Thought leadership plays a vital role in an effective, proactive public relations program. Showcasing a company’s thought leaders can boost visibility and help it stand out from the competition.
In fact, 75% of decision-makers, including members of the C-suite, say that thought leadership has prompted them to research products or services they had not previously considered, according to research from Edelman and LinkedIn.
But how do you put together a compelling thought leadership effort? And how can both the PR and content teams work together to maximize its impact?
Join public relations consultant Michelle Garrett and her guest, Erika Heald, B2B content marketing expert and consultant, as they discuss thought leadership.
Show summary:
In this episode of PR Explored, host and PR consultant Michelle Garrett sits down with her longtime friend and colleague Erika Heald to discuss the crucial role that thought leadership plays in content marketing and PR.
Erika, a seasoned marketing communications consultant and former journalist, delves into her journey and experience in the field, highlighting the importance of having a strategy to create impactful content.
The conversation covers the definition of thought leadership, the types of content that contribute to it, and the synergy between content and PR teams. They emphasize the need for collaboration and strategic planning to maximize the impact of thought leadership efforts.
The episode is a treasure trove of insights on how to foster cross-functional teamwork and create valuable, engaging content that drives business results.
00:00 Welcome to PR Explored
01:11 Meet Erika Healed: A Journey from Journalism to Content Strategy
04:59 The Importance of Thought Leadership
05:32 Defining Thought Leadership
14:48 Creating Effective Thought Leadership Content
23:46 Integrating PR and Content Teams
29:40 Breaking Down Silos for Better Collaboration
30:31 Winning Awards with Strategic Collaboration
32:52 The Importance of Measurement in PR
39:46 Leveraging Research for Thought Leadership
51:08 Effective Interview Techniques for Content Creation
56:07 Final Thoughts on Thought Leadership and Collaboration
Show notes:
Follow Erika Heald on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikaheald/
Erika Heald Marketing Consulting: https://erikaheald.com/
Erika’s show #ContentChat: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikaheald/recent-activity/events/
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
How PR and Content Teams Can Work Together to Maximize Thought Leadership
Michelle: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of PR Explored. Thank you for being here today. PR Explored is a video podcast where we delve into trends and topics related to public relations. I’m your host, Michelle Garrett. I’m a public relations consultant and writer, and to. Day my guest is a, not only a colleague, but really a friend.
I’ve known Erika Heald for years now. And welcome Erika. Thank you, Michelle. It’s great to be here. Yay. We, we’ve known each other, quite a while. We were just chatting about how we’ve, even worked with the same client o in the past. And, we’ve collaborated on things and so I’m really excited to have you here.
We’re going to be talking all about thought leadership today, and of course how content marketing and PR can work together. And we’ll get into all of [00:01:00] that in just a minute. But I wanna first. Ask you to tell us a little about you and what you’re up to these days and just anything that you wanna share.
Erika: Alright. for context for our conversation today, it’s important to note I’m a recovering journalist. I’m recovering from the crushing disappointment and lack of ability to support myself as a journalist, which is why of course I went into doing marketing communications and content. Pretty much right out of, college, and I’ve done that in-house.
I’ve done that within, an agency where I actually managed at Highwire. I helped launch their content studio, and I’ve been an independent consultant for the last eight years working with all sorts of companies. To figure out, their content strategy, which always includes thought leadership. So this is such a great topic for me today.
plus I’m working on a book that’s all about all of those foundational elements you need to have in place in order to, scale your content and to be able to really do [00:02:00] your best with con with thought leadership. So this is a very, timely conversation.
Michelle: That is so exciting. I can tell you, books are not easy.
Erika: Yep.
Michelle: But, it’s very rewarding when you, get to the finish line and you hold the book in your hand and it’s out there. I cannot wait for that. Yeah, it’s an achievement. And then people will say, when are you writing your next book? And I’m like, I, I dunno, maybe there won’t be an next, I dunno.
Anyway, that’s another conversation for another day. But it’s very exciting that you’re writing one. And I took your survey. I don’t know if you’re still doing your survey, but I think I, we
Erika: just, I just closed it out because, I, and I’ll give you the link to the, more evergreen. Version of it.
’cause I wanted to actually have a hard close date because the data that I’ve collected is actually going to be reflected in the book. So the, version that you took is going to be actually included in the book. Okay. But I’ll [00:03:00] give a link in the, LinkedIn comments to the new version that anyone can take to benchmark themselves to see how ready they are to be able to scale their content.
Michelle: Great. Yay. So did you get, I hope you got enough responses. I’m assuming you I did.
Erika: I wanted 300. I did not get 300, but I got 200 something. and of course, people drop off here and there, but I had more than a hundred something people actually go all the way through. So it is, it’s a valid thing and I learned a lot.
including things that I’m like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe people, aren’t doing some of these things. That, to me were like really low hanging fruit. but it was a really nice way to assess and see where people were at. and I think definitely our content marketing maturity has increased a lot over the past 10 years.
but there’s still, we definitely have a ways to go and a lot of it has to do with the organizations we’re in. I was lucky because I [00:04:00] spent, 10 non-consecutive years at Charles Schwab where I really got into the flow. really saw the benefits of having, I. Templates and guidelines and frameworks in place.
And as an aside, I had a friend who, does all sorts of internal comms and crisis comms, and she let me know that they still use one of the style guides that I put together for digital communications. And they’re still using those templates I put together for those recurring, recurring crisis situations like, outages because of.
snow flooding, whatever. Because I was like, why should anyone ever have to use their brain to do this thing again? This is, I wanna be, have people spend their time on thought leadership, not on what do we need to do again when we have to close the office? Because there’s been, snowstorms, no one should have to think about that more than once.
