digital content as much as it’s helped our university to strengthen its brand.” The ExpertFile platform Your employees are a great resource for generating interest in the media as well as a way to show potential customers and partners that you are doing interesting work. Showcasing them is easier with the ExpertFile platform, a SaaS application that helps organizations make their experts more visible. In my mind, ExpertFile is to showcasing people what HubSpot is to showcasing content. What’s traditionally held many organizations back is that until now, there hasn’t been an online platform to simply organize the growing base of expert content that is being produced across organizations every day. Yet this content is what many audiences are looking for. They want to easily reference everything from biographies to speaking engagements, to social feeds and multimedia assets. “Experts are a great way to humanize an organization and make it more approachable, yet many marketers struggle with how to best showcase these people online,” notes Peter Evans, founder and CEO of ExpertFile. “Adding expert profiles to various sections of your website such as your media room is an ideal way to create more engagement on your site and drive valuable speaking, media and customer inquiries. Experts are quickly becoming the new frontier for content marketing.” Disclosure: I am on the advisory boards of both HubSpot and ExpertFile. Peter Evans, ExpertFile CEO, is a friend.

Earned Media: The Secret Weapon of Brand Building

I was reading the newspaper recently and saw an article about tax filing season. The article outlined some of the challenges facing people during tax season but it also highlighted some of the opportunities and useful tips. It wasn’t the reporter outlining this information — it was a tax expert the reporter had interviewed and used as a source in their story. The information was incredibly helpful. The expert being interviewed humanized the issue by telling stories about people she had helped. I was engaged. And, because I was engaged, I read the story very carefully.  I even remember the name of the expert and the name of her firm. It stuck. I happen to have an excellent accountant — but if I didn’t — I can guarantee I would have called this expert in the story. In fact, I have no doubt she got calls after the article was published. And, from her standpoint and the standpoint of her firm — they paid nothing to be in that article. Not only did they get valuable space in a news story as an expert without paying for the exposure — the reporter likely even thanked her for helping. Advertising executives, marketing agencies and social media “gurus” typically don’t like people like me — news media strategists. We tell clients that the best bang for their buck is “earned media” which means exactly what it says — media that you have earned (and not purchased) whether it be through relationships or by being in an expert database. We help them tell their organic stories by positioning them as experts in their field, which is not easy today given everyone has a LinkedIn account or website calling themselves an “expert” or a “guru”. It’s one thing to proclaim yourself an expert — it’s something completely different to be recognized as one by the news media. You see, despite what some will say, traditional news media is far from dead. Is it facing challenges and reinvention? Absolutely. But, dead? Absolutely not and it’s still the medium by which earned media legends are made. I want to be clear in saying there can be, indeed, a time and place for paid media. The issue is that for too many organizations, it’s the only tangible tool in their toolbox. And it is, by far, the most expensive tool with, questionably, the lowest return on investment. In my opinion, unless you’re spending Coke and Samsung levels of dollars on advertising (multi millions), there’s a good chance your ads are being washed away in the information tsunami — the white noise that is our over-saturated information ecosystem. In many cases, advertising as a stand-alone marketing strategy CAN BE a colossal waste of your money. Even social media marketing and advertising is fast becoming the most cluttered and noisy space for paid and promoted messaging. Due to its lower cost, people are flooding to it making it increasingly more difficult to be heard in the sea of white noise. The fact is that a well-balanced marketing and communication strategy is one that reaches your target audience on a number of levels — some of them could be paid — some of them organically through social media — and the one many people neglect is to serve as experts to drive earned media. It is often neglected