Expert advice articles are seriously underrated. There are at least 8.5 billion Google searches every single day. That’s 99,000 search queries per second. So, yeah. People want to know a lot of stuff.
Is it all going to be related to you, your business or even your industry? No. But with 8.5 billion searches every day, there are going to be one or two in there that you should be offering your expert answers to, believe us.
Expert advice articles allow you to capitalise on a few things:
1) What your audience wants and needs to know
You know your prospects better than anyone. What are the most commonly asked questions or objections that need to be overcome as people progress through your pipeline? If you don’t know, ask your recruitment team or whoever handles your leads because they sure will! This is a fantastic way to form the basis for an entire suite of expert advice articles.
That’s one way to start. Another great way to generate ideas for your expert advice articles is to use one of the many amazing search listening tools like Answer The Public. These tools return impressive amounts of information on the most common Google (and other engine!) search terms based around specific keywords and phrases. Free versions allow you a few ‘plays’ each day and can provide you with plenty of information about what people are genuinely searching for answers to online.
The strategy? Answer common questions and address common worries or objections so that prospects find your expert advice articles during their research and due diligence process.
2) The knowledge and experience that you have in your franchise.
Show off your skillsets! Franchise recruitment has never been the place for hiding your light under a bushel. Sometimes, what defines you is your team or the knowledge, experience and history within your franchise. Probably both! And if you don’t shout about these things, or you don’t shine the spotlight on your star players until the enquiry is in, then there are an awful lot of prospects who won’t know anything about it.
Expert advice articles can be attributed to one single spokesperson or, better yet, to multiple experts within your team, be they heads of departments or those with specialist skillsets relevant to your brand. Children’s brand? Great, have your Early Years expert tackle an issue. Elderly care? Wonderful, have your head of compliance talk about common challenges. Premises based? Fantastic, have your property lead put together some points on what to look for in the ideal property.
You get the idea! If those teams or individuals are too busy or break out into a sweat at the thought of writing an expert advice article then may we humbly suggest you look into the services of a PR team who can support you?
3) Google algorithms.
When Google (other search engines are available) chooses what results to return for a search, its decision is multi-faceted. But it does always consider a few key things, including the appearance of the words in the query and the relevance of the pages/site in question.
By combining your knowledge of what your audience wants and is actively searching for with your in-house expertise, you’re creating a powerful piece of content. And search engines love great content! Your expert advice articles can transform your SEO strategy by boosting organic results, ultimately driving people to your site and your franchise.
Why write expert advice articles?
This is called the ‘circle back’ where we remind you why you started reading this blog in the first place. Very succinctly, expert advice articles give prospects confidence in you and your franchise brand for a number of reasons:
- You are sharing your knowledge and experience freely, for the good of others. Ethically, this is powerful and builds trust and credibility.
- Your credentials, and that of your franchise, will accompany the article.
- You are being offered up by Google as an expert in response to their search… you must, therefore, be an expert. Funny how that works.
No news is not good news.
Not when it comes to PR anyway. The final, perhaps not so obvious reason for writing expert advice pieces is as simple as it is a bit brutal. Sometimes, you might not have anything happening in your business that we’d class as newsworthy. Sorry. It’s hard to hear but there’s no point trying to push a news story that isn’t strong enough. It’s likely to do more harm than good because the media will reject it and probably remember you next time you go knocking… even if it’s with something wonderful.
Instead, in months when news isn’t staring you in the face, an expert advice article can be a powerful and very desirable piece of content. Not to mention being delightfully multi-purpose. As well as hosting them on your own website, in newsletters and drip feeding across social media, be sure to pitch your expert advice articles out to the media too.
For the best chance of success, make sure your expert advice piece:
- Is linked to a specific day or event that is current – not weeks old!
- Addresses a current hot topic or ‘in the news’ theme with a fresh perspective
- Has a local or geographical hook to the area you’re trying to achieve coverage in
- Directly answers a question you know is being asked on a regular basis (see above!)
Never assume…
We were going to leave this bit out. But the heading says it all, right? Please make sure that if you are offering your expert advice to your peers and/or the public that you have done your research, have the qualifications or experience to actually be offering the expert advice in question, and are presenting facts and information that is accurate and ethical. The entire PR profession thanks you!
If you’d like to chat about expert advice articles in more detail, just drop us a line or give Lucy a call. Her phone is literally always on, she’s a maniac. She’ll thank us for saying that, honest. Email lucy@revpr.co.uk or call 07921 572554.
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