Today I share how using topic experts can add real value to your business by building trust and credibility in your brand, product or service.
This tool is related to the PR discipline of communication for your business but could be used in any content too.
I’ll give an overview of what this tool is and how you can use it, what to look for in a topic expert, and provide examples of where it has worked well.
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Full Transcript
Emma Drake:
Hello, and welcome to this episode of Communication Strategy That Works with me, Emma Drake. How are we all doing today? Hope everyone is okay. So those of you who have listened to the podcast for a while now will know this, but just in case you’ve just tuned in today, I’m Emma. I’m a communications strategy consultant and I’m an ex in-house expert turned external advisor and I work with many types of businesses over the years, but I love to work with businesses that are funded to grow and have ambitious plans to be bigger companies one day.
I’m making it my mission to help break down some of these big topics in comms and PR and marketing and messaging and help you work out how to implement these into your business to create value, to build trust, and save you time, money, and energy. I wanted to talk to you today about an area that I think can add real value to your business. It’s related to the disciplines of PR and content and messaging. And it’s about using subject matter experts as parts of your strategy to position your business and products and services.
I’ll explain what this tool is, how you can use it, and what to look for in a topic expert if you’re going to work with one or one within your business and provide you some examples of where this has worked well. So let’s dive in. If you work in a larger company, you will likely have experts in that business.
If you are in a smaller or growing company or business, this may also be true, or you may be looking externally for experts to add value to what you’re doing. These people are typically people if they work within your businesses that have invented the product or came up with the idea, but they might also be the person who makes the product, especially true of technology products or artisan type products.
So an expert is a person with a high level of knowledge or skill relating to a particular subject or activity. So this approach is used in media relations as well actually when things go wrong or in crisis led situations and you’ve seen this, you would have seen this yourself. If we think about the most apparent example and that’s the global coronavirus pandemic.
I’m in England, in the UK and we had the chief medical officer often leading the government press conferences and this is because we’re more likely to believe what they say as they’re the topic experts aren’t they? So similarly, when the media are discussing the topic on the daily news after the press conference has taken place, they will get other experts on as well, so virus experts, maybe PPE experts for example.
Now I’ve used this approach successfully myself when bringing new products to an established market or to build authority in a topic that was linked to an area of practice for a business for example. I’ve also used it as a tactic to take the wind out of the sails of a negative media story by offering up an expert to speak on behalf of a company. I remember one time I used a bomb disposal expert to take the wind out of the sails of a potentially negative story when we found a world war bomb on a housing development site for example. Now, not many people can argue with the level of safety involved with the guy that has to go in and remove the bombs right? Okay.
So moving back to using this to promote your business for now as that’s what I really want to cover today, but by adding expert opinion into your content and messaging, you can create expertise and endorsement and trust in your products and services. This is especially true if you’re new to a market or bringing in new or controversial products or service into the market.
So what should you be looking for in your topic expert? Well, ideally the topic expert will have presence themselves first and foremost. So if no one has heard of them at all in the circles that you’re in, it probably won’t work and somebody can’t be a self-proclaimed expert. So look for a few things.
Are they active on social media? Do they have a following? Do they already attend industry events? Do they already have an opinion on the product or your industry that you work in and does that opinion match what you’re trying to achieve? It’s really important. Can they provide a particular point of view that you’re looking for? Will they be excited to be participating in something like this? Could you work together? Really, really important that you can have chemistry with this person.
If they’re inside your business, are they going to be around for a while? Okay. So is that person going to be employed by you or work with you for some time? So do they already share information you use or ideas or topics about your industry or types of products you make or services you sell or about your competition for example, that are doing a similar thing?
So by looking out for these things and having this approach and checking these qualities before you start, it’s a good starting place really to generate… down the line, you’ll be looking to generate traffic to your website, create warmer leads potentially from social media links and backlinks in online media articles where this opinion will reside for example. And this in turn can also increase your website’s domain authority. More on that another time. So in terms of getting people on board, there’s some preparation to do like everything, to make sure that your expert is going to be a help, not a hindrance really. So what do I mean by that?
Well, preparation is everything and in this situation, you’re putting your trust in this person to talk about your products and services, so it’s got to work for both parties, not just the topic expert. So the first thing you need to do, and I would advise you do is you set a goal. If you’ve listened a lot to my podcast, you’ll know I’ve said this quite a lot and you’ve got to set the goal.
You’ve got to understand why you’re doing this. And then you want to agree what you’re saying or choose a position on the topic that you agree on. It’s no good if the expert opinion, for example, is going to take you off in a direction that doesn’t work for you. For example, if it’s maybe too radical or too political for you, it has to match your product and business values. Okay. And then the third thing is to give some context and ideas around what it is you want to achieve and make sure you both understand and agree on that destination.
A final word on when the business owner is also the topic expert. Okay. This can sometimes be perceived as a little bit self-serving, so just watch out for that. Not always. Okay. Not always as it’s about the content of course and there may be other endorsements that support topic expertise if you are also the expert and the business owner. For example, this is things such as track record case examples, qualifications, crepitations and awards, but this may not work as well, so just watch out for that. You see, this approach is really about third party endorsement or look, I hired loads of experts to get this right, if you’re using people in your business for example, and it’s what makes this approach work and where it works best. It’s the real sweet spot.
So I hope you found this episode useful. If he wants to discuss any of the topics I’ve covered today, pop over to my social channels, linked in the show notes or feel free to contact me. Speak soon. So finally, thank you for listening to this episode of Communication Strategy That Works. Don’t forget to check my show notes for those links that I mentioned, and I’d really love it if you would subscribe to my podcast and leave me a review. And also, if you think there’s someone that could benefit from listening to this podcast, please share this within your networks. So I’ll just say bye for now and see you next time.