Experts Matter. Find Yours.

Whats YOUR Audience Engagement Score

Despite the billions of dollars now being spent on content, many schools have a big problem – Invisible experts. Faculty remain one of the most valuable assets for building market visibility and brand reputation. Yet surprisingly, most schools struggle to develop a strategic presence for their expert content beyond blogs and simple text based biographies and boring head shots. In this age of multimedia and social content, it’s a fact that visitors will go elsewhere if you haven’t created an engaging presence for your expert content. The costs of invisible experts Missed Media Inquiries: Print and broadcast media go elsewhere if you haven’t made it easy for journalists to find, evaluate and contact your experts. Less Engaged Visitors: Lack of multimedia content means visitors won’t spend as much time on your website and will feel less compelled to respond to your calls to action. Poor Discoverability in Search Engines: Google is a starting point for most audiences, so not appearing in the first few pages means lost opportunity for engagement and brand recognition.   Poor Research Recognition: In academia, the lack of details on faculty research means missed licensing revenues, government grants and less opportunities for research collaborations. Faculty Engagement: Faculty want to see an online presence that professionally recognizes their work and builds their reputation. Lost Talent: Faculty prospects want to see how you represent your best people. Publishing professional, engaging expert content helps you recruit and retain the best talent through proper recognition of their contributions. So How Does YOUR Organization Score? Based on our research working with thousands of experts, Fortune 500 clients and leading higher education and healthcare institutions we looked at all the best practices in working with expert content. Then we created a quick diagnostic tool called Audience Engagement Score (AES) that is a simple way to assess how your organization is performing in 5 key areas. AES gives you a score based on a simple 100 point scale. If you are scoring below 70% there is certainly more you could be doing to create an engaging online presence for your experts. Until now, there hasn’t been an industry benchmark by which an institution can effectively measure how well they are promoting their expertise online.   Here are the 5 key areas we assess: Discoverability Can audiences quickly search your website for your faculty experts and their content by topics, keywords and names?   Are you missing important leads because your faculty content isn’t ranking high enough in Google search results? Credibility Can visitors quickly review detailed biographies and overviews of your experts related to their areas of research?   Can past speaking engagements and featured interviews, articles and publications be easily referenced? Engagement Do you have up-to-date content such as videos, photos, publications and social media feeds available for journalists to review prior to booking media interviews?   Are you creating news alerts for breaking or popular topics to make them more interesting to prospective clients and journalists? Responsiveness Have you made it easy for audiences to reach you and your faculty experts within seconds at the moment you have their interest?  Or are they going to other schools? Mobility Is your content well designed for a growing base of mobile phone and tablet users? Remember the experts that walk the halls in your organization are your greatest asset. Would you like to know how your organization scores? If you have 30 seconds, click here and we’ll put together a customized, report for you including helpful industry benchmarks. Send us the website address you’d like us to review and we’ll do the rest. Get YOUR Free AES Report

