Experts Matter. Find Yours.

Make Your Expert Profile Stand Out!

Successful organizations know that leveraging their leadership and subject matter experts is important to driving visibility and value for the organization. Most About Us pages and corporate bios fail miserably in their goal of engaging key audiences – and they are often very out of date. Based on our years of working with corporate, professional services clients, academic and healthcare institutions and others, we’ve put together the “Top 5 Tips for Creating a Winning Expert Profile”. By following these simple tips we’re confident you’ll be well on your way to driving better conversations with prospective customers, media, analysts, conference organizers and others. We hope these tips provide you the starting point for better showcasing your people. Tip #1:  BE VISUAL Your Headshot Creates a Human Connection Profiles with photos get 14x more views (according to research from LinkedIn). A good head shot humanizes your profile and helps establish trust. Make sure to invest in some professional headshots. Avoid busy backgrounds and lose the props unless they are relevant. Tip #2:  BE SEARCHABLE Choose Topics to Help You Get Discovered Pay very close attention to which topics you list on your profile as they help determine search results. Find the right balance between general and specialized terms. For example “tax inversion” is a specialized accounting term. But “offshore tax”, “tax havens’”; and “corporate tax planning” or geographic tags related to specific tax havens such as “Bermuda” are more likely search terms used by various audiences looking for a tax expert. Tip #3:  BE APPROACHABLE Create a Tagline that Draws People In Your professional headline (tagline) and biography must create and sustain attention. Don’t misuse this prime real estate to simply restate your current job title. Focus on your value proposition to advertise what you’re trained in and summarize the experience you have. Keep it concise using relevant keywords. Here’s an example of a powerful headline for an accomplished expert: “15 Years Experience in Commercial Real Estate | Author | Adjunct Business Professor | Keynote Speaker | TV & Radio Guest | Architectural Enthusiast.” Tip #4:  BE DESCRIPTIVE Focus Your Biography on Accomplishments Keep your biography clear, descriptive and up to date. Describe your responsibilities in concise statements led by strong verbs. Incorporate industry specific keywords and topics. Whenever possible, quantify your accomplishments and responsibilities with numbers or percentages. Don’t forget to mention international experience and any special awards or recognition you received. Remember it’s not your life story or a chronology of all your work experience. Leave that for your resume. Tip #5:  BE ENGAGING Multimedia Helps Prove Your Expertise Journalists and conference organizers will often avoid profiles that don’t have multimedia as they need to see how well you present your ideas in front of an audience. Videos, photos and audio of podcasts or interviews provide quick validation of your ability to communicate your ideas. If you’re an author upload a thumbnail of your book. Upload clips of your speaking sessions. Did you appear on TV? License a copy of the interview or upload a screenshot of the broadcast.

