Stay up to speed on relevant developments

As a subject matter expert you are responsible for your client’s success. By delivering services that solve the imminent challenges in front of them.

As a subject matter expert you are also responsible for managing relationships with (potential) clients. And – to an extent – for identifying new business opportunities, raising awareness, generating demand, and selling your services.

All of this gets a lot easier when your (prospective) clients recognize you as a distinct & trusted authority.

Now, in order to receive this recognition, you’ll need to be visible. To the right people. At the right time.

When a current event affects the market, you want to be the one telling them how it impacts their business.

You’ll want to say something like:

“[X] happened. On your [= (potential) clients] journey towards [future], this means [implications].”

So, how do you stay on top of [X] – the current events shaping your clients world, their industry, and their business?

Maybe your knowledge management department is helping you with that. Which is great! However, here’s another (additional) DIY option which just takes 2 simple steps.

Step 1 – Discover relevant professional media

Once you understand who your ideal clients are, you can ask your favorite generative AI tool to give you suggestions for the professional media they’re reading.

Here’s the prompt you can use:

Please give me the [language] top [number] professional media outlets for professionals in the [type of] industry. Put the results in a table format.

Select the desired language – based on the geography of your ideal client. Experiment with the number of results. And change the industry for each target group.

Your final prompt will then be something like:

Please give me the Dutch top 10 professional media outlets for professionals in the financial services industry. Put the results in a table format. 

Step 2 – Receive updates about market developments

Once you uncovered which professional media outlets to follow, you’ll need to set up a system to receive updates on current events.

There are a few options:

• You can go old skool. Just visit the websites that your favorite gen AI tool recommended to you and subscribe to their updates.
  
  If this is your preferred option, I highly recommend setting up a rule (in Outlook or Gmail) to automatically deliver the updates to a specific folder. So, the updates won’t clutter up your inbox.
  
• Compose an automated email update which combines all of the updates you wish to receive. For this you can use a tool like MailBrew.
  
• Or, if you’re not a big fan of email, most websites offer RSS feeds. Add your feeds to an RSS reader like Feedly. You can also add RSS feeds to Slack or to an RSS app for Teams.

It’s a bit of work, but you’ll never miss a market development again.

As a final step, I recommend setting 30 minutes aside at a specific time each week. You can use this time to scan the market. See if there’s something interesting. And write a short social media post about it.

Hope this helps!

Thank you for reading Nudge #030, sent to busy subject matter experts on August 20, 2024.