Top 5 Lessons on how Wake Forest Won a Bulldog Award for Best Online Newsroom

“The primary goal of redesigning our online newsroom has been to help journalists covering Wake Forest do their jobs quicker, easier and better.” – Katie Neal, Executive Director, News and Communications In late 2015, the Communications & External Relations group at Wake Forest University embarked on an ambitious goal: “Tell Wake Forest stories and create a positive experience for news media by providing them as much content, access and support as possible.” Being in the midst of a $1 billion capital campaign, Wake Forest realized that the newsroom was a pivotal tool for helping shape the perception of the university to key audiences. Facing the challenge of dealing with an old newsroom, packaged in a way which made it frustrating for journalists to access the information they needed, the news team was tasked with creating a new and improved visually-compelling, mobile responsive and easy-to-navigate online newsroom. The news team was guided by two goals to address their primary audience of journalists: Give journalists what they want. Help them find the information they need to do their jobs easily and quickly. Make it easy for anyone to share Wake Forest news. And, to achieve these goals, they implemented their strategy which focused on four areas of emphasis: Offer a useful combination of newsworthy content, facts and resources. Showcase visual storytelling capabilities with multimedia options and a flexible web design. Establish a best-in-class expert guide. Prominently feature experts on trending topics and breaking news. Provide easy ways to share news stories, expert pitches, photos and videos to increase visibility on social media while reinforcing the brand. Since the launch of the Wake Forest newsroom in the spring of 2016, they have achieved notable success. They have seen a significant increase in media coverage stemming from their expert pitch efforts, they’ve had a positive social impact in their local community, and they’ve noticed an increase in content consumption. Just last month, Wake Forest was recognized for these efforts by winning the bronze Bulldog Award from the Bulldog Reporterfor “Best Online Newsroom of the Year.” The panel of judges was comprised of working and award-winning journalists, including a Pulitzer Prize winner, and represented a number of different media outlets including The Washington Post, USA Today, Forbes and The Oregonian. So what can we learn from Wake Forest? Here are the Top 5 lessons on how they made their newsroom stand out above the rest. 1. They Wrote Stories for Journalists Instead of taking a reactive approach to getting their experts in the media, the team at Wake Forest opted to be more proactive in getting their experts noticed. This meant presenting relevant news items, story ideas and expert pitches in a central and very visible location. They called it “Headlines”. Realizing that some stories needed a longer shelf life, the news team created the Headlines section to help journalists by providing storyline options. Here, journalists have a picklist of potential stories, a recommended angle and relevant Wake Forest experts who can comment. It’s a one-stop-shop for journalists. Even more, with Headlines, Wake Forest is getting the added advantage of telling their stories. How are you helping with getting your stories out there? 2. They Brought their Experts Forward With leading researchers ready to comment on a range of newsworthy topics – including the unprecedented U.S. election cycle – the news team brought their experts to the forefront by putting them on display in multiple locations of the newsroom. Using ExpertFile’s REST API, Wake Forest was able to extend its expert content on multiple pages, while still having the ability to manage that content from one central dashboard location. This has allowed the news team to be more proactive in updating expert content, capture key engagement metrics and respond to potential opportunities in a timely manner. For instance, the team created a special portal in their newsroom to direct journalists to the best experts that could speak on the election. From The New York Times to NPR’s “All Things Considered,” more than three dozen Wake Forest faculty shared their election-related expertise with top-tier news outlets around the world. Wake Forest professors had more than 1,300 media mentions for expert commentary alone, with the potential to reach more than 2 billion people. What is your organization doing to bring your people forward? 3. They Provided a Clear Path of Communication You’d be hard-pressed to find a page that didn’t provide some sort of contact method in the Wake Forest newsroom. Between having the news team’s contact email and phone number available on every page, and multiple contact buttons on the expert profiles, a journalist would have no problem finding the best method of reaching out. It’s important to present a clear path of communication between the journalist and the institution. Safe to say, journalists tend to be very busy and often time constrained. So, if they don’t find what they’re looking for right away, to put it in the words of Jay-Z, on to the next one. How are you making it easier for journalists to reach you and your communications group? 4. They Made it Easy to Find the Best Person Katie Neal once said it best, “We’re not under the delusion that media wake up and think they should go to Wake Forest first when they are looking for experts.” For the Wake Forest team, providing multiple avenues for experts to be discovered was a major objective. And, where do media look first for experts? Google. “We’re not under the delusion that media wake up and think they should go to Wake Forest first when they are looking for experts.” Google likes good content. Enhancing the discoverability of Wake Forest’s expert content on the world’s most commonly used search engine, is one of the best ways to attract media. However, the Wake Forest News and Communications team didn’t stop there. They added easy search functions to their pages. How are you ensuring your experts’ discoverability? 5. They Didn’t Limit Themselves to the Newsroom It’s important to think outside the box. Wake Forest exemplified this by extending their reach beyond the newsroom. Through syndicating expert content on different networks (ExpertFile.com) and promoting with various social platforms (Twitter), Wake Forest was able to access a much wider audience. Remember, distribution can take you from good to great. How are you thinking outside of your website? So, there you have it. By following these lessons learned from Wake Forest University, you too can begin to engage with media more proactively. To summarize, the key questions to ask yourself when creating a newsroom to engage with media are: How am I putting my stories in front of media? How am I currently presenting my media experts on my website? How am I making it easier for media to contact me and my team? How am I enhancing my experts’ discoverability? How am I extending beyond the reach of my website?

