Experts Matter. Find Yours.

3 Steps to Earn Local News Coverage

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

EXPERT PITCHING 101: The Power of Spotlights

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

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.  

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.

Earned Media: The Secret Weapon of Brand Building

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

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

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