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

In this Era of Fake News and Alternate FactsExperts are King

There’s nothing new about fake news. Satirical media outlets such as The Onion have been around for a decade giving us a good laugh. But somewhere in the past 12 months, something changed for the worse. The wool that was being pulled over people’s eyes wasn’t so obvious anymore. Satire and bad humour were replaced by visceral accusations, conspiracies, and smear campaigns. How did we get to this point, and what can be done to stem the tide? A sure sign that we had a problem was a development that was apparent in the last presidential election. New voices were on the national scene branding our traditional media outlets as biased, and elitist. We saw the phrase “mainstream media” become a bigger part of the conversation. Now we have to contend with “fake news.” Unlike traditional journalism fake news outlets deliberately spew wrong information. In an effort to get a story out, mistakes will happen. But in the world of fake news there is no retraction or correction of these mistakes — even when they are exposed as blatantly untrue. Further damage ensues when social media then acts as an enabler as fake news articles get amplified to millions of people, who are clicking away, feeding advertising revenues to these publishers. No matter what your political stripe or where you stood regarding the recent US election, fake news was rampant on both sides spreading false information, invoking anger, and deceiving the public. More recently, a fresher version of fake news has emerged as “Alternate Facts.” A term made famous by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway as she defended the statements made by Press Secretary Sean Spicer who lectured and insisted that the crowd present for President Trump’s swearing-in was “the largest audience ever to It seems that the whole nature of the game has changed almost overnight. Even the White House press gallery isn’t immune to these developments. This week’s Saturday Night Live sketch brilliantly sums up the aversive relationship that we’re seeing develop between the media and the new administration. (Note: For the record, the photo at the bottom is NOT a C-SPAN broadcast. It’s a comedy sketch. It did not really happen. This is NOT Sean Spicer in the photo below — it’s an actor portrayal). Perhaps most ironic for me is how believable fake news can appear to be. A friend of mine, a former investigative journalist commented that “given the outright absurdity of the actual “real” news cycle,” it’s getting hard for people to sort fact from fiction.” Perhaps this says as much about society as it does about media. So Where Does All This Leave Us? Some say the solution is as simple as removing the bias from our news media. The problem is, I know quite a few (real) journalists and they are serious about reporting facts. They work in newsrooms and report the news, they tell stories, but gathering and checking facts are what define them. As they work to a set of professional standards and deliver real information. However, we’re witnessing a massive change in the way that ideas are shaped and communicated to the public. Sadly, the traditional avenues of information flow and the mutual respect that even democratic nation states have had with the media appears to be eroding. There is also a disturbing undercurrent of thought that traditional news organizations are biased, and every outlet is always serving a hidden agenda. Recent events have prompted the need for news organizations to brief their journalists on how to govern themselves in these very “interesting times.” John Daniszewski, Vice President for Standards for Associated Press in a recent blog post called for clarity regarding the definition of the so-called “alt-right.” “We should not limit ourselves to letting such groups define themselves, and instead should report their actions, associations, history and positions to reveal their actual beliefs and philosophy, as well as how others see them,” writes Daniszewski. Other news organizations are looking at recent events and taking the opportunity to internally brief their journalists. In a recent message to staff, Reuters Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler wrote about covering President Trump the Reuters way: “The first 12 days of the Trump presidency (yes, that’s all it’s been!) have been memorable for all — and especially challenging for us in the news business. It’s not every day that a U.S. president calls journalists “among the most dishonest human beings on earth” or that his chief strategist dubs the media “the opposition party.” It’s hardly surprising that the air is thick with questions and theories about how to cover the new Administration. So what is the Reuters answer? To oppose the administration? To appease it? To boycott its briefings? To use our platform to rally support for the media? All these ideas are out there, and they may be right for some news operations, but they don’t make sense for Reuters. We already know what to do because we do it every day, and we do it all over the world. To state the obvious, Reuters is a global news organization that reports independently and fairly in more than 100 countries, including many in which the media is unwelcome and frequently under attack. We don’t know yet how sharp the Trump administration’s attacks will be over time or to what extent those attacks will be accompanied by legal restrictions on our news-gathering. But we do know that we must follow the same rules that govern our work anywhere.” Adler goes on to provide a set of rules for the Reuters team that I think are very wise, especially given the current environment. Do’s: Cover what matters in people’s lives and provide them the facts they need to make better decisions. Become ever-more resourceful: If one door to information closes, open another one. Give up on hand-outs and worry less about official access. They were never all that valuable anyway. Our coverage of Iran has been outstanding, and we have virtually no official access. What we have are sources. Get out into the country and learn more about how people live, what they think, what helps and hurts them, and how the government and its actions appear to them, not to us. Keep the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles close at hand, remembering that “the integrity, independence and freedom from bias of Reuters shall at all times be fully preserved.” Don’ts: Never be intimidated, but: Don’t pick unnecessary fights or make the story about