In Digital PR, compelling campaigns are key. But what transforms good copy into great copy is the authority behind the piece, this is where third party experts come in.

So, Why Use Third-Party Experts?

Adding third-party commentary to your campaigns can help to strengthen the piece. Using an expert who is not directly affiliated with your client's brand makes it feel more balanced, objective and informative, whilst acting to support the original message of the campaign.

Journalists are far more receptive to campaigns that incorporate expert insight and knowledge. So, including a relevant and authoritative voice within your campaigns is likely to increase media pick-up. We know this based on what we see almost daily in the current news cycle, as well as reviewing the pieces that have landed best from our own outreach here at NOVOS. 

Another reason why third-party experts are so beneficial in digital PR is their ability to increase the reliability of your content, which is beneficial for both DPR and SEO - think E-E-A-T.

E-E-A-T is a set of guidelines used by Google to assess the quality of content. It looks at four factors, expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness to determine the overall quality of search results.

Here’s how it works:

• Expertise - When you include a third-party expert in your campaigns, you are citing someone qualified to speak on a particular subject matter. This shows both Google and the readers that what they are reading is coming from someone who knows exactly what they are talking about.
• Experience - Google places a lot of value on this portion of E-E-A-T, so having an expert who can cite real and lived experiences based on the topic of your campaign can add to the credibility of the piece.
• Authoritativeness - Using an expert who is well-known and well-cited by other high-authority domains will add authority to your campaign, this is an important ranking signal for Google.
• Trustworthiness - Google looks for proper sourcing and transparency, so including and properly crediting third-party experts will boost the overall trustworthiness of your piece. Make sure to include their full title and link to their website to show that you are pushing reliable information rather than an agenda.

How & Where To Source The Right Experts

When it comes to sourcing an expert for your campaign or mailer, the first step is to identify the type of expert you need. The expert you require will depend heavily on the topic and style of your campaign. For instance, if you are working on a campaign about travel trends, you would seek a travel expert, who could be a flight attendant or a travel agent. Alternatively, if your campaign discusses how to make your home appear more expensive, you might enlist the help of a qualified interior designer.
Here are some additional examples of the types of experts you might source depending on the topic of your campaign:

• Money saving: financial advisors or money experts.
• Property: letting agents, mortgage advisors, landscapers, builders & architects.
• Parenting: child psychologists, family therapists & parenting coaches.
• Sleep: sleep specialists/therapists.
• Health: doctors, personal trainers, nutritionists, fertility experts & physiotherapists.
• Fashion: stylists, personal shoppers & buyers.

The next step is to find your experts. There are many platforms you can use to find the right experts for your campaign. Some places you can look are:

• Response Source: put out requests asking for specific experts.
• HARO: similar to Response Source.
• Twitter: using #journorequest, you can ask for specific experts to come forward.
• LinkedIn: either put up a post asking for particular experts, or contact people directly that you think could help.
• Instagram & TikTok: review content related to your campaign topic and message any relevant experts.

And, lastly, you need to consider if you have found the right expert. You need to think strategically about whether they are best placed to speak on the topic. Some things you should consider are:

• Do they align with the narrative of the campaign?
• Do they have the credentials & knowledge to speak on this topic?
• Can they provide interesting, impactful & unique insights or data?
• Will they add anything your client cannot already provide to the piece?

How To Work With Your Chosen Experts

When working with third-party experts, you want to treat them in the same way you would treat your client. You need to be transparent, respectful of them and their time, and be very clear about what it is you need from them and when. Here is a list of things you should be crystal clear about:

• What you need from them in terms of commentary - how long, what they should include etc.
• How they will be attributed within the piece - title to be used, what link to include.
• Deadlines - be specific about when you need them.
• Where their commentary might appear - what publications you’ll outreach to.

Something else you need to be really clear about is that once you have outreached the campaign, journalists can be known to make small tweaks to things such as headlines. So be clear about this with your expert in case it is changed to something that feels a little more click-baity, and feels far removed from the tone and sentiment of their comments.

It is also imperative that you share the copy with the expert for final approval before you begin outreach to ensure that they are happy with how their comments have been used and how they have been credited.

The aim here is to build a good rapport and make the process as smooth as possible, doing this will increase the chances of them working with you again in the future. See them as relationship-building exercises, as it is always handy to have experts on hand.

The Issues Surrounding AI-Generated Expert Commentary

In the world of Digital PR there have been some recent conversations discussing the topic of using AI to write expert commentary, essentially creating fake experts.

To put it bluntly, don’t do it! As an agency, this is something we do not do, and will never do. Not only is it ethically questionable, but it is also not something that will be rewarded by Google. Using fake, or AI-generated expertise does the opposite of building trust, authority and brand value. 

However, using real-life experts opens up the opportunity to be featured by authoritative domains, the kind in which Google and Large Language Models (LLMs) actively crawl when pulling search results or generating AI responses. The more credible and accurate your content is, the more likely it is to be cited, linked, and amplified.

Real voices still, and always will, win.