Bospar knew just what to do.
We did deep-dive story-mining sessions with key subject matter experts (SMEs) to better understand their areas of interest and potential bylined article topics for each SME, and we assessed the client’s market, its key competitors and what makes the company stand out.
We recognized that, post-pandemic, companies were trapped in a skills spiral and needed help figuring out how to retain and retrain employees to drive engagement and productivity. We also understood that widespread adoption of AI was making workers skittish, leading them to question how they could remain valuable to their employers and prompting them to develop their skills and become AI literate to increase their marketability now and in the future.
The PR team identified and analyzed the competition, which included a handful of companies, and it became clear that our client’s differentiator was skills validation, the last mile of learning that many organizations weren’t paying attention to or were foregoing altogether. We also wanted to emphasize how the client enables companies to customize labs to the way they work.
We then created a strategic, forward-thinking plan, including one bylined article per month and one press release per quarter, to position the client with media as the thought leader that it is.
But we understood that many media outlets that accept contributed bylines operate on long lead times. So, we also leaned into newsjacking, the practice of actively monitoring the news for topics that dovetail with our clients’ interests and inserting our clients into breaking news stories by providing reporters who produce those stories with ready-to-go client thought leadership quotes. Some of our newsjacking even led to secured bylines. For example, when we pitched a quote related to the Apple Vision Pro news, TechRadar invited us to produce a byline.
Because we know that proprietary data is a great tool with which to secure impactful media coverage, we also collaborated with the client and Propeller Insights to plan, execute and promote a survey on how IT pros feel about current learning and professional development opportunities, and we shared those results in a press release and pitches to tech media.