Michelle: Yeah. That’s not what we should be focusing on. yeah, that’s a good point. [00:05:00] So we’re talking today about, content and, PR and how we can work together on thought leadership efforts to really maximize their impact and just get more out of them. So I think hopefully this topic is gonna resonate with a lot of people.
and we are going to, I’ll ask you some questions, but obviously, People watching or listening can ask questions too, and we will just, please
Erika: do I love questions.
Michelle: Yes, me too. I love that too. So the first question that I wanna start with is, because there’s a lot of discussion about the definition of thought leadership, what, how do you view it?
What’s your definition?
Erika: So for me, thought leadership is when. You have a person who is passionate, experienced, and knowledgeable in an area who is willing to go out there and share their own unique perspectives that possibly, and, you [00:06:00] know, preferably if possible, challenge the, status quo and help people think about things differently in your industry.
So they’re not just regurgitating the same thing everyone else is saying. They’re not trying to, outsource it to someone else. Although you could outsource help with your thought leadership, you have to have that human involved. So it’s a human sharing their unique perspectives. In short, it’s the kind of thing that only humans can do in the ai.
Can’t do.
Michelle: Yes. It has to be unique. And the thing that gets me is that sometimes I feel to be a thought leader, you actually have to have some experience, to have, to have, gained a perspective or, yep. Actually have some thoughts, to share.
because, and that sounds, be willing to
Erika: engage, right?
Michelle: Yeah. It sounds silly, but not everybody you know has that, I when I work with manufacturing companies that have been around [00:07:00] 50 years, they’re probably more likely gonna have some leaders there that have, do have some perspective, ’cause they’ve been in the industry a long time. But yeah. I’ve worked a lot with startups and it’s, not to say that they don’t have thought leaders, but sometimes, you have to have been in the industry a little bit to at least have some idea of, what, you could offer, what, you can bring that’s different.
Yeah.
Erika: Yep. A hundred percent. And part of that too is sometimes organizations will think, oh, hey, the, we wanna have thought leadership, so we need to get the CEO out there. The CEO may not be the right person to be the thought leader to represent your company or your industry. It might be someone else in the executive suite, or it could be somebody else in your organization.
Who is in charge of something that is doing something very different from the way other people are doing it and thinking about it. CEO has a lot of things to do, so you gotta make sure that you’re not, picking the wrong person [00:08:00] to take on that role.
Michelle: No, I love that because, I think that’s really important.
Because, yeah, they might not even be a C-level executive. There might be somebody else out there. In fact, those are sometimes the best people to do thought leadership. And when you have a program, of course you can plug in multiple thought leaders, because obviously, you’re not probably gonna get.
Your CEO published every single month on a contributed article or whatever. So it’s good to have, I think, multiple people that can play that role, for your company if, you’re able to do that. Not everybody can do that, but
Erika: Totally. But if you’re able to, you of course you wanna have that kind of a thought leadership strategy where you have that overarching thing you want the company to be known for, and then you pick those people to be the pillars on those different areas.
That, support your overall premise and your overall, branding. And so you have, maybe you have your CMO, maybe you have your product lead, maybe you have the person that does a lot [00:09:00] of your, usability research or, whatever that is. You have those people and you define what it is that makes them special, that really can contribute to what you’re trying to get across.
And then You you’re supporting each of those lanes.
Michelle: And
Erika: that’s not something that happens a ton. But I’ve definitely worked with, multiple companies where we did that very, directly, where each person, we sat down, we figured out what everyone wanted to talk about, and we figured out how they would, work together.
And then we start to get, gave them all a plan for the year for what kind of speaking engagements, what kind of content they should write for owned properties, what organizations the PR team was going to try to build relationships with. So they’d start getting those interviews so that way all of it worked together because it’s not just about content creation, and it’s not just about pitching for media relations.
All that stuff has to work together. And if you’re doing it right, all of that owned content you create. [00:10:00] Is going to fuel all the other things.
Michelle: So you’re saying you should actually have a strategy. I guess you shouldn’t just do stuff. You shouldn’t, we’re just gonna do this.
Erika: Back in the day, I feel like there were some organizations that their strategy was, let’s do a press release every month and let’s let answer every hero that comes across that we can answer.
It was just, scattershot. It was, random acts. Of content and media relations and that’s, yeah. It makes it look like your CEO isn’t doing his job or her job, that they’re just all day talking about random stuff. So it’s important, I think to, really understand what you’re gonna try to get out of it, because if you’re just doing thought leadership to stroke someone’s ego, or to be able to say that you got so many placements in a month.
That isn’t gonna drive business results, which means it’s not going to be able to hold on to budget [00:11:00] when times get tough. Yeah. If it’s
Michelle: not showing any, be, actual ROI, it’s gonna be an easy line item to cut when the time comes. So it might work for the moment, but probably not long term. So I think exactly.
That’s a really important point too, and I, on your website, I noticed, I know, no more random acts of content or, yeah, that’s my value
Erika: prop. That is not just a tagline, it’s who I am, and it’s frankly, Michelle, it’s why I’m branded as a consultancy. I know so many people will say, oh, your agency.
And I very politely say yes in our consultancy because the big differences, and I saw this firsthand, is people come to an agency with a list of things they want, not with a problem to solve or with object objectives. It’ll be like, oh, I want this thing. Can you make this thing for me? And I think it’s so critical to make sure that you.
First have a strategy. You have those objectives, you understand what the success [00:12:00] looks like. You have a plan that all fits together because otherwise all you’re doing is making work. And eventually the money will run out for just making work and you’re not gonna make a lasting impact. And I don’t know about you, I don’t wanna do work that doesn’t have a lasting impact.