us. We may care about the inside baseball but the public generally doesn’t and might not be on our side even if it did. Don’t vent publicly about what might be understandable day-to-day frustration. In countless other countries, we keep our own counsel so we can do our reporting without being suspected of personal animus. We need to do that in the U.S., too. Don’t take too dark a view of the reporting environment: It’s an opportunity for us to practice the skills we’ve learned in much tougher places around the world and to lead by example — and therefore to provide the freshest, most useful, and most illuminating information and insight of any news organization anywhere. Winning back the public trust — Why Experts Matter Perhaps a way to help reverse this trend is to ask more of our experts within our organizations, and get them to contribute more to these important conversations. It’s about getting our academics, physicians, professionals, and leaders in their respective fields to contribute more to help the media present a more balanced set of perspectives in ways that engage the public. In this new era, it appears that many experts are invisible to the media on a range of big issues such as climate change, economic data, security, crime and healthcare policy. Opinions — not always informed opinions — are taken as fact. People without qualifications are being asked to speak on topics that require years of study, research, and experience. This is why, now more than ever, we need to see a return of intelligence and knowledge to present true facts. Credible Experts Matter Credible sources are vital in helping ensure the proper degree of research has been done. Published work, peer-reviewed studies, as well as policy that has been developed and practised all play key roles in determining an actual expert. Proven credibility cuts through rhetoric. It promotes the delivery and flow of facts as opposed to feeding only one side of a debate. Being Approachable Matters We have to agree that the current sentiment that many have toward traditional institutions and their experts is that they are not providing enough practical information of benefit to the public. The term “ivory tower” comes up frequently to describe environments such as universities and think tanks. While we need these environments of intellectual pursuit they cannot be seen as disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday life. Transparency Matters Do you know where your information is actually coming from? The flow of money into the development of fake news and so-called “experts” who are pushing agendas is tremendous. We’ve seen it recently with the sugar industry — much like the tobacco industry who literally wrote the book on manipulating and re-wrapping expertise and research in the middle of the last century — setting ideas on nutrition back decades. The market is crying out for a more consistent way to discover and evaluate the credibility of experts. We need a quick and trusted way to review their education, background, publications as well as their affiliations. We need to be able to conduct a front-line background check before we give them the platform to share their perspectives on television, radio, or in print. We need to vet the expert before they reach an audience that relies on the information being communicated to form opinions and make critical decisions that affect their lives. Local News Matters Local media is shrinking. Newsrooms are currently being threatened by constant shifts in both consumption and business models. If we are to promote accurate information and win the war on actual facts, we must make it easier for local journalists to do their jobs. Mainstream media still carries a lot of weight, especially online and television where the nightly news reaches a massive audience. Though the ratings are large, the subject matter doesn’t always resonate with viewers at home. We need to do a much better job helping local media get better access to the experts in our organisations so they can localise issues and tell stories, and do it in ways that everyone can understand. For example, a story on national unemployment numbers has a different context in San Francisco than it does in Flint, Michigan. Climate change is impacting Miami a lot differently than it is in the Great Lake states. In the end, all news is local. Speed Matters News is increasingly a speed game. With social media, a 24-hour news cycle, and the race to be first, time is of the essence. But in this game, haste may not only make waste, the truth may be a casualty as well. Most recently Fox News reported on a violent shooting at a mosque in Quebec City, Canada. Six people were killed by a lone gunman. Fox News reported that the suspect was of Moroccan origin — that was false. The shooter was in fact of Canadian origin. It wasn’t until the Canadian Prime Minister’s office requested a retraction that Fox walked the story back…but it took almost two full days. In true Canadian fashion, Kate Purchase, Communications Director for Prime Minister Trudeau thanked Fox News. In the meantime, wrong information was shared across multiple platforms and seen by millions of people. This is when having your experts prepared, media-trained, and trusted internally to speak with media is key. In times of emergency and chaos, it may be the words, advice and perspective of a high-level expert that can calm a nervous public, or at the very least, clearly explain a situation and its outcomes with accuracy and trust. So Why Should This Matter to You? If you are focused on building your market visibility and brand reputation, making your organization’s experts more discoverable and responsive to media is as much a function of good public relations as it is a public service. In these days of fake news, alternate facts, and unclear agendas, an unbiased and objective point of view presented by a credible expert may be one of the few remaining pillars of integrity we have left. Experts bring credibility, reliability, and an elevated level of perspective and advice that the public can trust. It’s up to all of us to ensure our thought leaders rise above the fray and help rebuild the trust that is essential to building a civil society. How is your organization working with its experts to respond to these challenges? I’m particularly interested in speaking with communications and media relations professionals in higher education, healthcare and professional services as our team conducts more research in this area. Let us know what you think by sharing below. I read every comment. 

