How Can Consultants and Professional Services Firms Become Media Experts?
By Jordan Baker, Founder of Fair Public Relations and former UK national journalist
Being highly qualified does not automatically make somebody a good media expert.
You can spend 20 years advising clients, know your subject inside out and still struggle to give a journalist what they actually need.
When I was a journalist, the experts I found most useful tended to have a combination of things.
They knew what they were talking about.
They responded quickly.
They had evidence where evidence mattered.
They were prepared to have an opinion.
And, crucially, they could explain complicated things in language normal people understood.
That last point matters enormously.
A consultant may spend every day talking to other specialists using technical terminology, but the journalist may be writing for a national newspaper, business audience or consumer publication where those same words mean very little.
The goal is not simply to be an expert.
It is to become a useful media expert.
What does a journalist actually need from a professional expert?
The exact requirement depends on the story and publication, but several qualities consistently help.
Genuine authority
You need a legitimate reason to be commenting on the subject.
That could come from:
- professional qualifications
- years of practical experience
- specialist client work
- senior responsibility in the field
- original research
- professional memberships
- repeated exposure to a particular problem
- direct operational experience
The title "consultant" itself does not prove anything.
A journalist wants to know why this person is qualified to talk about this issue.
Speed
Media opportunities can disappear very quickly.
If a journalist needs an expert today and your reply arrives four days later, the quality of the answer may no longer matter.
When I was a journalist, somebody who could respond quickly was extremely useful.
Over time, journalists remember that.
Clarity
A good expert can explain their subject without forcing the journalist or reader to translate it.
That does not mean oversimplifying to the point of being inaccurate.
It means understanding the audience.
A technical trade publication may be perfectly comfortable with specialist terminology.
A consumer publication probably needs something very different.
The best experts can adjust.
Evidence
Strong opinions are useful.
Strong opinions backed by evidence are even better.
If somebody tells a journalist that a major shift is happening in their industry, the obvious next question is:
How do you know?
Experience can sometimes answer that.
Data can sometimes answer it.
Professional evidence can answer it.
The important thing is that the statement has substance behind it.
An actual point of view
The least useful media commentary often says absolutely nothing.
"Businesses should continue to monitor the situation."
"Communication is key."
"Companies should consider their individual circumstances."
All of those statements can be true.
They are also unlikely to make an article memorable.
A media expert should be able to explain what they genuinely think and why.
How do you work out what your firm should become known for?
This is one of the first things I like to work through with expertise-led businesses.
At Fair PR, our Founder & Authority Positioning Session helps us clarify where someone's strongest authority sits, which themes are genuinely relevant and where the best media opportunities may be.
I generally like to think about positioning in two tracks.
The opportunities journalists already want
First, there are subjects journalists regularly need help with.
A recruitment company may see frequent requests around hiring, salaries, workplace trends or candidate behaviour.
An accountant may encounter regular opportunities around tax, small-business finances or common financial mistakes.
An HR consultant may see recurring questions about workplace culture, management or employment trends.
If the client has genuine expertise in those areas, I am happy to be relatively broad.
Those opportunities can create useful early wins.
They help us learn what journalists respond to.
They can help establish the expert publicly.
And they can start building relationships.
The things the client particularly wants to own
Then there is the more deliberate, longer-term positioning.
Perhaps the consultant wants to become known specifically for succession planning.
Or organisational transformation.
Or neurodiversity in recruitment.
Or a particular area of workplace culture.
Or a very specific financial issue.
We can then gradually steer more of the content towards those themes.
I think the strongest campaigns normally have a mixture of the two.
If you only accept opportunities that perfectly match three extremely narrow phrases, you may miss lots of useful media activity.
If you talk about absolutely everything, nobody understands what you actually stand for.
The aim is breadth with direction.
How can a consultancy audit its own expertise?
Start with what happens every day inside the business.
Ask:
- What questions do clients repeatedly ask us?
- What mistakes do we repeatedly see?
- What changes are happening in our sector?
- What do people outside the industry misunderstand?
- Which problems do we solve particularly well?
- Where do we have unusual experience?
- Which common assumptions do we disagree with?
- What can we explain using evidence or first-hand experience?
- Which subjects could we discuss confidently with almost no preparation?
You do not need 50 topics.
In fact, an enormous expertise list can be a warning sign.
Nobody is genuinely an expert in everything.