I wanna be doing something meaningful that really, helps push the business forward.
Michelle: Yeah. Yeah. But so many people I think are just kinda. Just day by day, they don’t take the long view. They’re just like trying to get it done. They know their boss is asking them, or pressuring them to get things done.
So they just put their head down and do the things. But we don’t really always understand. And my thing is that I always wanna ask more questions, and I always say, if you’re not in an organization where you can do that, might be a problem just because you should be able to have those conversations and ask those questions.
You made a point about companies that just wanna, think they’re gonna write a press release every month and that’s the strategy. that still happens, that we still see that. And it’s not [00:13:00] strategic. it’s, that’s, not, maybe a press release isn’t the right thing and maybe, like you need some things besides press releases in the mix and, there’s just a lot more to it than, but, In some cases, I know people are not comfortable asking the questions or, even having that conversation, I call it pushing back. But I wouldn’t even maybe say that. I would just say you should be able to have that, strategic conversation about, okay, why are we writing this press release?
Or why are we writing this piece of content and how does it fit into the. Bigger picture. So I love that we’re talking about strategy. ’cause I, don’t think people understand, the importance or even sometimes even understand what it is. what is this? like how do you, how, how do we be more strategic?
So I like that.
Erika: And people usually don’t like the answer to that too, which is you start with having an intake form or a template that you use whenever you’re starting any piece of content and it. Starts with the, what’s the objective? What is this [00:14:00] piece of content trying to do? What’s the one thing that you want somebody to take away from this?
What are our owned resources that we need to be using to inform this or to link out to it? do we have third party data that can validate our point of view? Having all that kind of stuff upfront before anybody starts thinking about creating a thing. Is absolutely vital, and that’s how you get to be more strategic with this stuff versus it just being, random and disconnected from the rest of what your company’s doing.
Michelle: Yeah, no, that’s really important, I think. And obviously I just feel like some people just don’t, they’re just Overwhelmed just trying to keep up that they don’t take time to step back and that’s why they need you to need you help them with that. so let’s talk about some examples of, content, that, that belong in the thought leadership category.
’cause I also see that [00:15:00] discussion a lot and not everything, I don’t consider everything to be thought leadership content. I.
Erika: No. And there, and there are a lot of different content types that can vary that sometimes they’re thought leadership and sometimes they’re not. most blog posts are not gonna be thought leadership, but they can be similar with podcasts.
a lot of podcasts think that they’re gonna be thought leadership, but they turn out to just be somebody talking a lot about the company and what the company’s doing and their products. And even if you’re interviewing your. Customers about it, that’s still not, that’s still not thought leadership content.
But you can be doing, a podcast or a video series that is thought leadership. It’s just gonna have a completely different style and objective and, way that you’re approaching it. I also think that you can be doing. you can be doing proprietary research that’s going to support your thought leadership platform.[00:16:00]
So if you have a really strong perspective and you want to have some external validation, then you can use that proprietary research. So the research itself is not the thought leadership, but all of the content that you know, you’re gonna be able to create the. the stats that you’re gonna be able to pepper into those presentations that you’re giving or into those eBooks that you’re gonna create.
so it can be like this really amazing fodder and foundation For a really rich, thought leadership content later. and these days, you see a lot of people saying, oh, social media is where I’m doing my thought leadership and I don’t see a lot of thought leadership on social media.
I see a lot of. I see a lot of people using AI to oh, create very long posts that have a very specific format with the exact same emojis that chat. GPT always tries to give you when you’re using it for brainstorming. If you don’t [00:17:00] tell it, don’t emojis. And I, do, I, when I’m using chat GPT for brainstorming, I frequently tell, please don’t emoji at me.
I really, I can’t take it seriously. you can use social media for thought leadership Long term by reinforcing the longer form content you’re creating by amplifying other people that are, in a similar vein and, supportive of the direction you’re going with your thought leadership so you can I certainly, I don’t think most people are using social media in that way.
Michelle: Yeah, I mean I, one thing that I do with one of my clients is I interview the CEO every quarter and then ghost write a post that goes on the blog for, the, client’s company. Then I’ll pitch that as a piece of earned media contributed piece, and then we will share it on social media, pull out, some insights and you could [00:18:00] probably pay and boost it if you wanted.
So that’s the whole like. Paid, earned, shared own, starting with the own, though, it always starts with the owned.
Erika: I think it has to, ’cause especially if you want to build trust with your community, with your industry and with the media, you need to have some of that really good owned content that shows what your perspective is.
It shows that your, thought leader, is articulate that they can think on their feet. So that’s why it can be very helpful to have things like a video podcast where they’re regularly sharing their perspectives so that way folks can see, what are they like in a live setting versus what I.
Are they like reading from a script, which, frequently you’ll get video content from executives where they’re reading from a teleprompter and maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but if they’re reading it from a teleprompter, I don’t know if that can be considered to be thought leadership because they need to [00:19:00] feel it, right?
It needs to be coming from inside of them, not from their script writer.
Michelle: Yeah. No, but I, do think a lot of times, the thought leaders be the executives or someone else at the company, they’re busy. maybe writing isn’t their, jam. Yeah. and it is helpful to have somebody to, interview and get the.
Thoughts out of their head and then go strike a piece. Hundred percent. And
Erika: I’ve had many of those kinds of engagements where I’ve been that person where, you know, I either do what you’ve done, where you do, a quarterly interview with the ceo. Or I actually had one, startup founder who he would record me voice messages in his car, on his drive in.
’cause he had a long commute. And so he would do some thinking out loud, brainstorming. I would take that, turn it into a transcript, come up with ideas, and we would, asynchronously collaborate on it. I. So it [00:20:00] really, can be done in whatever way works best for the person. I’ve also found folks who, I always call it a word vomit, which I realize is a very vivid way of describing it.