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?

Media Training Can You Afford NOT to Be Prepared When Reporters Come Calling?

Want to see someone in a respected position of power throw away a career in all of about two minutes? Stephen Duckett was an expert in his field. Respected globally. Until this… Watch this exchange Duckett wasn’t prepared to deal with media. He paid a serious professional price and left a lesson for us all to learn from. In fact, his exchange is used by a lot of media trainers on exactly what not to do in a  crisis situation. As a former news producer, I remember scrambling to find an expert opinion or perspective when news was breaking. If a story required explanation and when it was beyond the grasp of even the brightest of reporters we needed the help of supporting sources.  They were critical in helping explain, validate, and ideally, break down just what was going on to our audiences at home. When an outbreak struck, we needed an epidemiologist. When a rare earthquake shook the region, the search for a seismologist was on. Finding the expert wasn’t usually the problem. We had local universities, colleges, and health care facilities within arm’s reach. However, finding an expert who could effectively speak on camera often was. Our goal was to keep people from turning the channel – so boring, highly technical speaking experts simply wouldn’t do it for us. When I worked in TV, we needed someone who could explain a complex subject, in layman’s terms, and in sound bites of about 15 seconds. It may not seem like much, but it is a lot to ask. Explaining high level content is not easy, but the reality is that your audience needs complex subjects explained in the simplest of ways. To do this right, it requires understanding the roles and goals of media and media training. Anyone who will be representing an organization, institution, or corporation needs some form of coaching. It’s a must-have requirement for most CEOs and politicians. Turn on your news at just about any hour of the day, and you can easily tell who has been properly prepared and trained and who hasn’t. It doesn’t happen organically. It takes work. It takes expert coaching. Media-friendly speakers bolster credibility and get noticed. In times of a crisis, a trained speaker may be the missing piece that can make or break a situation a reputation. Those who are not trained stick out—in a very bad way. They stammer, evade questions, ramble and are usually incoherent. If the task is mainly to describe a current situation, an untrained expert may ramble or speak hundreds of feet over the head of the average person. If there’s a crisis at hand—a tragedy, a scandal, a lawsuit or worse—an untrained speaker risks making a bad situation worse. Take a look back to July of 2013—an out-of-control train carrying crude oil exploded, destroying the downtown section of Lac Megantic, in Quebec, Canada. Thirty buildings were leveled, killing 47 people. In this small town, everybody knew somebody who was killed. Edward Burkhardt, president of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway Inc. arrived shortly after the explosion. He was the near-perfect storm—an untrained, and likely uncoachable leader. He was clearly in distress, rattled, arrogant, and unprepared. He fixed blame at the worst possible time, blaming the train’s engineer and the local fire department. A journalist asked how much he was worth. A town is destroyed, the world is watching, close to four dozen people are dead, and his reply was, “I’m worth a lot less now than I was last week.” Proper media training and coaching would not have prevented the horrible tragedy, but knowing how to speak during such a high-stress situation and knowing what questions to expect might have mitigated the visceral reaction of residents, industry and government officials. As it stands, Edward Burkhardt and the company, no matter how successful either had been in the past, are now forever associated with that interview. Conway Fraser worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for almost 20 years. He’s a Gemini award-winning journalist who worked as a national reporter and investigative journalist. These days, he specializes in strategic and crisis communications as well as media coaching. Conway’s worked with some of Canada’s top corporate executives, academic leaders, and politicians. In both journalism and in PR, he has seen executives who have spent decades building a reputation only to have it destroyed in moments because they weren’t prepared to deal with the media. They’ve either never received media coaching or, Conway says, have taken mandatory training but were never further invested in. In other words, he says, they thought they didn’t need media training and were only taking it to appease the Board or ownership. “Proper media coaching isn’t just about knowing how to spew a main message, use effective body language or bridge away from challenging questions,” Conway says, “In my sessions I also teach my