Public Relations: Building Thought Leadership Through Bylines

When most brands think of a public relations program, they focus on traditional activities, including press release and announcements, customer case studies and industry trends, and pitching to reporters for coverage in their next industry pieces. A lesser-used technique for building thought leadership and brand visibility is through submitted bylines with a top company executive as the author.

Many industry publications have shrunk their staff as they scramble to cut costs in the digital world, and as a result, they are hungry for good content from leading commercial company executives, provided that these bylines are interesting and not simply marketing or sales-oriented articles.

One of the advantages is that the brand gets to control every word that is published, and isn’t at the mercy of the reporter or editor to select what they choose to include in the story. Pursuing these types of submitted bylines allows the company to control how its perceived by both its competitors and consumers.

Here are 3 reasons to build your company’s thought leadership through bylines.

Position yourself as an expert.  Garner attention in the industry with media coverage of informed written pieces from your company’s leading experts in the field.  Educate the public on little known issues to gain their trust and simultaneously expose your company name to new groups of consumers.

Identify a problem and the solution.  Although publications typically aren’t interested in articles that read too much likes sales pitches, these thought leadership can be used to indirectly promote your company’s products or services.  Media coverage of your experts place your company as the solution to the identified problem.

Set the stage for a launch.  Leading up to the launch of a product or service, companies want to be in the limelight as much as possible.  Gaining coverage from notable publications in relevant industries places the company and news of its new upcoming launch in the minds of target consumer groups.

When utilized correctly, media coverage of thought leadership pieces can be an invaluable tool.  It becomes an integral component of a company’s content marketing strategy to influence how its seen in its industry and cement its position as a leader in the minds of its consumers.

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