But literally, that’s what I want from, from somebody in this situation where it’s I know you wanna talk about this topic. Can you just give me all the things that you think about it, like the experiences, all the stuff. Don’t try to make linear, sense out of it, just. Give me all of the stuff.
A big word, dump a word vomit, and then they’ll do that. And then I’ll sift through it and ask questions. And we can come up with really great stuff because I’m like, I’m the one who can figure out how to make a story out of this, or multiple stories. That’s not what I need from you. I need the point of view.
I need the experiences from you that I can then use.
Michelle: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that, [00:21:00] you just said something and I had an idea and then it, went away. But, but oh, you were talking about the podcast. So you can get a lot of great content that way that you can repurpose. So that’s what’s so nice ’cause you can use.
D script is what I use to get a transcript and I can export that to Word and then I can play with it, pull out clips or snippets I can put on LinkedIn, for example, and oh yeah, write a post for that. And so there’s just so many things you can do once you have the. Stuff pulled out of their brain. So yeah.
And
Erika: it can then become this treasure trove that you can go back in mind later. Things that you didn’t even necessarily use initially, you might use, months or even years later. Yeah. ’cause of course, when I put together an outline for my book, what did I do? I went into Otter, which has the transcripts and recordings of, every podcast I’ve done for the last three years.
And a lot of client meetings too, and I asked it [00:22:00] questions, I asked it, who should I go back to and talk to that I had a really good conversation on, these different topics. Yeah. And, which, where do I go for some of these quotes? And it was pretty, pretty cool because it could remember better than I could about who it was that had come up with, some of these really, interesting perspectives on some of the topics.
some of, in some cases I was like, oh yeah, of course, of course I’m gonna talk to them or whatever. I’m gonna quote that. but it unearthed some things that I’d forgotten that, too I’d had the conversation with. So it’s actually amazing whenever you can get those kinds of, those kinds of longer form content, thought leadership pieces that you can get, a transcript for and that you can then document, hold onto and reuse it.
Michelle: Yeah. No, it’s great. It’s like a, it is like a treasure trove once you start doing it. that’s the thing. I [00:23:00] think, some people hear that PO the Word podcast and they just think, oh, everybody has podcasts, but there’s so many ways you can use what you know what I. You create while you’re actually producing the podcast.
That’s valuable in other ways. So I think there are a lot of benefits to it that may not be like the first thing you think about when you hear, oh yeah, let’s start a podcast. That, that might roll their eyes. But it’s actually a really, it is a real, it’s, it can be a very, valuable, way to, to get some, good content and they, you can use it, in so many ways.
Totally. so next I’m gonna ask about, I know you have a background in pr. so what do you think about, teams working together, the content and PR teams, really working together on thought leadership initiatives. So how do, what’s [00:24:00] your view on that?
Erika: So I have lots of unpopular opinions on this based on the fact that, when I started, when I made that transition from journalism into marketing, it was doing marcom roles, so marketing communications, which meant that I was doing content for the website.
I was doing press releases and media relations, and I was also writing the newsletter and writing web copy. I was doing all the things. I’ve been in companies that were small enough that I’ve been the person, the one person doing all the things. And in, in large, larger organizations, frequently I would be brought in for, or I’d be applying for a role that was just a sliver of it.
But as soon as they saw that I had done all those things, frequently the role blossomed is how I like to think of it. And it ended up being, like content and communications. If you look through my LinkedIn, you’ll note. Most of my jobs involved content and communications both reporting into me because.
To me, like [00:25:00] having all of that stuff together is so helpful because I’ve worked in, larger organizations where the corporate comms team was over here, but then there was also internal comms, and then there was content, and then there would be, some things that cut across. And when you have that level of complexity, it’s really hard because you end up frequently in that situation where there ends up being one team that feels that they’re the owner of the, thought leader’s time, and then they won’t necessarily support the thought leadership ideas or initiatives that the other teams are interested in.
And of course, the problem with that. Is thought leadership can’t just be owned by the marketing team or just by the PR team? Or just by, some other team. It has to be looking across the organization and involving everyone. Because it all works together. That owned content supports [00:26:00] the earned media and IT support.
all of it works together when it’s working well. ’cause the worst thing that can happen in an organization is that you have one of those, leadership team members being approached by multiple people on the same topic. That’s when you get the super annoyed people, saying, why can’t you guys work together?
do I, why do I have three teams all wanting to talk to me about this topic? What is wrong with you? you’ll hear it at that top level in these organizations that have broken things down into those silos. and so you can feel like, what are we gonna do if that’s the case?
that’s when you have to bridge it by having things like cross-functional editorial councils. And, at Schwab we had a number of those in different groups, even amongst all the folks who did internal comms. Since there were so many different divisions, across the company, we had a quarterly editorial meeting where we talked about the things that we knew were gonna be impacting the [00:27:00] organization as a whole.
Michelle: And,
Erika: individual groups, initiatives to get everyone aligned so that we didn’t end up in that situation. but it’s tough. I’ve been there, I’ve been in that situation where I’ve, been charged with, client communications and client content and had somebody else own, let’s say, the Twitter channel back when.
That was something that was really helpful, and that person literally would never, ever post any of the Twitter content that we wrote to promote our, owned content. Not one time. And, we would get into debates about it. And that person who did not even have their own Twitter account, did not use Twitter.
They just knew better than me and they refused to do it. And I, it was just, it drove me nuts. Yeah. I was like, but. Ah, it was such a missed opportunity. Yeah.
Michelle: I’ve worked with clients who have somebody, a [00:28:00] separate, person or agency doing their social media. And, we need to be plugging every single piece of earned media into social in some way.
