One of the greatest assets of any institution is faculty expertise and research, an invaluable commodity in the media when it comes to drawing attention to a business school or university.
Done right, ensuring media visibility for academics and their work has many benefits. These include strengthening your institution’s reputation on the global stage, as well supporting the student and faculty recruitment initiatives, and it also keeps your high-profile academics happy.
At BlueSky Education we recognise the value of promoting faculty expertise. With over a decade’s worth of experience working with world-leading institutions, we come equipped to support your school in promoting its insights, expertise and ground-breaking research.
Whatever the subject area, our effective PR methods ensure that expert insights and academic papers are right for the public – without offending an academic by ‘dumbing down’ their work.
With our market-leading know-how, strong and longstanding relationships with key journalists and editors at leading publications, as well as a gift for storytelling, BlueSky Education’s approach offers effective, tailored communications support to institutions, ensuring regular and impactful media exposure.
We have the ability to craft, from complex data or information, the stories that turn your research into tomorrow's headlines. Academics are not meant to be storytellers, but we are. We are able to find the human impact or interest in the most obscure concepts without impairing or undermining the research. We know how to interest your audience, whilst keeping the research credible and accurate.
Afterall, research is carried out in order to have an impact and for discoveries to be used to improve businesses, society and much more. Papers must therefore be seen – not hidden away in closed academic journals – and media visibility is key for this. We’ve given researchers a platform that has helped them to change companies, advise governments and even share their work with the UN.
How we ensure media coverage for academic research and insight
Through regular engagement with the faculty at your university or business school, we proactively share their expertise with the media. This can take a number of forms, including drafting press releases around new research, as well as pitching thought-leadership contributions and features to targeted journalists.
We are also often contacted by a raft of journalists who seek academic insight, and we can put your institution’s experts forward. Having cultivated close relationships with key publications across the world, such as the Financial Times, Forbes, BBC and Poets&Quants, BlueSky Education is considered a trusted and reliable representative of, and therefore a go-to organisation for, leading academic research. We understand what the leading media outlets are looking for in a story, and so can advise around how and when to engage with that publication, and what content to use. Our ‘News sense’ will save you from spending hours unsuccessfully reaching out to journalists.
This all enables us to regularly provide PR opportunities to schools, presenting them with proactive as well as reactive opportunities achieved through journalists seeking out BlueSky Education’s help.
With extensive experience working with institutions that specialise in wide range of subjects, from management and business, to technology and science, we come equipped to achieve results for any organisation in the higher education sector.
Since we work on a global level, we provide international exposure, creating and executing cross-border media campaigns, generating awareness in highly sought-after markets. In doing this, we present your university or business school as a go-to institution for expert comment, ground-breaking research, and interesting stories, while also supporting other goals such as recruitment drives.
Alongside effective media campaigns and securing opportunities, we provide expert guidance for academics around how to engage with the press. As BlueSky Education is made up of media and communications experts, we provide support and advice in order for faculty to produce written contributions – often editing or ghost-writing materials – offer verbal comment, and take part in live broadcast interviews.
Awareness-raising research PR
Ultimately, the key objective of many PR campaigns is to generate thought leadership, position the author or authors of the work, or their institution, and raise awareness of the subject.
We understand that measuring PR is not a very precise science, but we understand the importance of evaluation, BlueSky Education is therefore able to offer a suite of measurement services that allow you to gauge the understanding you have created amongst your target audience, from the numbers of readers reached, to shares on social media and analysing the outlets there’s been coverage in by the success of their search engine ranking.
We deliver a tailored PR service for an institution’s research and their faculty that generates measurable results. This means it can be reported back to important stakeholders with clarity.
If you want to talk to us further about promoting faculty expertise and research in the press, get in touch with BlueSky Education today, or call +44 (0) 1582 790700 or email.
Alternatively, if you’re interested in our workshops designed to help academics write for the media, please see here.
If you’d also like to raise your Dean’s public profile, discover more about our services here, or if you’d like a PR agency’s expertise specifically on programme promotion then read more here.