Secrets to Promoting your Experts to Chase Producers: What exactly do they need from you?

Many moons ago, when I worked in a newsroom, my Executive Producer once said to me, “We only really work five days a year, the other 360 are just filler.” He was being cheeky and clearly exaggerating – but what he meant was that outside of elections, plane crashes and visits by the Pope or President, assignment editors are constantly scrambling to feed the beast and fill a newscast or a paper. It’s even worse in what we now know as the 24-hour news cycle. The news doesn’t sleep anymore. There’s no down time and a lot of time and space to fill. The reality is, with the modern news cycle now being immediate, never ending, online and everywhere the need for content is greater than ever before. From local papers, radio affiliates and even national broadcasts, the need for expertise, opinion and perspective is one of the few common denominators in journalism. And, when it comes to the 24-hour national TV news networks, the demand is even higher with reporters, researchers, technicians, assignment editors, executive producers and chase producers all hunting and scraping for issues and experts to illustrate those issues. This is great insight to be aware of if your role is to get your experts in the news. I worked with Mark Borchiver early in my career. He’s the Associate Producer, CTV National News with Lisa Laflamme which has a viewership of millions across the country. He helps put the show together every night and can tell you that the chase desk is busy all day to feed 24-hour news. They rely on a steady stream of guests and experts. On National News, CTV has a lot of go-to people who either contact CTV or CTV will call them.   “The real challenge is to bring fresh talent to the newscast,” Borchiver says. “We need to bring new experts and talking heads into the news family because there’s a certain audience fatigue and predictability factor, when the same guests keep showing up. “ And with media, presentation is just as important as being primed.  If you are going to be interviewed or appear on a show that has an audience of a million critical viewers, be prepared. If you are not prepared, there’s a good chance you won’t be invited back, says Borchiver. “Experts need to be media trained and ready for air. Not everyone has the same skill level and not everyone can be taught.” Every news market is different. There are different perspectives, news approaches and quite honestly finding and accessing credible and reliable expertise isn’t as easy as one would think. Even for a news giant like Al Jazeera, in Qatar, finding that ideal person to lend perspective or context isn’t easy. “Part of my job is selecting which stories deserve analysis or reaction from what we call ‘guests’,” Morgan Waters tells me. Morgan, who I also worked with back in my early TV days is now the Executive Producer, Aljazeera English Global. A big job, with high expectations and obviously little room for error. “For us this means a segment, usually live, where anchors conduct interviews for about three to five minutes on a particular subject. This is very important for our organization so I usually deal with about a dozen guest segments every day, plus next day guest planning.” At Al – Jazeera they have a team of interview producers whose job it is to find, pre interview and book these people. They usually go for people through credible organizations that the network trusts, such as NGOs, think tanks, and academic institutions although each interview producer has their own contact list which also include activists, bloggers and civil society. But that isn’t where the credibility check ends. Waters also reminds me, “An expert may work for a credible organization and appear regularly in the media but if I suspect his information is questionable then I won’t ask to book him. “ So in a nutshell, here it is plain and simple. There’s a never-ending news cycle out there. And it needs to be constantly fed. Some organizations wait to be called, while others or pro-actively building relationships with reporters and producers to get their experts seen, heard and read.  Many have signed on with ExpertFile, a procured expert database full of people who want to be interviewed and are ready for it. Offering up your in-house expertise and providing someone who is credible, reliable, objective and can shed light, a unique perspective or a fresh angle on news story helps journalists deliver the content they need to the audience that wants. You win. They win. Win-Win. So go feed the beast. Have your organization seen in the news, heard by a massive audience and promoted across multiple media platforms. All for free. Well, free with the exception of some serious effort and savvy on your part. But cost-free for your organization. So what do organizations need to know? Be Fast: When news breaks be responsive.  Take advantage of the moment and offer up your expert. Delays reduce your chances that you will get scooped by another organization. Be Prepared: If you offer someone up to media – make sure they have some degree of media training. Be Pro-Active: Don’t wait for media to come to you. Go to them. Be Current: Ensure your expert information such as biographies, publications, photos, videos are easy to review and up to date. Be Discoverable: Get your content outside of your own website.  Often media won’t look there first. Ensure your experts can be found in other ways such as the ExpertFile database at  Expertfile.com which is home to thousands of experts who are just a click away for media.