because it’s the one marketing tool that requires working with someone who truly understands journalism and journalists — and what their daily and hourly needs are in terms of getting their jobs done. So – yes – it’s hard work and it’s very specialized work. But there are companies, people and tools out there that can help. And, it’s worth the hard work. Being quoted as an expert in a legitimate news story or feature interview can move mountains in terms of building your brand. First of all, being in a news story gives you an instant status AND credibility. In paid advertising, it’s you saying how great you are — it’s self-declared. People are skeptical — they know you’ve paid to say that about yourself; you are blasting out a one way message. However, the traditional media interviewing you is a two way conversation the public is watching in an engaged way. It’s akin to a third party testimonial. In other words, the viewing/reading/listening audience sees a trusted journalist they feel they know who is putting this expert source in their story — this is someone the journalists trusts as an expert source so inherently the message is that the public should trust them as well. In this case, the medium (traditional news media) truly is a big part of the message. You can’t buy that. Legitimacy. Credibility. The foundation of any successful brand. It is earned. I have a college client that I work with. They decided to focus more on earned media, admittedly, with some hesitation. We media coached a number of their professors and Deans. We put a plan into place to develop some tangible relationships with journalists. It started small with one short interview. Then it was two. Then it was a regular spot. And within one year, the amount of earned media they have received has arguably far outpaced the value of all their paid advertising. Some of their people have become go-to experts for the media where they were non existent just a year ago. Prospective students and parents see this college’s experts in the media and immediately associate true tangible value to the institution in considering where to enrol. We built capacity with this College and now they are rolling on their own. They have momentum. This is what you need to reach for. And earned media is the gift that keeps on giving. That newspaper story, radio interview or television panel you were featured in will be shared by the media outlets to their huge social media audiences. Other interested people will then share it further to their networks. This is increases your third party credibility — in some cases reaching more people than the original news story. This rarely happens with ads or paid media and is the secret weapon of earned media. And if you weren’t already convinced, then consider this: earned media creates huge online traffic and can have an extremely positive impact on organic SEO for your website or brand — something paid media can’t do. So, if you’re a hospital, a university or research centre, one of the core issues you’re facing today is recruiting top talent. Recruiting is competitive and complex — yet most potential recruits will begin their research on Google. They will search your institution and see what’s being said about you. If you are getting a lot of positive earned media, that will quickly show up high on your Google search results. The potential recruit reads those news stories and sees your institution is out there with its experts. Even doctors and professors will associate traditional earned media coverage as a measurement in credibility. So, how do you go about increasing your earned media reach? How do you become known as an expert in your field with the media? Admittedly, it’s not as easy as buying a full page ad in a newspapers or boosting a post on Facebook. Earned media is both an art and a science and it requires an intuitive, expert knowledge of the media. Making sure you are listed in searchable online networks that journalists use is a very good start. But there is a caution. You only have one or two chances to prove yourself as a reliable and value added source for journalists. If you become known as a lame or boring guest, you’ll be blacklisted and that opportunity will disappear. So before you go running into the streets declaring yourself an expert ready for national media exposure. Make sure you’re ready to be interviewed by the media because they won’t give you a free ride. They are journalists and not stenographers. You will be asked tough, challenging questions. The key is to be prepared for the opportunity. How do you do that? Well that’s my next column. Stay tuned.

The Many Faces of Expertise: Theres more than one way to define an expert!