I would rather have a handful of strong areas supported by real experience than a media biography claiming somebody can comment on every business topic imaginable.
Who should speak for a professional services firm?
The person with the best relevant expertise.
It sounds obvious, but companies frequently default to the founder or most senior executive.
That is not always the right choice.
Imagine somebody owns a law firm but is not themselves a lawyer.
They may be an excellent spokesperson on entrepreneurship, leadership, growth or the business of running a professional firm.
They are probably not the person I would put forward for detailed legal commentary.
Use the senior lawyer.
Similarly, the founder of a care company may know the business extremely well.
But if a journalist needs clinical insight, a senior nurse may be the much stronger source.
Job title should not override credibility.
Can a company have more than one media expert?
Absolutely.
For many professional services firms, I think this is ideal.
One person might speak about the commercial side of the business.
Another might own a technical speciality.
A third may have deep knowledge of another client problem.
This can increase the range of credible media opportunities available to the company.
It also avoids forcing the founder to comment on subjects where somebody else inside the organisation is much more authoritative.
The key is defining those areas properly.
If everybody is supposedly the expert on everything, the positioning becomes meaningless.
How do consultants turn everyday client knowledge into media commentary?
A lot of strong expert commentary comes from things professionals consider routine.
An HR consultant sees patterns across workplaces.
A recruiter repeatedly encounters the same hiring problems.
An accountant sees the financial mistakes small businesses make.
A management consultant sees operational problems appearing again and again.
A lawyer sees misunderstandings about particular areas of law.
To the professional, those observations can feel ordinary because they encounter them constantly.
To a journalist's audience, they may be extremely useful.
The skill is translating them.
A recruiter saying:
"We provide innovative recruitment solutions tailored to each client's needs"
has given me almost nothing to work with.
A recruiter saying:
"Employers keep assuming candidates are rejecting jobs because of salary, but in many of the searches we are handling the real problem is how long companies take to make decisions"
has given me an actual idea.
It is specific.
It potentially challenges an assumption.
And it creates obvious follow-up questions.
That is much closer to useful media commentary.
What makes a consultant's quote usable?
I like expert commentary to be:
- clear
- concise
- interesting
- specific
- jargon-free where the audience requires it
- factually defensible
- relevant to the question being asked
Compare these two hypothetical answers.
Weak:
"Businesses must ensure that they take a holistic and strategically aligned approach to the evolving workplace landscape, ensuring all stakeholder needs are considered."
I have no idea what I would do with that sentence.
Now consider:
Stronger:
"Companies are losing good candidates because their hiring processes are too slow. If somebody waits three weeks between interviews, they are often already speaking to another employer."
The second version tells the reader something.
You can agree or disagree.
You can ask for evidence.
You can build an article around it.
Good media experts speak like people, not corporate brochures.
How can consultants use client experience without breaching confidentiality?
Carefully.
Professional services firms often hold extremely interesting information because of their client work.
That does not mean the media is entitled to confidential details.
If you are discussing client experience, remove identifying information unless you have clear permission to use it.
You can often talk about broader patterns.
For example:
"We are seeing more small businesses ask for help with X."
"We repeatedly encounter this problem."
"Several recent assignments have involved Y."
But be careful that the combination of details does not indirectly identify somebody.
If you want to tell a detailed client story, ask permission.
Confidentiality and professional obligations come before getting an interesting quote into an article.
How important is independent credibility?
Very.
Professional services are often trust-heavy purchases.
Potential clients may research the firm and the individuals inside it before they ever make contact.
Media coverage can become part of that public record.
It provides a public example of an independent publication deciding that the person's contribution was relevant or useful. That is not the same as an editorial endorsement of the firm.
That does not guarantee that the person reading the article will become a client.
It does not guarantee search rankings, backlinks or AI recommendations.
But it can add another layer of external credibility beyond the claims the business makes about itself.
Our Professional Services PR work seeks suitable opportunities for expertise to be useful in exactly this way.
What should a media-ready professional profile include?
Make life easy for the journalist.
A good profile should clearly explain:
- who the person is
- their current role
- relevant qualifications
- professional experience
- specialist subjects
- appropriate professional memberships
- any notable relevant work
- previous media appearances where useful
- suitable photographs
- current contact details or a route through the PR team
The profile should also be honest about the person's scope.
A journalist should be able to understand what this expert can credibly discuss and where their expertise stops.
Fair PR also maintains a Media Expert Directory for this purpose.