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.

Part 2: How Duke University doubled their media hits by showcasing faculty

Last week we shared the first five major rules of Expert Marketing that are currently being used by Duke University to double their media hits (READ PART I). We also developed some strategies and best practices for higher education institutions to better market their experts. In this blog post, we are going to share our team’s final insights into how to better leverage your experts. Rule #6: Create Once, Publish Everywhere At one time we just had to focus on creating a news site. That’s now expanded to a multi- screen environment that requires we thread content into sites that are being accessed from desktops, mobile devices and even digital signage that is often scattered throughout the campus. Sit down with your digital team and map out how to distribute media across multiple channels such as social networks, news-feeds, homepages, faculty sites, as well as faculty profiles in your expert center or speakers bureau. Many schools still don’t have the “responsive” capability to push their news content out to mobile users. Insiders Tip: Duke applies a “create once publish everywhere” model to ensure that time-crunched journalists can easily connect with their expert commentary, whether they access the website’s desktop or mobile versions, or through a wide range of social channels. Rule #7: Get Your Expert Quotes Ready for the Real-Time News Cycle Organizing a system with your faculty to publish pre-approved expert quotes on your website can pay huge dividends, as news outlets have fewer reporters covering more territory. Many of our clients tell us they are seeing less experienced reporters who have much less time to research and interact with media departments. Having pre-approved quotes ready to go makes it much simpler for media, making you much more attractive to them. This pre-planning can minimize the strain on faculty experts during class hours. An added bonus is that it also minimizes misquotes. Insiders Tip: Duke University aims to provide daily quotes on its website by midday as part of its “news tips” section. While these quotes generally take less than one hour to produce, they have proven most effective. Almost all of their news tips have been used by the media since they started producing them in June 2014. Rule #8: Promote Your Core Areas of Expertise First With so much going on throughout the campus there are a lot of opportunities to promote a diverse range of topics to the media. However, it’s really important to identify the core topics where you have expert commentary in demand. The best media relations people have established their school as go-to sources for select topics. You should also stake your claim. What groundbreaking research can you find on the campus that relates to key news events? Think about what reporters need to communicate to their audiences. Do you have faculty who are credible, approachable and engaging on these topics? Invest the time with your team to develop a master topics list and tune this list regularly based on upcoming faculty contributions and news cycle developments. Insiders Tip: Duke University identified a number of key factors that contribute to the media take-up rate such as the degree of media interest in a story; the relative supply of experts available to media and timing considerations. While it’s impossible to control all these variables, They learned, based on trial and error, that concentrating on core topics where they have an academic focus such as politics, law and the environment generated more coverage. Rule #9: Focus your Editorial Calendar on Key Event Anniversaries It is important to get the mix right when looking for media opportunities. While it will always be to your advantage to leverage breaking news if you can mobilize your faculty experts, there is also a predefined editorial flow to the news across a calendar of special and recurring events. It’s crucial that you get some of these major opportunities on the calendar and develop a campaign to enlist faculty experts. For example, Black History Month and the Super Bowl are both annual recurring events happening in February. It’s good to map these along with other special events that are periodically staged or non- recurring such as a G8 Summit or the upcoming papal visit to the US. If you can mobilize your experts to provide value for media who need to start researching these events well in advance you increase your chances of coverage. Insiders Tip: The Duke University media relations team actively monitors upcoming anniversaries and other timely events that reporters are likely to write about. Events that have the potential to generate stories that Duke can leverage with their experts are reviewed by the communications team in twice weekly scrum meetings. Rule #10: Leverage Tools such as Twitter to Grow your Media Contacts Much of the success you will have with faculty experts hinges on your ability to take your message to the market. So it’s important to focus on grooming and growing your media contacts. Besides buying access to media lists from vendors such as Cision, PR Newswire, Marketwired and Meltwater; don’t forget about Twitter. It provides a huge opportunity to build a list of influencers and key opinion leaders. Using a simple topic and hashtag searches on Twitter, you can begin to map various clusters of people who are following specific news beats that may be relevant to your institution. Remember that media outlets tend to follow other media outlets for story angles and media sources. Having a well organized list of people that have interacted with you in the past is a large part of distributing your news faster to a larger audience. It’s important to do Twitter searches to research specific reporters you want to pitch to see where their interests lie. Insiders Tip: Duke University refines its media lists continually using Twitter. It looks at the social graph of reporters who make use its online news tips to identify other journalists to add to their database.

