Turning one expert opinion into six pieces of press
How an editorial team turns a single point of view into a coverage campaign, without asking the expert for six times the work.
The reason most expert content programmes stall is not that the experts have nothing to say. It is that every piece is treated as a separate ask, and a partner who has already given you forty minutes does not want to give you forty more.
The programmes that last work the other way round. One conversation, one strong view, then six things built from it.
Start with a real disagreement
The interview has one job, which is to find the thing this person believes that the rest of the market does not.
Not a summary of the regulation. Not a balanced overview. A view. If the answer could have come from any of your competitors, keep asking.
The whole campaign rests on the strength of the opinion. A safe view produces safe coverage, which is to say none.
Forty minutes, recorded, with someone who knows the sector well enough to push back. That is the only time the expert has to give.
The six formats
From that single recording, six pieces follow, each aimed at a different audience and a different moment.
- The cornerstone article. Eight hundred to twelve hundred words on your own hub, under the expert's name. This is the piece everything else points at, and the one that has to rank.
- The trade byline. The same argument, rebuilt for a specific title's readership and their house style. Not a reprint. Editors can spot a reprint instantly.
- The comment pitch. A tight two paragraphs of the expert's view, ready to go to journalists the moment the topic is in the news. Speed is the entire product here.
- The LinkedIn post. The most contentious paragraph, in the expert's own voice, with the cornerstone article linked underneath.
- The short video. Ninety seconds of the expert making the point to camera. This is the asset that travels furthest and the one most firms skip.
- The client-facing note. The same thinking, reframed as a briefing your fee earners can send to clients directly. This is usually the piece that makes the partner care about the programme.
See what this looks like running across your whole expert bench.
Book a demo →Why it compounds
Each format reaches a different audience, but they all point back to the same hub page, under the same name.
The trade byline gives you a link and a masthead. The comment gets you quoted somewhere you do not control, which is exactly the corroboration that makes an answer engine confident naming your expert. The video and the LinkedIn post do the work inside your own network. The cornerstone article collects all of it.
Run that for one expert and you have a decent quarter. Run it for eight experts and you have a firm that shows up wherever a buyer looks.
What it costs the expert
Forty minutes of interview. Fifteen minutes reviewing the cornerstone piece. Ten minutes on camera, usually on the same day as the interview. That is roughly an hour a month, and it is the only reason the model survives contact with a busy practice.
Everything else, the writing, the reshaping, the pitching, the editing, sits with the editorial team.
Where it goes wrong
The two failure modes are predictable.
- The view gets sanded down in review. Three rounds of internal sign-off turn a sharp argument into a summary of the law. Agree upfront that compliance checks facts and risk, not opinions.
- The formats are made in isolation. Six separate briefs, six separate asks, six separate calendars. Build all six from one recording in one week, or the multiplier disappears.
Get those two right and the rest is production, which is a solved problem.
See your experts, found.
A 30-minute walkthrough, tailored to your firm, of where your experts would rank and what it would take.