As the lead researcher at ExpertFile I spend a lot of my time thinking about the nature of expertise. I often get asked about the criteria that we use to identify experts, and it’s actually a very difficult concept to pin down. One of my favourite services that we provide to our clients is sitting down with them and helping them articulate what exactly “expertise” means to them. Sometimes this is an easy question, sometimes it is very, very difficult. The fact remains that there is no definition of expertise that perfectly encapsulates every organization’s requirements. How do you begin to select your experts to showcase? Well, there are many different ways of exhibiting expertise. A lot of our clients are higher education institutions who are seeking to promote their academics. The evidence demonstrating their unique experience in their respective fields are easily encapsulated in their academic credentials, awards, grants, publications and professional affiliations. Academics are often at the cutting edge of their fields, and are very experienced telling meaningful stories about them. If a reporter is writing a story about the mountains of Pluto, then an astronomer who has dedicated their lives to the study of extra-Neptunian objects is a perfect choice. By contrast, expertise in the corporate realm is more based on personal experience than academic credentials. This significantly differentiates corporate expert marketing programs from higher education. Although education and credentials remain important, it is generally more graded with a personal experience with the topic at hand. For example, a senior engineer at Google (with extensive media experience) would obviously be a tier A source for explaining the science behind contemporary web search engines, despite potentially having no university education in computer science! (Note: Some fields in computer science, such as machine learning, have a much more academic basis). Both the astronomer and computer scientist are clearly experts, but the means that we used to evaluate their expertise are very different. I’m sure that you can see that both academics and practitioners have meaningful comments to add to news reporters. At ExpertFile, we think that the most important skill an expert can have is the ability to distill their domain-specific knowledge into a compelling, relevant and meaningful story. This ability to tell stories transcends experience, or credentials. A Harvard professor may be a nobel prize winner, but unless he can effectively communicate his research to the media and the public, he will not be perceived as an expert. In contrast, a professor at a local community college may have less august credentials, but if they can tell a good story, then they will engage with the public and media much more effectively. In fact, in some cases “lowly” adjuncts bring vibrant life-experiences and direct understanding of the real world applications of academic theory, and may therefore eclipse the atrophied viewpoints of some tenured faculty isolated for decades in the academy. So at ExpertFile, we feel that a balanced representation of both academics and practitioners at every level is crucial for creating a balanced marketplace of experts that is a valuable resource for all our users. Although our platform contains thousands of academics, some from top flight institutions, we also list thousands of incredibly credible, engaging experts with real world, contemporary experience that can often eclipse that of tenured faculty. We are very proud of our network, and curate an active and vibrant community with a diversity of different voices and perspectives on topics of breaking news interest. We don’t open our network to anyone, the ability to distill meaningful and engaging content for others is crucial, so those who are only shilling a product or self-promoting are not welcome. Some people think that only academics belong on an expert network, but at ExpertFile we believe that would exclude many people with extensive expertise. Similarly, it would be the height of elitism for us to restrict our database to tenured academics from top-tier universities. This would do our users a great disservice by removing those voices with a perspectives gained from practical experience.

Part 2: Collaborating with Faculty Experts: A How-To Guide for Marketing Departments & Deans

In my last blog post, I shared some strategies that marketing departments can use to collaborate with their faculty experts (Read Part I). This post will reveal the final five principles that will help you collaborate with your faculty and get better results. 6. Show Quick Wins to Get Momentum As the old saying goes, “nothing succeeds like success.” We all like to back winners. So while you won’t immediately see massive changes across the board on day one, it’s important to show progress. Expert marketing programs deliver significant results over the long run but you must communicate the early wins you achieve in the first few months to create internal momentum. Remember it’s not just about the numbers. It’s just as important to provide qualitative information on the market interactions you are generating for your experts. For instance look at these early indicators: Contribution – Who’s participating in contributing content to your expert center? Look at key types of files such as publications, videos and presentations. Engagement – Also consider sending stats out to your experts showing which profiles get the most amount of web traffic. Other Results – Speak to activities where you used your expert content to do outbound story pitches to media. Also mention coverage you are getting, or speaking engagements that resulted from inquires received from your expert profiles. For instance, one of our ExpertFile clients, very soon after launching their expert center received an inquiry from a major engineering publication for one of their professors, a direct result of their participation in the Expert Center.  Communicating this to other faculty drives engagement. Tip: Send out a quick “Leaderboard” email showing the top five or ten experts who rank highest in completed profiles. This public recognition will get noticed. 7. Opt-In your Experts For Various Research, Writing & Speaking Contributions The famous “help me, help you” quote from Jerry Maguire sums up the importance of collaborating effectively with your experts. They are very busy people; meeting them halfway will ensure mutual success. Get some face time: Emails with requests to send information often will go ignored.  