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