Part 1: How Duke University doubled their media hits by showcasing faculty

In the February 2015 issue of CASE Currents, Steve Hartsoe, a Senior Editor at Duke University and former Editor for the Associated Press, shares some powerful strategies for working with experts on campus. This article is a must read for any organization looking to build reputation through more focused media relations. Now you might be thinking that Duke is an already renowned university with an extensive network of media contacts so this stuff is easy for them. Not true. Doubling your media hits isn’t easy for any organization. Duke made some major improvements that set them up as a go-to destination for journalists to find credible, relevant sources. However, even implementing just a few of their ideas could drive some big results for your organization – without having to blow out the size of your marketing team or budget. Spoiler alert. The Duke strategy centers on being more strategic and collaborating better with faculty experts. The best practices that the Duke media relations team employed should inspire any organization that wants to generate more coverage. Whether you are looking for media visibility to help drive student enrolment, alumni giving, or corporate partnerships, there are valuable lessons to be found in this article. For the full article check out the January/February issue of CASE Currents at www.case.org. Please note you will need a subscription to view. So what’s going on at Duke that’s driving all this media coverage? To examine this further, our ExpertFile team weighs in below with the first five major rules of Expert Marketing for Schools and summarizes some insider tips they shared from their experience. Tune in next week for the finale! Rule #1: Organize a Team to Help Focus on Expert Marketing As with most initiatives, it’s vitally important to get the support of senior people in the organization when developing an increased focus on faculty experts. Gaining the support of a group of progressive deans within the school as well as notable faculty can be critical. Appoint a specialized team that can help you establish media visibility as a priority for your school. Build your case for an expert marketing program and ask for their support in developing your plan, then set up some regular meetings and make this team visible on the campus. It will help you develop a sense of collaboration and continuity. Insiders Tip: Duke built a “rapid response team” within their media relations department that had a clearly defined meeting schedule. They met twice a week and kept meetings to just 30 minutes in length. These regular check-ins helped identify breaking news opportunities and inspired a sense of priority and established momentum. Rule #2: Strategize with your Experts It’s amazing how many colleges and universities’ media relations departments we talk with that are disconnected from the interesting research conducted by their faculty. Ironically, it’s this research, as well the academic interests and passions of your faculty that feed the most engaging stories you can tell to the media. Make sure you have a good understanding of current and upcoming research that you can pitch. You should also identify what publications and books are being planned by faculty and see how you can collaborate with them. Insiders Tip: Duke invested the time to meet personally with faculty members to get a deeper understanding of their research and identify relevant topics that could be pitched to the media. They also invited some faculty to media meetings to brainstorm on potential news stories. It’s this kind of contact that helped make faculty more responsive to media opportunities and respond to deadlines. Rule #3: “Opt-In” your Experts for Different Types of Contributions It’s becoming more understood by faculty that media coverage can be a very good thing for their career and their organization. However, be careful of one size fits all approaches in recruiting faculty to contribute their expertise. Contribution from faculty comes in different forms. Faculty can be engaged in a broad spectrum of activities that run from broadcast TV interviews, blogging, and even helping speak at recruiting or alumni events. It’s good practice to create a master checklist of possible engagement types and to take an inventory of what your faculty experts may want to opt-in for. Having this inventory allows you to better plan for content development projects and also ensures that faculty clearly understand the duties that are expected of them in a media relations capacity. Insiders Tip: Duke’s media team recruited their experts for a range of contributions based on the level of interest and comfort level of faculty. And they made it clear that agreeing to be a media source meant responding promptly to incoming media inquiries. Rule #4: Provide Media Training and Support While every campus has it’s faculty “rockstars”, who can rise to the challenge of any breaking news opportunity, many experts on the campus can benefit from some form of media training. It’s critical to your media strategy’s success that you provide the experts with support and opportunities to practice their speaking skills in front of a camera. If you expect more experts to step up to the podium, it’s important to make the investment. However, make sure you design these programs to be engaging and don’t overwhelm your faculty by making them too exhaustive. Often they can be coordinated over lunch or in the early morning before classes start and can be focused on key areas such as: public speaking, blogging tips, video training, and social networking guidelines. Get a sense of where your key gaps are among faculty before you dive in. Also remember these sessions can provide valuable opportunities to shoot video interviews, B-Roll clips and even headshots that can be used to provide media assets for your website, alumni magazine and other properties. Insiders Tip: Duke invests in media training for its faculty experts and administrators offering a two and a half hour media training workshop each year to participating faculty, covering interview techniques via phone, video and social media. Rule #5: Meet Journalists on Their Terms Reporters appreciate media relations contacts that help them get their job done. Operating under tighter breaking news cycles they have less time to discover and research experts. In todays competitive media market what sells papers or builds ratings is often what gets covered. You have to focus your experts on helping journalists tell stories that matter to all those “eyeballs”. The best media relations professionals understand the value in building relationships with journalists. These connections are often essential in establishing your organization as a relevant, trusted source of expert commentary. Given the importance of these relationships, we’re also seeing the renewed popularity of industry conferences hosted by organizations such as the MAKI Network (www.thembasite.com) and Wynne Events – BAM Conference (www.wynneevents.com). These events give schools a unique opportunity to listen to and meet journalists from major news networks. ExpertFile sponsored both MAKI and Wynne events this past year, and we were impressed by the roster of global media attending. Insiders Tip: While Duke still distributes the requisite daily news on campus events and other university happenings, they don’t get mired in all of this content. They also focus a great deal of their activities on expert content that positions their university as a go-to source that is both credible and relevant to a variety of media audiences. READ PART II of How Duke University doubled its media hits by showcasing faculty experts.

