Why Thought Leadership Is the New PR  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast]] - Full Title: Why Thought Leadership Is the New PR - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/63390e83-ce94-493e-9d4a-7033b511efa3 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **PR's Role Has Fundamentally Shifted** - PR no longer means only press releases or celebrity relationships. - Amy Rosenberg says PR now directly affects AI search and digital visibility. Transcript: Amy Rosenberg I'm going to laugh. If people still think that we need to do press releases, that's like an old misconception that people should actually be over that by now. But mainly, this is going to be funny, you don't always need PR. That's kind of the thing. So here's the thing. And that's a whole book title, Practical. We need to be practical about things. We don't need to do everything. And sometimes we can do PR. Sometimes we can do a press release. But we need to think about it first and get things organized first. And actually, we need to have ideally a nice online presence first. And then we can go and do some PR. And right now, PR is actually helping with AI search. So showing up in AI. So the old story used to be, oh, PR helps with SEO, which is showing up in Google. But now, well, we still want to show up high in Google, and we can do that through digital PR, and I can talk about how. But now, apparently, PR is very important for AI search. ([Time 0:01:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0dcc7ccc-987a-43c9-9fbf-f04f297a9436)) - **Prepare Your Online Foundation First** - Get organized and build a solid online presence before doing PR. - Prioritize practical work over doing everything at once, Amy recommends. Transcript: Amy Rosenberg And that's a whole book title, Practical. We need to be practical about things. We don't need to do everything. And sometimes we can do PR. Sometimes we can do a press release. But we need to think about it first and get things organized first. And actually, we need to have ideally a nice online presence first. And then we can go and do some PR. ([Time 0:01:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/52e0696f-8382-4e12-997f-5989d1c7b6b4)) - **Thought Leadership Drives Digital Authority** - Thought leadership is the key lever in modern PR and SEO. - Rosenberg frames thought leadership as central to rising in Google and AI results. Transcript: Amy Rosenberg All right. John Jantsch I want to come back to that. But I think part of the confusion is, you know, in the old days, before we had all these digital platforms, it was really more of a, it was very much a relationship game. It was, you know, who you knew at the publications because they were very gated. You know, how you could spin a story in a way that was meaningful to a journalist. You know, those were the real skills. But then all of a sudden, you know, you know, Facebook or we got blogs and we've got Reddit. We've got all these other things that essentially can be lumped into PR. I mean, how do you help people kind of say what PR actually is? Amy Rosenberg Well, good question. And I love that because it's I do. Honestly, I kind of do want a little bit of silo or separation. We can take a PR campaign and we can transform it into content to anything. ([Time 0:04:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/38244286-3def-4e76-93fe-84ed5a1afd93)) - **Earned Media Boosts SEO Credibility** - Media placements provide high-authority backlinks that search engines trust. - Rosenberg says earned media often beats purchased links for credibility with Google. Transcript: John Jantsch So you already mentioned SEO and I'm seeing a lot of SEO folks, you know, it used to just be, hey, we could get keyword rankings by doing X, Y, and Z all day long. That's how it worked. I mean, I've seen certainly a lot of them say that's not working so well anymore. And I see a lot of SEO people talking more about PR, not as a siloed practice, but as a part of SEO now. And then you make that case certainly in the book. Do you have an example of where integrating SEO or really thinking like PR as a core component of SEO made a measurable difference? Amy Rosenberg Well, I feel like right now I'm the worst salesperson ever, and I'm the one that will never tout my profession too much because it's a little salesy. But a lot of SEO people have been saying that PR is the actual driver of authentic links. So here the thing. Google knows when you're buying links. So you sometimes, so you can forget app sponsored articles sometimes depending. And then we just need to get our clients if we can, or ourselves on high domain authority websites. And the media actually has a higher domain authority than other websites. ([Time 0:05:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d33933dd-a6e0-479f-a114-6b6277ff55c4)) - **Frame Content Around E-E-A-T** - Position a person or brand as a subject-matter authority through content and speaking. - Use E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authority, trust) as your framing for thought leadership. Transcript: Amy Rosenberg It's easier to get results for that. So often we are not looking at relationships. We are looking at streamlining. We want, because we can't make relationships with everybody. So we need to have good ways to scale our PR campaigns. And so when we're doing thought leadership, that's positioning a person, whether it's an article or on the stage, we are streamlining everything because you're getting a lot more Value actually in google's eyes because it all ties back to i don't know if you know the acronym eat i'm gonna mess up that's what thought leadership is eat which is the what google looks For they have human reviewers and they're looking for anyone that's writing on a topic to have experience, authority, trust. And there was another one. I don't remember. John Jantsch The other E they added is expertise. So it's experience, expertise, authority and trust. And so that's where ([Time 0:08:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/77c14805-9415-490d-b06d-28bd8c752321)) - **Start Small And Repurpose CEO Content** - Start thought leadership with CEO-written blog posts and repurpose into press articles. - Use high-domain media placements to amplify reach without heavy speaking commitments. Transcript: Amy Rosenberg Yeah. And I just want to add that we don't, we need to kind of start somewhere, right? We don't need to start. A lot