And that can be frustrating. ’cause I feel like that gets discounted sometimes and it’s no, you need to be, Promoting this, tagging the publication, tagging the flow needs
Erika: to be going every way. You need to be upcycling and recycling all those things because also you can’t expect that anybody who is a customer or follows you or you an in is an industry analyst.
They’re not following you on all your channels. They’re not reading every publication in the world. There’s not time for that. You, they may have to see something positioned three different ways before they even click through and see whatever that thing is. So you’ve gotta be thinking through any piece of, owned media or earned media placements, all of those things.
You’ve gotta be re-sharing them, repackaging them, and thinking about different ways to approach them [00:29:00] with your audience.
Michelle: Yeah, no, absolutely. It’s, you work so hard to create the content and then, it’s oh, it did. you could get so much more out of it. It’s oh, like I think that’s a problem.
Instead of worrying about always like churning out more content, maybe we need to be more strategic. There’s that word again about what we do with the content that we. Already created that we already have, and how can we work together to get the most out of it? And I think, yeah, PR, content, social, all go together.
I think in a corporate structure it gets all mishmashed around. I know with job titles and friends that I have that are looking for jobs and yeah. working in those jobs, it’s really, it is really hard to break down the walls of the silos, but I think it’s worth trying.
Erika: at a minimum you can think of each other as frenemies, right?
That you’re competing, yes, you’re competing internally over the budget dollars and over time. But if you’re. [00:30:00] Combining your forces and doing things together. Then you’re going get more. It’s if the two of you have one call with the CEO where you’re asking your follow up questions to the other person’s questions and you’re all getting that full picture.
Then you are not gonna be the one getting. Ding on their performance review for wasting leadership time and being unprepared and not, not collaborating. Cross enterprise. You can head those things off at the past by doing that collaboration upfront and it’ll make you look better.
And then you can also then, like you wanna know how to get. how to win awards, how to have an award, winning submission for any of these things. It’s all about having that strategy in place, being able to articulate that strategy and show how you collaborated with other people. ’cause those kinds of comprehensive, content programs, PR campaigns, all of those things that have the content and PR elements.
When you have a really solid. [00:31:00] Output with great results. But with that strategy upfront, seeing what you’re trying to accomplish and then showing that you accomplished it, that is 100% how you win awards, which is top of mind. ’cause I’m gonna be judging the Content Marketing awards again this year, and I believe you’ve been a judge too.
I frequently judge the strategy, the, strategy categories and I cannot stress enough. If you are up for an award for a strategy related thing. There is no strategy. You’re just telling me what you, what your results were, how many views you got, all that stuff. You’re going to get zero points on the how.
How good is this content strategy? Because you didn’t have a strategy, you did some stuff. You told me how it went. I, dunno if that’s good. what were you expecting? What did your last thing do? What does good look like for you? What were you even trying to accomplish? Yeah. Were you trying to get eyeballs on something?
[00:32:00] I don’t know, because you didn’t tell me what your strategy was, so you’re not gonna be winning that category.
Michelle: She’s a tough judge, folks. Listen.
Erika: Fold it in. It’s easy to do too. ’cause I’m not looking for, a 20 slide, presentation about their strategy. I’m looking for the, the, that top level. What was your objective? what was, what were you hoping to accomplish? Who were you trying to reach? What were the methods you were going to do it?
And then what happened? It’s easy. It’s five things.
Michelle: sometimes people don’t even measure like where they’re at. Yeah. before they start, like where, is the bar now? Like, where are we at now? How do we know what we’ve accomplished if we don’t even know where we start? it’s, that’s, the measurement piece is always mind boggling to me.
But anyway.
Erika: Elephant in the room with PR frequently is measurement, right? Because it’s what can we measure and what matters? And so [00:33:00] people, in the past have tried to do things like, oh, what would it have cost for us to have purchased that amount, that many inches of ad space in that publication?
And try to use those equivalencies as the value. And it’s that’s silly because an ad. And what an a’s job is versus, media coverage. Those are very different things. They have, different levers that they’re pulling on for your organization and it’s really about, if you are.
Have coverage that actually drives somebody to contact your organization. That is amazing. But it’s unlikely that you probably even have things in place to do that. Occasionally you might, get really lucky and somebody might, respond to you, via social and say, Hey, I wanna, demo based upon all the great content you’ve done.
I worked someplace where that happened multiple times, and it was really cool to get credit for booking a demo based upon content. That we’d been sharing on [00:34:00] social. but you just, you really have to work hard to put things in place, whether it’s like using, UTMs on all of your links to show what channel and what content it was that was shared.
So that way you can get some of that attribution going or what have you. But, We, can’t just say, oh, it’s all about awareness. ’cause come on, most of us aren’t out there doing those really expensive brand awareness and brand share of voice studies. ’cause they’re expensive and time consuming.
So just trying to use that instead, we can do better. Yeah,
Michelle: it is hard though, and I think it all works together, which is again, another reason why he needs to be strategic about it. And I don’t think you can look at any, how do you know, like the person that you know did buy your thing, like maybe they saw you at a trade show and they read a piece of content and they saw an ad and it’s just like you don’t really know exactly what the point was when that.
They were like, yes, I’m, like you might [00:35:00] not, it was a
Erika: cumulative effort. Yeah. Which means that you gave that consistent, brand messaging to them. You built that trust. Yeah. They, understood who you were and what you stood for and what made you different from the competitors. And that’s gonna be the sum of all of those parts, which is why it’s so important that the pr and the content compliment each other.
Because if they don’t, then they’re not, neither of them are gonna be successful at driving, business results.
Michelle: Yes. So strategy, collaboration, so important.