Alphabet And Fitbit: Could This Be the Competition the Wearables Segment Has Been Waiting For?

If Google can use FitBit to dominate the wearables market as they did with the android operating system for smartphones, the acquisition could make sense. Of course, the major player in this market is Apple. Circuit Seed for configurable analog in scalable digital and CoreLogika for hyperspeed logic computing are technologies that could lead to a significant improvement in performance over the Apple watch. These technologies are built using the Complementary Current-Injection Field-Effect Transistor (CiFET). This configurable platform uses the ratio of the source and drain channels to meet specific performance requirements for each application. The circuits are less complex, linear without correction circuitry, and much smaller using a fraction of the power consumption of similar components. They generate less heat and operate over a wide temperature range - improving the performance, sensitivity and reliability of the circuits. This results in longer battery life and more accurate measurements, making them suitable for monitoring applications for physical activity and health. Alphabet already has a health science division that will be an important asset. If the acquisition is successful, we expect to see an android smart phone integration with Fitbit that could extend the monitoring, data collection and analysis capabilities. The simplicity of Circuit Seed makes the RF connectivity an easy task to complete. For more information, please contact: Lesley Gent Director Client Relations, InventionShare™ lgent@InventionShare.com (613) 225-7236, Ext 131 Or visit our website at www.CircuitSeed.com

Facebook Buys Startup Building Neural Monitoring Armband

Facebook has talked a lot about working on a non-invasive brain input device that can make things like text entry possible just by thinking. So far, most of the company’s progress on that project appears to be taking the form of university research that they’ve funded.  With this acquisition, the company appears to be working more closely with technology that could one day be productized. Circuit Seed for continuous analog signal processing and Corelogika for discrete digital logic could greatly enhance the success of commercialization of Armband. These are building blocks to build low power high performance circuits that result in products that are smaller, very low power consumption, increased sensitivity and accuracy and they are insensitive to process variation and temperature that are challenges for other devices. Since they use standard CMOS digital processes with no extensions, the designs are less complex, fewer bill of materials resulting in lower cost, higher yields and better margins. For more information, please contact: Lesley Gent Director Client Relations, InventionShare™ lgent@InventionShare.com (613) 225-7236, Ext 131 Or visit our website at www.CircuitSeed.com