of people get really tripped up over thought leadership because first of all, I mentioned this stage. Well, a lot of my clients are shy and they are running companies, they're CEOs, and they're busy. Who really has time to go out and do a lot of speaking engagements, right? So sometimes we will do that, but often we start, you got to start somewhere again. So we start with content and this is where we're doing great blogs from the CEO. And then we're taking that and turning it into a press article. And then the press article can run ideally on a high domain authority website. And then our CEO doesn't have to go anywhere. Like for us, we're really all about efficiencies too. ([Time 0:09:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3eb0bbdc-0fa7-4268-b11c-2f4e3f703017)) - **Use Podcasts To Build Authority** - Use podcasts as a scalable way to practice messaging and build domain authority. - Vet podcast DA and prioritize placements that move SEO and visibility metrics. Transcript: John Jantsch Good question. Amy Rosenberg So first of all, they are huge for building domain authority or for getting SEO because, you know, so often what we will do is podcasts are part of the whole thing so we really get detailed With our media lists and this is where we have all of our lists but we do outline da so to tell you the truth before i decided to do well thank you for having me on the podcast i looked and you Have a good DA. You have a really good, like 54, which for my agency, I'm at like 20 something and I'm a small agency. So you are great. And then the media, they're, you know, around 80 to 100. Anyway, so anyway, so we look at that. And then for some clients, again, they don't want to be too, they're busy. We don't want to bug them. And so we will, you know, vet where we place them. And then we will also think about it as a way to practice our talk. This is where, again, starting somewhere. So if we do want to go and do a speaking engagement, we do need a little visibility first to get our client accepted. So we start with podcasts, actually. ([Time 0:11:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/074903e1-56c0-4af9-8d5e-8f903b1e08fb)) - **Create Social Posting Rules** - Build simple social systems and post consistently rather than trying every platform. - Create rules like three posts per blog and one post per media hit to automate social PR. Transcript: Amy Rosenberg And so we can't, busy people, especially myself, we can't do anything without system. And so it might not be quote unquote strategic, but we need to get things done. And we do need some visibility on some of the platforms, not all of them. So we'll look at a client, we'll think, okay, what platforms should they be on? And then we will create kind of rules around how often we will post about something. And a rule would be, for example, three posts per blog post. And then another rule in different writing, right? You have to write the post differently. And then another rule would be at least one, if not two posts per media hit. And we have to do those because we have to thank the media and tag them. So anyway, so we have those systems and oftentimes we a PR firm. So a lot of PR people will say, well, we you do social. That's your job. You shouldn't silo it. Well, OK, but here's the thing. Sometimes people just hire us for PR and then we notice they're not doing social and we might need them to because we're looking at a crisis down the road. So we need some positive social now. And so we will just kind of say, okay, here's our system. This is what we're doing around this social and kind of get it done for them. ([Time 0:13:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f6ebe4bb-424e-4625-9fe1-d2716cf48441)) - **Measure PR With Analytics Integration** - Align PR goals with measurable outcomes and integrate analytics with tools like Muck Rack. - Track coverage locations and correlate online coverage with conversions when possible. Transcript: Amy Rosenberg Like I said, I'm the worst salesperson ever. So I don't fight people. I don't have, nobody has time for that also. And then also in a, they might be right. We have to look at the budget. It's all about your budget and your bandwidth. So some clients, we can't work with everybody. That's why we wrote I wrote the book. But also, we would like to work with and it doesn't matter what we want. It's who is ready for a pr and who's not and it's got to be somebody who you've got to get your stuff together first which is your base which is content i think in this day we've got to have Like a nice kind of streamlined thing going so that you're in the group we've got to you know beat the beast then we can layer in some pr and then we can put pr again on a program where we can Look at it like we have goals. It could be almost like sales quota goals, but for PR or content where we say, OK, we're going to just we're going to do one campaign per quarter and that might just be enough. And we just have it all scheduled out so that we're not feeling like we're missing something. But we can't really, we're trying to measure our results, right? So we do have a great database called Muckrack that is our software that connects with our clients' Google Analytics. And so we can track like, hey, where did we have this online school? So we can track where our coverage landed in terms of the location and we can track the enrollment for the school by location. So you can get really granular with that. ([Time 0:15:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/55a39916-0671-40f5-9d49-87f19cb7062f)) - **Begin With Monthly Blogging** - If you do nothing, start a monthly blogging program to support SEO and PR. - Use a marketing calendar to schedule quarterly PR campaigns for consistent momentum. Transcript: Amy Rosenberg So if you're really just not doing anything, I would just say try and get yourself on a monthly blogging program for SEO. PR. But once you kind of get that going, then you can look at like the marketing calendar and kind of think about how, when you can do some PR, when you can do some proactive PR. And if you look, I have a calendar on my website that is free. I need to make sure that you can access the link, but it has, you could fill out your marketing calendar and I call it marketing, but a lot of it is PR. But to be clear, PR looks a little different these days. ([Time 0:18:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/eeb308c9-da5b-4765-aa46-23d077171ee0))