PR for ambitious tech businesses: what’s best, thought leadership or comment?

What’s the best type of media engagement for your ambitious tech business: comment or thought leadership?

Ambitious tech businesses with limited resources need to spend their time and money efficiently, so when it comes to positioning your business and establishing and nurturing your reputation as an expert, what is the best PR tactic for business – comment or thought leadership?

Defining the difference between contribution and thought leadership

Before we think about which approach is best for increasing your business’ awareness and enhancing your reputation, it’s essential to understand the difference between contribution and thought leadership. Article contribution or comment is where a business leader or subject matter expert provides short, sharp comments which may be used as a quote article that a journalist is writing. The final article will most probably include several quotes from various industry experts, including your competitors, allowing the journalist to explore and showcase the topic from several different viewpoints.

Thought leadership is where businesses harness the expertise and knowledge of their subject matter experts in insightful articles. These authoritative articles explore the issues that are important to their customers and may offer unique insights into how these challenges can be overcome. Ideally, these by-lined articles will appear in a respected media outlet and link back to the company website.

What are the pros and cons of distinct types of media engagement?

There are key advantages that a comment has over thought leadership. The biggest one is ‘time’. Journalists are constantly working to a deadline that is often imminent, so they will want to speak to experts quickly to source useable soundbites, particularly if they plan to speak to several different companies. This means that the time you need to invest in these opportunities will be less than what you would have to dedicate to a robust thought leadership strategy.

The other key benefit is frequency. What I mean by this is – that if journalists know that you can follow their brief and give them interesting, engaging, and thought-provoking soundbites, they are more likely to come to you again in the future. It’s these types of opportunities that help us to form meaningful, long-term relationships with your key target media.

What businesses may struggle with is the lack of content control that comes with ad hoc comment opportunities. Your experts will not have the opportunity to review their contribution before it’s published. This can lead to occasional misquotes but in our experience, this very rarely happens. Let’s not forget that journalists have a reputation to maintain – it’s unlikely they will want to do anything to jeopardise this.