Couples Who Tailgate Together Stay Together, Says New Baylor Research

Marketing researcher and husband team up to study tailgating’s impact on relationships For millions of football fans across the United States, fall is the time to break out the grills, load vehicles with coolers and food and games, and gather with friends for the time-honored tradition of tailgating. It’s a tradition that Baylor University’s Meredith David, Ph.D., assistant professor of marketing, and her husband, Luke Lorick, have been enjoying since their undergraduate years at the University of South Carolina. The couple partnered on a recent research project to better understand tailgating’s impact on relationships and well-being. David is known nationally for her studies of phone snubbing – “phubbing” – and smartphone addiction. Lorick owns and operates Tailgating Challenge, a website devoted to testing and reviewing tailgating equipment, and he launched National Tailgating Day, which is celebrated annually on the first Saturday of September. “I noticed how at tailgates people actually interact with each other and are not glued to their phones like we see in restaurants and many other settings,” David said. “This led us to combine our expertise to study the impact of tailgating together on well-being.” The researchers surveyed 143 tailgating adults (44 percent were female) who answered questions about their partners and their respect toward that person. The results show that individuals who tailgate with their significant other report higher levels of respect and relationship satisfaction, David said. The results of the study will be presented later this month at the Atlantic Marketing Association Conference. “Tailgating fosters the human-to-human, face-to-face interactions and connections that we as humans need but yet find hard to come by as a result of cellphones and ‘phubbing’ tendencies,” David said. With over 70 million people tailgating annually, spending on average $150 on each occasion, David said this research offers important guidance for marketers, particularly in terms of positioning strategies in marketing communications for tailgating-related products and events. “For example, in advertisements, marketers should focus on portraying couples, or even friends, tailgating together as this may resonate more and help build bonds with the products they sell and the markets they are reaching out to,” David said. David said she and her husband knew that tailgating strengthened their relationship, but they wanted to dig in to see if it was – or could be – helpful to others. “We have lived and experienced these effects ourselves, so we wanted to determine if this impacted others the same way,” she said. “We found that tailgating helps strengthen relationships, in part, by helping people escape the hustle and bustle of everyday life. They disconnect from their TVs, laptops and cellphones and make real connections with loved ones and friends.” ABOUT MEREDITH DAVID, PH.D. Meredith David, Ph.D., serves as assistant professor of marketing in Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business. Her research focuses on marketing strategies with an emphasis on consumer behavior and well-being. Recently, her research has explored how new media technologies, including smartphones, impact personal and workplace relationships. She has also published research related to customized pricing tactics, interpersonal attachment styles and the pursuit of health goals. Her research appears in numerous professional and academic journals and she has been interviewed and quoted for her research in national and international news outlets, including ABC News, Fox News, Oprah.com, Redbook, Consumer Reports and Health magazine. ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY Baylor University is a private Christian University and a nationally ranked research institution. The University provides a vibrant campus community for more than 17,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas through the efforts of Baptist pioneers, Baylor is the oldest continually operating University in Texas. Located in Waco, Baylor welcomes students from all 50 states and more than 90 countries to study a broad range of degrees among its 12 nationally recognized academic divisions. ABOUT HANKAMER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY At Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business, integrity stands shoulder-to-shoulder with analytic and strategic strengths. The School’s top-ranked programs combine rigorous classroom learning, hands-on experience in the real world, a solid foundation in Christian values and a global outlook. Making up approximately 25 percent of the University’s total enrollment, undergraduate students choose from 16 major areas of study. Graduate students choose from full-time, executive or online MBA or other specialized master’s programs, and Ph.D. programs in Information Systems, Entrepreneurship or Health Services Research. The Business School also has campuses located in Austin and Dallas, Texas. Visit www.baylor.edu/business and follow on Twitter at twitter.com/Baylor_Business.