branding

Positioning Yourself as an Expert Source

Part of the purchasing decision for any prospect or customer lies in your ability to serve their needs or meet their challenges. Building awareness about your capabilities and your brand—becoming an acknowledged expert and keeping your brand front-of-mind—can be a key part of lead-building. It starts with getting your information into the right newsmakers’ hands.

Some business owners simply have a knack for keeping their companies’ names in the news even when they aren’t making news. Their strategies for getting publicity can work for you, too. With the definition of “media” expanding to include trusted websites, blogs and e-newsletters as well as traditional print and broadcast outlets, there are more opportunities than ever before to become a sought-after expert source.

“Journalists, editors, bloggers, people who cover business news, want to have relationships with people they can turn to when they’re doing stories,” says Steven Van Yoder, author of Get Slightly Famous. “There’s an inside beltway that you can get in on just by knowing your target market, having an understanding of what they read, where they go online, what they listen to, where they get their news and then introducing yourself as a source of information. It’s a pretty straightforward process.”

It’s important to remember that these contacts are looking for information about their topics, not just about your products or services. If you engage is straight self-promotion, you’re less likely to get quoted or tapped for future interviews. “Be helpful first,” Van Yoder says. “Promotion comes second.” Even if that interview doesn’t generate the kind of publicity you’d hoped for, you’ll have established a relationship with the reporter that can return higher publicity dividends over the long term.

Ideally, you’re following the print, broadcast and online media that cover your company’s industry well enough to be able to identify your target journalists and bloggers. But the media explosion makes it difficult to follow everything, much less to keep track of all the freelancers in the field. Online resources, such as Profnet, provide you with access, free of charge, to reporters who need resources. They put out calls for experts on a given topic, and if you can provide the information they need, you contact them.

Competition for attention is fierce, and many publicity-hungry respondents try to grab attention for products and services that don’t really relate to the topics at hand. To rise above the noise, Van Yoder says, stay on topic and provide solid information the reporter can use.

Business owners can also raise their profiles by broadening their definition of publicity, especially when targeting a local community. “Publicity is not just media coverage. It’s a way to reach your public,” Van Yoder says. He recommends a mix of doing media outreach along with making public appearances, giving seminars at your location, being an educational research within your industry, and engaging in community activities. Each of these reinforces your credibility, strengthens your reputation as a subject matter expert, and by extension, positions you for additional media coverage.