Erika: and that’s also, to me, that’s what’s fun. I like collaborating with other people because, I come up with great ideas on my own. Okay. But the ideas I come up with having a conversation like the one we’re having here, you’ll just be going back and forth and someone will say a word.
Or a series of words, and then you have that little tickle and then all of a sudden you come up with this great idea that just blurps out. Yeah. And [00:36:00] yeah, it needs to be refined, but the back and forth and the people with different backgrounds and different experiences working together, I. Is 100% where the best ideas come from and where the best content comes from because it isn’t just from that one perspective, it’s much bolder and, richer content than it would be otherwise.
Michelle: Yeah, I think it’s really hard when you’re just sitting in your little bubble by yourself, your little silo to really, knock it out of the park all the time because you know you need to feed. Ideas in there, or it’s just gonna be, the same thing or just get stale, if you’re not.
Fueling that with something, So I, yeah, I don’t know why people don’t like to work together. I guess I know that, sometimes people are territorial and, I don’t know, controlling, maybe I’m not sure what it is, but, but yeah, or
Erika: it’s maybe they had really terrible school projects where you had to work in a team and inevitably you had those [00:37:00] team members who didn’t do anything at all, and you ended up having to.
Pick up their job. And so you have this lingering resentment about the idea that teamwork is not the dream work. It’s really your drudgery. ’cause you’re gonna be the one who cares and carries it across the line. especially when you’re talking about thought leadership, it’s gotta be a team effort.
’cause you need the teamwork that involves that person who’s gonna be out there. Sharing. Sharing the point of view, all the people on the team that are gonna create the content, the derivative content, promoting and pitching the content. And you also need that person who’s gonna be the thought leader.
You need them to be out there and collaborating and talking to other people. If they’re sharing their thought leadership And somebody responds to it
Michelle: And they
Erika: don’t reply well then all of that work that you all just put into that effort. It’s for N because that, it needs to continue.
So somebody, if you have a really strong perspective, there’re gonna be people coming in to [00:38:00] challenge your thought leader. And who are gonna say, I don’t know what about this and coming up with things and they’ve gotta be willing to engage. Even with people who disagree to, not necessarily can’t sway them or bring them around, but you’ve gotta be able to defend your, point of view.
You gotta be able to say. I’ve seen that happen, but I still think that my point of view is the better way to go because, and you share it out. You don’t have to go back and forth in the comments for years with that person, but you’ve gotta be able to, be confident enough about taking a stand to be able to respond.
So that’s the other thing is, if you’re going to be doing social media as part of thought leadership program, your executives need to be willing. To engage. If they’re gonna just tell you don’t respond to that person ’cause they were negative, then you shouldn’t be sharing on social because you’re gonna come across, as one of those big companies that doesn’t actually care what their customers think.
’cause inevitably that person that you blow [00:39:00] off is gonna end up being a customer. Yeah. maybe occasionally it’s a competitor trying to, salt your wounds. But more often than not, it’s gonna be maybe another industry analyst or industry thought leader who you could partner with and collaborate with.
’cause if you have that person who has a different point of view from your thought leader, I. That’s actually really cool if they jump into the conversation. Then you have two people approaching the topic with different perspectives and realistically, your company. Your brand, what you’re trying to do, who you’re trying to attract shouldn’t be the same as everyone else.
Right? There should be plenty of room for you and your competitors to be able to be talking about things. this makes me think of the fact that so often when I’m doing long form content, I’ll ask, are there any companies whose research I can’t include in this piece? Or are there any folks you really want me to make sure to [00:40:00] amplify?
And, in the best projects people will say no. As long as it’s, valid. recent research, you can use it. And the reason that I like that is because if your competitor does some amazing, compelling research that supports your perspectives and supports the industry as a whole
You including that into your piece. It makes you look stronger because you are not afraid. You’re not trying to pretend that you don’t have any competitors, that nobody else does anything related to what you do. You’re sharing some research and you’re trusting that the people who are reading it can do their own homework.
They can decide what kind of a company they wanna work with you, including a stat that your competitor sourced in their research that supports your initiatives is not going to cause you to lose a sale. It’s, if anything, it’s just going to build the respect of your [00:41:00] audience who’s wow, I respect that they, are supporting the industry and care about the industry and their customers.
I. Because your customers care about what it’s gonna take for them to sell in the idea of making, a purchase or making a change. ’cause they have to come up with all those stats and with the use cases and with all the examples themselves. So everything you can do to help them with that. is a good thing.
bit of a rant there, but I just, I do really, it always bums me out. ’cause most, most of the time I’ve worked places where you absolutely could not quote research from someone else. And so then they’d be like, we need to do our own research. And that’s worst, oh, to do our own research.
That’s exactly the same as their research.
Michelle: you can always. Pull from research that other organizations did that maybe aren’t a direct competitor too. That’s what I say when clients, ’cause most clients that I work with are, [00:42:00] I wouldn’t call ’em. I would call ’em smaller companies, but that’s 500 employees or whatever.
That’s my definition of small business. It’s not 10 employees maybe, not gigantic, but they can’t afford to do their own research, so we would pull from, I. an industry, respected industry association or somebody who’s done research in the sector that we could probably cite or just, I think, you can frame that up in your own way and use it, in your own.
I. And your own thought leadership. hundred percent. You don’t necessarily have to be conducting the research yourself to leverage research. And that’s an important point. And I research is great. I wish every client could do their own research, but it’s hard to produce good research. even when they have the budget.
I think a lot of people don’t understand how to do that either. So I’m hoping to have Michelle Lynn on at some point to. [00:43:00]
Erika: She is. She’s amazing. And you know what I always have really admired about her work is her work starts from understanding what the story is that you’re trying to tell. So again, that’s the PR and the content have to come together when you’re doing proprietary research to think about, okay, what’s the story that we are trying to tell?