clients about the media, what their job is like, what a day is like for a reporter, what they need from you and how to respect their role. If anyone doubts the value of that, they’re playing with fire. Ask Stephen Duckett.” Natalie Duddridge is a reporter for NY1. I worked with Natalie years ago in Canada at the start of her career. Natalie’s talent as a journalist has taken her to Ottawa (Canada’s capital), Toronto, and most recently, New York. New York sits at the top (sorry L.A.) of media markets in the United States. It has a huge audience of about 10 million people and it is hands down the most competitive media game on the continent. Reporters in these markets never get to rest. They’re either chasing stories, or when they are covering a story they had better have an angle, source, or expert that the others do not. And when you are in a race with at least six other news outlets, standing out isn’t easy. Finding experts and having them ‘camera’ or ‘microphone’ ready is a must. As Natalie explained to me, getting an expert for a story is absolutely crucial. In a market as diverse as New York City, those experts can range from police to politicians, to health and education officials, to scientists and artists. Natalie also lent some great perspective on just how a reporter puts together a story and how your expert needs to know that news is also about storytelling and not just details. “Last week I did a story about the heroin epidemic plaguing the Borough of Staten Island,” Natalie explained. “We like to begin our stories with a human element, in this case a recovering drug addict. In addition to his personal opinions and insight about how to prevent and slow the opioid crisis in the region, we also reached out to the local Drug Rehabilitation Center and interviewed a doctor as well as a therapist. We also interviewed the Staten Island District Attorney about the work he’s doing with New York State Governor to get more dollars for a drug task force to do everything from put more money into preventative education, build rehab centers, add police, fund additional assistant district attorneys to process criminal cases.” If you were counting, you can see she spoke with three key experts on the subject of the story. Each was essential in the reporting process. “For this story we featured several different experts on varying opinions on how this current drug crisis should be dealt with. All of the facts, stats and data for this story were based on the officials and experts we contacted.” Being prepared and knowing what the reporter wants are also ideal elements in conveying the right message. For TV, short, smart, and to-the-point responses work best. “We need a 10 to 15 second sound bite that is ideally informative and clear, and in some cases entertaining,” Duddridge told me. “When I am making calls to experts, I essentially do a pre-interview over the phone to hear how clearly they can explain a topic. If they are great at breaking down studies and terms into focused ideas that are concise and fit into a two-minute story, our job as reporters is so much easier.” A win/win scenario. Your message is delivered, your institution and experts are promoted and the reporter files a great story. It all seems simple. But it’s not. It takes training and preparation. If you are going to offer up your experts for an interview, they need to be ready. Media training takes time, it costs money – but it’s an investment in your staff and your institution. As we learned from the example above, not knowing how to answer, interact, and respond to media can be devastating. Performing under pressure only succeeds with practice and training. If your experts are media trained the reward will always outweigh the risk. Here are a few tips: Get media trained – Use a professional media coach. It costs money, but the professional development, readiness, comfort, and ability to deliver will pay off ten-fold. Media-friendly experts get noticed – When your expert is on the news, people see them. They are representing your institution, so think about what this means for your credibility and recruiting potential. You never get a second chance at a first impression – An old, clichéd saying, but it’s true. A weak speaker who comes across poorly imprints a negative impression on viewers, peers and your institution as a whole. It’s amateur hour, and it doesn’t need to be. Friends for life – Once you prove yourself as a worthy and media-friendly source, the media will keep coming back. Experts who can provide journalists with the information, perspective, and sound bites they need are not only appreciated but noticed and remembered by all media. Once you have established yourself as a reliable source, expect the reporters to come calling time and time again. Dividends – Every story where your expert looks good is positive earned media. Getting on NBC, CBS, FOX or any other nightly newscast is a huge win for your Communications Department. It’s exposure, promotion, and advertising—and it’s free.  

