How to use thought leadership to deliver new insights to journalists and gain brand awareness
Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash
Thought leadership has become a pivotal element in the B2B landscape, influencing both decision-making processes and fostering trust among senior executives. It’s no longer just a marketing tactic, but a highly strategic way to build brand trust and advocacy.
Since Joel Kurtzman coined the term ‘thought leadership’ in 1994, the concept of sharing valuable insights and creating industry leading personas has gone from strength to strength, and in recent years marketing departments are increasingly recognising the value thought leadership brings to a brand.
By positioning themselves as authoritative voices within the HR sector, brands can utilise their content to effectively capture media attention, influence their narratives and build trust with their audience.
Thought leadership goes beyond self-promotion; it involves sharing valuable, research-backed insights that address current challenges in the workforce.
UK journalists are typically under tight deadlines, highly selective about sources, and focused on credibility, originality, and audience relevance. As a result, brands must ensure they have interesting, knowledgeable experts that are passionate about their field.
Be Authoritative, but Accessible
Your spokespeople, often senior management or HR experts, must come across as credible and relatable. They should be interesting, knowledgeable experts in their field. Having worked with employers, seeing and solving issues, your organisation’s thought leaders need to be able to convey their professional experience in a well-communicated and informative manner, offering context and guidance, not just opinions.
It is often helpful to be media-trained, offering concise, non-jargon filled quotes - linking to wider workforce challenges. Doing so at short notice for comment can be necessary for some journalists, often creating strong results.
Offer Thought Leadership Beyond Press Releases
UK journalists need genuine thought leadership, not thinly veiled sales pitches. Sales is an absolutely no in PR terms. Journalists want valuable insights from respected spokespeople.
To increase a brand’s visibility, subject matter experts can also publish views and guidance on social media sites such as LinkedIn as well as on their own websites, news sites, and to speak publicly at conferences.
Build Relationships and Reach
Thought leadership succeeds when journalists see you as a reliable expert. To build these relationships it’s important to work closely with a PR firm - as much as we’d love to shout about ourselves here, it’s important to find the right fit for you and your brand. Work with a PR firm that understands your business, the challenges of the sector and which types of media to work with to gain exposure. With the best contacts, they will be able to create personalised pitches, offer insights and show the value of your expertise. By building this relationship between your brand and journalists, they will increase your exposure as a thought leader in your field.
As a thought leader, it’s important to be able to stand out to UK journalists, moving beyond generic commentary and deliver data-rich insights that offer both credible and contextual thought leadership. As mentioned, it’ss important not to fall down the rabbit hole of sales or self-promotion and to stay focused on relationship-first media engagement.
With these elements in place, an HR brand can become a go-to source for journalists and a trusted voice in UK workforce conversations.
Contact Kay Phelps at PR in HR - she’ll be provide guidance on thought leadership and how to make it work best for your HR brand.
PR in HR is best place to increase recognition of your HR brand.
We know that gaining valuable PR wins in the workplace media is vital, but it’s also complex.
Amplifying your messages with PR strengthens brand awareness and credibility to a much wider buying audience. It helps build trust. It helps grow your brand.
Problematically, there are hundreds of voices clamouring to be heard by national, HR and workplace B2B journalists and influencers, and only a relative few get into the media spotlight each day.
We help your brand to be one of them, repeatedly.
We use powerful PR so our clients - providers to the HR market - rise above the noise to gain exceptional brand recognition.