How can the re, how can this research help us tell this story? How can we. Help be outrageously useful with content that we can create based upon this research. So you have to think about all of that before you start asking the questions, because otherwise you may find that you’re asking questions that give you a bunch of data, but they don’t give you a story.
They don’t support your thought leader stories. It’s just, a thing to pitch randomly to the media. And yeah, you wanna have a reason. To talk to the media, but shouldn’t you, [00:44:00] whenever possible have all of these things be part of your brand narrative? come on, you’re gonna spend all this time and effort.
You might, it should be integrated.
Michelle: Yeah. there’s so many mistakes you can make with the research. That’s why I feel like it’s important to, to work with somebody, a professional, like Michelle or, a small, maybe small. group or agency that does research.
’cause I just feel like you can go wrong at so many points and I’ve seen it over and over again. And if you are gonna pitch a journalist are gonna look, under the hood and see, how many people you surveyed and what questions you asked and all of that. Yeah. Is
Erika: this an ongoing survey or is this a one-off thing that they’re never gonna get again?
Yeah, because that’s the other thing to think about when you’re doing things like this that are, when it’s, research that supports thought leadership, if you can commit to doing it every year. It’s gonna be so valuable, not just because you get that trend over time for those core [00:45:00] questions that you keep asking, but because you become, a piece of data, a story that people who have a specific beat, they can count on it.
When I was at Achievers, I had people from day one being like, so when is your next edition of this, very specific employee engagement survey that they did every year. When is that gonna come out? This year? I was like, wow. I’m like, they’ve done it a couple times and it already has people who are ready for it because it’s valuable to those folks.
So it’s Think about how you can add value on the PR side to those journalists you wanna connect with to the industry analysts and to, your perspective customers, because all of those things go into creating truly valuable content out of that research too.
Michelle: Yeah, I was thinking about Andy Cristina’s, research on bloggers.
Yeah. And that he does every year. He’s been doing it for, at least 10 years, I’m gonna say. Yeah. So that’s, that’s gotten him, a lot of, [00:46:00] visibility, but also it’s just really interesting to watch the, trends over time and, I find that to be pretty.
Erika: And it’s so great to have that as a content creator because when you get people thinking, oh, surely this content should only cost X dollars.
You point them over to that and go, so again, what were you saying? How many, oh, you think I should just spend an hour creating this content? Okay, let’s call them opinion piece. And it’s gonna be only my opinion. And you’re not gonna want it.
Michelle: No. It takes a lot more time than people think. even when I try to repurpose a piece of content, I find, from my newsletter to my blog or something like that, it takes time to just, it, it’s really.
You don’t count how much time. I’m not even always aware of how much time I think something’s gonna be easy or straightforward, but no, then it, there’s just always things that go into it that you’re not really thinking about. So I think that’s, important. [00:47:00] Time, money, effort, strategy.
It’s all, it’s really, it’s not, you can’t, it’s not random and you can’t
Erika: skip PR and content being BFF. You’ve gotta work on that relationship. You have to be aligned. Ideally, you have to have that shared, content calendar where you’re aware of everything that’s happening. ’cause even just the fact that sometimes PR will be aware that something’s happening that the content team doesn’t know about, and vice versa, just sharing that information so everyone understands, oh, hey, this launch got pushed out.
Or. Hey, all of a sudden we’re being invited to a case study with this client and it’s ahead of us doing our user conference. Like having all those conversations and keeping track of all those moving parts. And sharing that, information is so important because otherwise you end up with the fire drills where no one’s happy and you’re creating, you’re doing work That’s not as good as it would’ve been if you’d been collaborating from the get go.
Michelle: Yeah, I think [00:48:00] that’s, another good point because, I feel like you were talking earlier too about a waste of time, for people that, are getting hit by multiple departments or multiple people to be interviewed on similar topics. Yeah. I just feel like if you’re not in alignment, it’s really hard to, make any headway on some of these things. And, also, I thought of another question that I didn’t really have on my list, but sometimes, I think when you’re collaborating, the PR team might take the lead. Sometimes the content team might take the lead. Yep. so it’s good to know, Those teams probably have different strengths, and yeah, and maybe, maybe PR does own the relationship with the, thought leaders, but maybe the content team, is, writing the blog posts about, the how tos and the customers or, there’s different ways you can do that.
and dev divvy that up so that [00:49:00] everybody feels like they’re contributing. And obviously, it’s, it, It could be too many cooks in the kitchen, but sometimes it’s the more, putting the heads together, it actually is better for the whole overall picture. Totally.
Erika: And I’ll give you an example of that.
Let’s say you have a situation where you only have so many referenceable customers, so everyone’s super protective of their time and only wants. To, reach out to that customer once every six months. whoever is reaching out to that customer at that six month, timeframe Needs to understand Hey, is there a question that we’re asking everybody, because we’re gonna do a piece of content later in the year that has multiple perspectives on this topic.
Okay. We need to get that in. Are we, is there something upcoming where we know we’re gonna need a quote from a customer about this topic? let’s make sure we include that in the customer case study interview too. So it’s like you need to be aware and have that collaboration, [00:50:00] across anybody who touches any facet of thought leadership to make sure that you can have that one 30 minute meeting, but that you get those pieces of information that you know you’re gonna need over the next six months.
whereas too often it’s more like you hear, oh yeah, I just interviewed this client for this case study. And then you’re like, oh, did you ask them this thing? And no, it’s ah,
Michelle: because yeah, you don’t wanna be going back and wasting the customer’s time ’cause it’s valuable. And if they spend any time with you, I think you’re lucky.