Fighting Red Tape To Win The Media Relations Speed Game

It’s a situation that happens every day in the media relations world. A reporter calls and they need someone for an interview fast. This is how the scenario should play out: Step 1 - The media calls a communications officer with a simple request for information and an interview on a recently announced program. Step 2 – The communication officer identifies a suitable spokesperson. Step 3 – The reporter and spokesperson talk, arrange an interview -- and there is some excellent earned media and exposure for your institution. It sounds simple enough. But, not so fast. In reality, things often fall apart on step 3 and the process turns into something that borderlines on a Monty Python skit. Based on my experience and others I’ve consulted with – it often plays out something like this: The communications officer contacts the suitable spokesperson’s Manager to ensure it is okay they can speak to the expertise and subject matter they specialize in. Then, they have to loop in that manager with a Director and CEO to inform them of the media request and the plan. And then if the Director agrees, the CEO gets on board. Or perhaps the Director agrees only after checking with the CEO and agreeing to the spokesperson. Once that’s nailed down somehow…the CEO wonders if speaking points are required and will only proceed once the Manager and Director have signed off on them. After the speaking points are finally approved, speaking points and the media request are sent to the identified spokesperson. Then the communications officer (remember him or her?) responds to the media that they have found an expert and will arrange a time for interview. The communications officer has the Manager, Director, CEO and spokesperson each sign off on paper-generated Media Request Form for filing and safe records keeping. And, then…..finally……if the media hasn’t already gone elsewhere, the reporter and the spokesperson finally speak – about 18 steps later. It’s actually more steps than it takes to assemble my daughter’s bike or the average IKEA nightstand. It’s cumbersome, ineffective and costs the organization a lot of time in person power for something that doesn’t need to be this difficult. And the reality is … this spokesperson is a paid professional with a Master’s degree who was hired for the subject matter they specialize in. The media request was related to a media release issued by the organization. With a simple approval process and a pro-active approach to media, this could have been easier for everybody with an immediate turnaround and a positive outcome. Think this is a joke? It’s not. In fact, there’s a Communications Officer’s support group that meets every Thursday to share similar situations (I’m being cheeky). Media will appreciate that sensitive issues take time to respond to. In fact, a lot of media relish the thought the there are people scrambling to answer the tough questions. What drives media crazy is having to wait hours for what should be a simple, safe and low-risk reply. They likely already know the answer, they just need the expertise to lend it credibility and verification. (Photo courtesy: CBS Television Studios) So does your Communications Process need an institutional intervention? When you make it hard for media to get easy answers, they might start looking elsewhere. Odds are they will. Consider this: Do you have a grading system for media requests? Low-risk asks can be seen coming and responses pre-approved or left in the hands of your very competent staff. High risk asks mean approval and oversight. People will get that. As well, it will lend a tone of seriousness to the situation. Do you know the reporter or media outlet? A strong relationship needs faith on both sides. Known reporters and news outlets survive on reputation. Expect them to be professional and trust that they’ll get it right. Trust your Communications Team – Don’t Micro Manage Media relations isn’t a science – it’s an art where experience matters most. Communications Officers likely know the media and most come from a media background. They’ll know the angles, they scan the media and can likely predict the questions. Empower them to save you time and rely on their instincts. Too many Communications Officers ask “Why did you hire me?” when they aren’t trusted on the simplest of things. Most institutions have a rigorous vetting process – so why the worry? Didn’t you hire these people – rely on your staff and let them be accountable. Fewer steps saves time, reduces confusion and meets the need of a low-risk ask. Less micromanaging = more trust. Morale is a big deal in any workplace. So when the media calls, here’s my advice. Take a deep breath. Assess the risk. And arrange the interview as soon as possible and with as little maintenance and anxiety as possible. The media get the information they want, your institution gets the earned media and free exposure it wants and your Communications Team maintains a reputation as a group that can deliver content on deadline and ‘gets’ the information game. Remember – in today’s media – it’s all about speed. The easier you make it for media, the more the phone will ring. 

