Becoming a thought leader (aka a go-to industry expert) can be a real ‘hey mum, I made it’ moment — and who are we to deny you the opportunity to take centre stage and discuss the all-important topics that you’re passionate about?!
Giving yourself a voice, and using it wisely, can help to better convey you and your brand’s personality and in turn, increase credibility and wider brand awareness. For example, Steven Bartlett is a British entrepreneur that is featured in podcasts, interviews, TV shows and more discussing his business success — with over 4m followers on Instagram, and his credible thought leadership experience, we’d definitely go to him for business advice, wouldn’t you?
So, if you want to be the Steven Bartlett of your sector, here are some of our top tips:
Understand your goals — what are you trying to achieve? What would you like to be known for? What advice can you give?
Our client Net Zero Industry Wales (NZIW) has a clear and concise mission — to make Wales the country of choice for producing sustainable goods and services. This means that from the get-go, we understand where it, and its CEO Ben Burggraaf’s, expertise lies. So, when pitching we know exactly the angle of the story we are trying to create and what existing news topics Ben can piggyback on.
One example of this was the closure of Tata’s Steelworks which provided an opportunity for Ben to discuss the ways in which the steel industry could decarbonise — a feature that was brought to life on ITV Wales, reaching over 500,000 people.
Know where your audience goes for advice — create a target media list and get to know the key journalists that specialise in your area of expertise, so they know to come to you when they need a comment.
Recently, Mentera, which nurtures a prosperous Welsh economy by supporting Welsh businesses, wanted to promote one of its latest farming projects — to discuss industry-leading technology that is being trialled at a farm in Pembrokeshire. By understanding the audience that Mentera wanted to target (agriculture/farming industry, communities in Wales), we knew to go straight to our contacts at S4C. And we secured an interview with Arwain DGC on an episode of Ffermio — a Welsh language agriculture affairs programme, reaching 721,000 people.
Draft a compelling pitch — when it comes to pitching, the name of the game is making the life of a busy journalist just that little bit easier. Try and get your pitch into a paragraph and be concise (who, what, why, when) so they know from the get-go, how the expert will fit in with their existing content and what they can comment on.
We recently supported the National Infrastructure Commission for Wales (NICW) in the launch of its flood report — which provides 17 recommendations to Welsh Ministers on how to make Wales more flood resilient. From local communities to industry stakeholders, there were lots of audiences to reach here so we tailored our pitch to be relevant for each target publication/crowd — using regional and pan-Wales statistics, highlighting applicable recommendations and more. This not only gained us a range of digital coverage, but we also secured interviews with NICW Commissioners on the likes of BBC Radio Cymru, BBC Breakfast and S4C.
Really, thought leadership is all about knowing yourself/your brand, your audience and your media so once you have that nailed, there’s no stopping you. But, sometimes, it can be easier to get support from the professionals that already have the knowledge and relationships sorted…Spoiler alert — that could be us!
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