And then, if you don’t, if you leave things off your list Yeah, that’s not great. ’cause I know from experience it’s tough to get them back, it’s
Erika: It is. And plus, you also want them to feel valued. You want to include your customers in the content you’re creating because it feels bad if you have just been in interviewed about something and then they publish the ultimate guide to whatever, and you were literally just talking to ’em about it, and you’re example isn’t in [00:51:00] there, that feels bad.
And that’s what happens when you don’t have everyone talking to each other and collaborating. Yeah.
Michelle: Yeah. I also, it’s also tough when I’m put in the position to write about a customer, but I wasn’t on the interview with the customer. Yeah. So it’s you can’t have 10 people on the call maybe.
it’s good to have the people that are actually gonna be doing the, Construction of whatever it is. at least listening in. And I actually like to ask the questions too because sometimes things come up while you’re chatting with your, the list of questions you might have given them ahead of time, things come up that you’re not thinking about.
and you can run off in a different direction and add even more to the, more color and flavor to whatever it is that you’re writing.
Erika: Frankly, if you’re doing a good job interviewing, that’s exactly what will happen because you’ll earn their trust at the top of the interview, and as they get more and more comfortable with you, as you go down into the harder questions, they [00:52:00] will share more with you and you’ll get those colorful stories that they wouldn’t have otherwise.
Gone into. So I do agree. It’s always so helpful. that said, I frequently end up not being the person. but when I’m in those situations, whenever I can, I try to be the person who helps write the interview guide so that way I’m, structuring the questions in the flow that I know can really work to get the super candid examples.
And then I also try to even give the person interviewing examples of what to listen for, what kind of an answer we’re looking for from the question. So that way if they get something that’s just really high level or not going to be what we need, that they understand that they didn’t get what we need from them, so then they can try to probe more to get into it.
Or when we know that a common answer to something is X, y, or z. Then showing what the right follow-up question should be for that in order to create, a piece of content that is really personal. oh, here’s a good [00:53:00] place to ask them. Oh, cool. Can you share an example for that? because the person interviewing can get nervous or maybe they haven’t done a lot of this, or they aren’t a content creator, so they don’t necessarily know what is gonna be really helpful to the person writing it later.
So again, yeah. That’s where having all that cross pollination and collaboration helps everybody.
Michelle: Yeah, I always try to stress when I’m not doing the interview, how important numbers are, time saved, money saved, anything they’ve been able to measure. Because I feel like a lot of times if you don’t know to ask those things, you would, it wouldn’t occur to you how important that is.
But if you’re actually trying to show how your product or service, help somebody save time or save money or whatever, you need that actual data if they have it. And again, it’s like you can’t just say, it saved us time. Whoop be like, of course. How much time? Or, yeah.
What were you able to accomplish that you can, just
Erika: things, walk me through what [00:54:00] that process was before, like, when did you have to get started each quarter doing this? How many people were involved? just knowing that you can do those kinds of things to quantify it too. So yeah, they might be able to say, oh, this saved me 10% of the time, but they will be able to say, oh, this used to take three.
It used to take us three weeks to close the quarter, and it was me and so pulling an all-nighter. And sometimes we work on the weekends, and so then you’re starting to do the math. You’re helping them figure it out, and then they’ll actually get to that percentage where they can’t always. If you ask just for that number, some people would be like, I don’t know.
We didn’t, we didn’t track that. But you can walk them through and get to a number that they’ll feel comfortable with. It just takes, a little bit of practice.
Michelle: Yeah, no. And if sometimes again, like they, they’ll send you notes that someone else did the interview. And I’m like, okay, I’m gonna have to work my magic on this one because it’s,
Erika: that’s when you have to start going, what can I imagine?[00:55:00]
And then you write things and go, I’m imagining here, please let them adjust. Like I’ll come up with a really good quote. It’d be like you let them adjust if this isn’t exact exactly accurate. but whatever possible you want it to be in their words, And, that’s true for thought leadership as well.
You want. Always to be using the thought leader’s words. You’re not trying to regurgitate your brand, your brand book. You’re trying to amplify that person’s experience and build their expertise. So I, think that’s maybe the. like last big point I would love to share is just don’t get bogged down in trying to make your thought leader sound like they’re reading your brand messaging platform.
’cause that I think is a huge mistake that, I see folks fall into and it doesn’t sound authentic ’cause it isn’t.
Michelle: Yeah. You want their words, you want them to talk about, their experience and [00:56:00] their words. That’s what’s really powerful to people. And yeah, the same thing over and over again, just doesn’t really.
Mean a whole lot? I don’t think so. That is a good point to end on. I, unless there’s anything else you wanna share before I, I think
Erika: that’s the last, I think that’s it. Okay. I just, I love thought leadership and I, hope that folks after listening to our conversation really take a, take a look at how they’re approaching their, their workflows and their teamwork on it.
’cause it is a team sport. It’s has to be, if it’s going to be effective and meet your goals.
Michelle: That is a good point. I’m gonna put up your website one more time. while I thank you very much for joining me today, and I know that we will be seeing each other, online and we’ll be seeing each other in person in a, few months, again at c thank you so much Erika.
This was fun and I always enjoy. It’s my pleasure.
Erika: And I always love collaborating with you.
Michelle: [00:57:00] Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for being here. And please, everyone, please join us again. I’ll be back on, the 16th, I believe, with Doug Downs. We’ll be talking about how podcasts can help you. they’re important piece of your PR program and we touched on that today.
So that’s another way, that you can, Beef up your, PR and content program with the podcast. You can get a lot of great content that way, and we will talk about that on April 16th. So thanks, Erika. Thanks everyone. Bye bye.