Instead invest the time to set up a quick meeting at their office to review and update their expert profile to make sure it’s up to date. Locate new projects that are in progress such as publications or speaking engagements and set a date to check-in with them. Identify Opportunities: Identify their key research interests and passions to see where they can help in contributing to the overall content mix. Organize Your Content Contributions: Build out a list of key areas for each expert where they can “opt-in” to contribute to your expert marketing programs. Think about various areas they can help as a researcher, writer, or speaker for both internal and external events. Remember, there are many jobs to be done across campus that go way beyond media interviews. Identify who can write blog posts, contribute to content in a research capacity, or even review story pitches. Track these commitments and follow up with your experts and you will see the payoff. Many experts want to help, but it’s important to approach them and organize your interactions with them in an efficient manner for success. Content planning frameworks are a great way to track this information. 8. Put Your Experts in the Spotlight Want to see better results from your media relations efforts? Organize your experts based on areas of interest. Once you’ve curated that list, you can align your experts with breaking news events and other opportunities on your editorial calendar. Here’s how it looks: Set up a “Topic Cloud”: List all the areas of interest that your faculty experts want to speak on. Make sure the terms you use are relevant to what journalists are searching for on Google. Start at a high level and then drill down for a structured taxonomy of terms. For instance if you have a medical expert who speaks about ebola you also should index them under the term “infectious disease” as journalists also use this search term when looking for sources. Align Your Experts with an Editorial Calendar: An editorial calendar allows you to plan content well ahead of time so you can promote upcoming research, publications and other announcements. Mapping experts to these events in advance will deliver better quality output and engagement. For example, there are always stories that recur every year, things like tornadoes, taxation, gas prices and the like. Preparing for these stories allows you to have your angle ready, along with creative assets such as images and videos that will engage targeted audiences. With this work already done, you will have time to attend to other pressing matters. Get Ready to Pounce on Breaking News: The benefits of real-time marketing and helping journalists write the next paragraph of a breaking story are immense, but this is a game of speed. Matching the right expert to the right media opportunity requires this type of pre-planning to identify who the go-to people are within your organization. 9. Develop a Scorecard: Identify Some The Expert Metrics You want to Measure Here are the categories you need to pay attention to as you evaluate your progress as an organization: Contribution – Show stats on how you are seeing growth in published content assets. Track the growth in areas such as the number of published expert profiles, % completion of profiles and growth of published content in categories such as videos, PowerPoint presentations, and whitepapers. Engagement – Ask your digital team to provide stats on the number of profile views each expert is receiving monthly. Try ranking some of your top experts and send out a note congratulating them. Also try to spot trends such as traffic spikes related to topics that may be of interest to the media. These metrics can help you decide what topics you focus on when producing content or promoting your experts to journalists. Inquiries – Requests to contact your experts can come from a variety of audiences, and all can be valuable for internal departments ranging from media relations and advancement to recruiting. It’s important to evaluate what types of requests you are receiving. You can sort and route these requests more efficiently with an online form.  Some suggested categories you can track include: Media Inquiries Speaking Inquiries Expert Witness Inquiries Student or Parent Inquiries (classify by type i.e. Graduate Students, Foreign Students) Donor Inquiries Partner Inquiries Research Collaboration Inquiries Results – While it can be difficult to close the loop on all requests that you generate from your expert marketing efforts, try linking the source of your inquiries back to results. For instance, if you are doing clip reports, highlight specific media coverage that resulted from your efforts. You should also look at other important data such as student inquiries and donor connections that are made through your expert marketing programs. This will help you justify the return on investment and perhaps allow you to secure additional budget and resources from various groups in the organization who benefit. 10. Make Your Experts Feel Special: Don’t Forget Rewards and Incentives Anyone running a successful expert marketing program will tell you that it’s important to embrace some of the “softer” people skills to get results. It is essential to provide feedback and recognition to contributors to keep them motivated to help you. Remember that your experts are in constant demand, so you are competing for their most limited resource – their time. Here are some key things you should consider when working with your experts: Be Visible: Walk the campus and take an active interest in the work your experts are doing. Face-to-face meetings are an important part of enlisting support. Educate Them on Their Value as Experts: Help your experts understand how their contributions can impact areas related to media coverage, student enrolment, donor and alumni relations, and government and corporate sponsorships. Offer Assistance: Help them manage their online presence in your expert center. Make it as simple as possible to update content such as presentations, videos and speaking engagements. Recognize Key Contributions: Send personal notes to experts to thank them for their help. You can also do a shout out via email to a list of key contributors.