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.

How To Tick Off Reporters

During media training sessions, I share examples of easy ways to completely tick off a reporter — not as a tutorial — but as a cheeky way to say DO NOT do these things ever if you want to maintain any kind of healthy relationship with media. Below you will find the ones that bothered me when I worked as a journalist. Do any of these things, and you’re in for a world of fun. 1. Tell a reporter how to do their job – They love that. Criticize the subjective tone or focus of a story while you’re at it. Bonus points if you can do this while never mentioning that the story was technically 100% accurate. 2. Ask them why they didn’t cover your story – Reporters love justifying how they do their job and the decisions they’ve made — to PR people. If you ask with a little bit of attitude, all the better. They dig that. 3. Only be helpful when you want something from them – Reporters can’t tell when they have an artificial one-way relationship with a PR person. No need to invest a little time in getting to know them and THEIR needs a bit better. 4. Send them a media advisory right before an event – They will never guess that you don’t really want them there so you made it logistically impossible to get there on time without being able to say they weren’t invited. 5. Only communicate with them by email or text – Reporters love nothing more than a controlled message via email with no chance to ask a question. Sometimes (legal implications) you have no choice — but we’re talking about the other 99% of the time. An email is great for communicating tone, too. 6. Send out a media release with a contact who’s not available – It’s a great tactic. Send out a media release and put the person’s name at the bottom for media to contact. But, that person is not available. This screams “credible”. 7. Promise a scoop then hold a news conference – Nothing says “I love you” like a broken promise. And, chances are they communicated the promised scoop to their editor, too, so you now have double the fans in that newsroom. 8. Ban them from anything – If there’s one thing reporters truly love, it’s being punished for doing their jobs. So, ban them from news conferences or events. Lord knows they’d never tell anyone, especially on social media. 9. Tell them how lucky they are to get what they got – It certainly works with spouses — so why wouldn’t it work with reporters, right? 10. Make them go through access to Information – They understand that there is some information that will require access to information — but the true joy comes in having to go through the red tape to get something simple and easy. 11. Ask them if they’d ever come work for you in PR – Nothing says manipulation like false flattery and dangling a carrot. You better be serious. 12. Make them watch other people eat – What is more enjoyable than attending a Chamber luncheon or keynote address and watching people eat while you stand in the corner waiting for the speaker. No need for a media table at all. 13. Hold a news conference with inadequate audio/visual facilities – Today’s reporter has to listen to the speaker, ask questions, video, tweet, etc. all at the same time. Would an audio board and camera riser help? Sure. But, what’s one more thing for them to do at this point? 14. Call their boss to complain about them – This was one of my favourites — when the PR person would go over my head. I can assure you I didn’t hold a grudge and didn’t dig into your organization with a little more rigour. 15. Return their call at 4 p.m. – You’re busy so reporters completely understand if it took you 6 hours to get back to them just to say you can’t help. I’m sure the next time YOU want something, they’ll be equally as gracious. There are others. There are many others. Feel free to share the ones you know of and perhaps we’ll compile another list in a few months.

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.

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.