Tools To Help You Find an Expert Spokesperson for Your P.R. Campaign

Identifying the right spokesperson for your brand is one of the most important decisions for any company when launching a new product or service and it’s also one of the most challenging, not to mention frustrating.

Depending on your media message, you may need to know about some tools to help you find an expert spokesperson for your P.R. campaign. Whether your looking for an credible professional in food, health, medicine, pet training, lifestyle, or any myriad of professions, the “expert” part may be two-fold: 1) An expert in an industry and; 2) An expert on-camera.

It all boils down to knowing what tools or resources are available to locate the ideal spokesperson to represent your brand.

While there is no perfect tool for finding experts on subjects — no perfect “experts.org” tool with a simple user interface (though new tools like expertisefinder.com are emerging) — two sites, Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Search, can function as tremendously powerful engines for finding experts. To learn more about how Journalists use these tools to find quotable experts, read here.

Now, if you have a particular spokesperson already in mind, Google is still initially one of the most effective ways of tracking down a way to contact them or their manager or agent.

You can also Google book authors on a topic that works well with your product, service, or brand since the book gives them credibility that leads to bookability with the media.

You can also look at websites for Speakers Bureaus that may give you a good starting point, especially if you’re looking to connect with well known expert or celebrity as a spokesperson. Professional services, like Celebrity Service, are always going to be the best way to locate your initial contact person to start initial conversations regarding a possible spokesperson.

If you represent an expert, you’ll want to get them in the “virtual rolodex” of news room decision makers. This way they’ll be the “go to” person when they need a quote or need to book an expert for their program. So, in addition to your media pitching, you need to make sure that they are listed in these tools as well and increase their name with SEO.

If your campaign includes a satellite media tour (SMT), please contact us. We’ll give you straight talk on the current media environment and how to bring together all the right elements for a successful broadcast campaign.

Peace and coconuts,

Marianne Schwab, Executive Producer, CMP Media Cafe

This entry was posted on June 28, 2016 at 6:56 pm and is filed under Broadcast Public Relations, Spokesperson Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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