A directory can make somebody easier to discover and verify.
It does not replace actively building journalist relationships.
How does somebody become a journalist's go-to expert?
It can develop over time when somebody handles media opportunities consistently and well. But no particular journalist is obliged to return to the same expert.
You need to be quick.
You need to be accurate.
You need to understand what the journalist is asking for rather than answering the question you wish they had asked.
You need to be contactable.
You need to know your subject.
And you need to be honest when something falls outside your expertise.
Journalists want people who make their work easier.
If I contact an expert and they send me a clear, accurate answer quickly, that is useful.
If I come back two weeks later and they do the same thing again, I start remembering them.
If every interaction is straightforward, the relationship becomes easier.
That does not mean a journalist will automatically return after one quote.
But reliability builds familiarity.
Can professional services firms really generate substantial media coverage?
Yes, where the expertise is strong enough.
For example, Fair PR's work with technology recruitment business Spectrum Search generated 86 published media opportunities through expert-led PR.
The useful lesson is not that every consultancy should expect 86 articles.
It is that specialist knowledge can create a large number of editorial opportunities when it is translated into subjects journalists actually want to discuss.
A recruitment business knows recruitment.
But that knowledge can also connect to technology, employment, workplace behaviour, candidate expectations, salaries, skills and wider economic conversations.
The same principle applies across professional services.
When is a professional services firm ready for PR?
You need genuine expertise first.
PR cannot manufacture professional authority that does not exist.
You also need somebody who can contribute.
They should be willing to give opinions, answer questions, provide evidence where appropriate and respond within media deadlines.
The firm needs reasonably clear positioning.
And it needs realistic expectations.
Journalists are not there to promote your consultancy.
They are there to produce useful journalism.
Your expertise gets you into the article when it helps them do that.
So, how do consultants become media experts?
Start with real expertise.
Narrow down the subjects where you have something genuinely valuable to contribute.
Choose the right spokesperson for each topic rather than automatically using the most senior person.
Learn to translate specialist knowledge into clear, useful language.
Give journalists evidence.
Respond quickly.
Do not exaggerate.
Know where your expertise stops.
And keep being useful.
Becoming a media expert is not really about building celebrity.
It is about becoming somebody a journalist knows they can rely on.
FAQs
Can a consultant become a media expert?
Yes. Consultants can be excellent media sources because they often have specialist knowledge and repeated exposure to real client problems. The key is translating that expertise into clear, relevant commentary for journalists and their audiences.
Do journalists need experts with formal qualifications?
It depends on the subject. Some topics, particularly legal, medical or regulated areas, require very specific credentials. In other areas, deep professional experience may be more important. The expert must always stay within their genuine scope.
Can a small consultancy get national press coverage?
Yes. Company size is not necessarily the deciding factor. A small consultancy with strong expertise, credible evidence and a timely point of view can be highly useful to national journalists.
How should a professional services firm choose its media spokespeople?
Choose the person with the strongest relevant expertise for the particular subject. The founder or CEO does not automatically need to handle every media opportunity.
What if my subject is highly technical?
The expert needs to adapt their explanation to the audience without sacrificing accuracy. A specialist trade publication may accept technical terminology that would be inappropriate in a national consumer article.
Can consultants discuss confidential client work in the media?
Only where confidentiality is protected. Use anonymised patterns carefully or obtain explicit client permission for identifiable examples. Do not reveal sensitive information simply to strengthen a media pitch.
Can media appearances help a professional services firm build credibility?
They can contribute to credibility by creating independent third-party evidence around the firm and its experts. They do not guarantee enquiries, rankings or commercial outcomes.
Could your professional expertise interest journalists?
Fair Public Relations helps consultants and professional services firms turn credible specialist knowledge into useful media opportunities.
Our Professional Services PR and Expert Commentary PR work can include positioning, media-angle development, expert commentary, journalist outreach and ongoing account management.
We do not turn consultants into generic commentators on subjects they do not genuinely understand.
We identify where their expertise is strongest and where that expertise overlaps with what journalists need.
Explore Professional Services PR
Written by Jordan Baker
Founder of Fair Public Relations and former UK national journalist
Jordan Baker is the founder of Fair Public Relations and a former UK national journalist with more than a decade of PR experience. He writes about journalist outreach, expert commentary, professional services PR, founder positioning and earned media.
View Jordan Baker's media expert profile
