FAQs for Prospective Clients
Q What are the benefits
of being listed?
Expert Guide is the largest guide of its kind and attracts hundreds of thousands
of visitors every year. As a result, organisations looking to promote their experts
can be found by a global audience who may not otherwise have been able to locate
you. Expert Guide allows people to find your experts, even if they didn’t know your
organisation. Examples of outcomes Expert Guide has generated for our clients include:
- Media coverage quoting experts;
- Speaking engagements (paid and community service);
- Opportunities for research and professional collaboration with other experts;
- Private sector consulting opportunities;
- Paid expert witness work for law firms;
- Enquiries from prospective students to study or conduct research with experts.
Q Who should be listed
on Expert Guide?
Expert Guide was designed to help organisations looking to create opportunities
for their experts to be interviewed by the media, and/or to engage with government,
academia or industry. With this in mind, we cater specifically for organisations
such as:
- Universities and educational institutions
- Research centres and institutes
- Museums
- Associations and special interest groups
- Commercial organisations that employ experts.
Q Who should not be
listed on Expert Guide?
Expert Guide is not a commercial Yellow Pages designed to advertise our clients’
products. We offer a service that provides organisations with an opportunity to
promote their experts for contact with journalists, government, industry and academia.
If you are thinking of joining to market your product/service directly to potential
customers, we cannot guarantee results, as our site is not designed for that purpose.
Q How much does it
cost to list experts on Expert Guide?
Expert Guide offers a range of different plans depending on how many experts you wish to list, and what level of services
you require. To review our plans, please
click here.
Q What do I get for
my money?
Expert Guide provides you with a password-protected login system whereby you can
add, change and work with your experts’ profile/s at any time. Visitors find your
experts by keyword searching, and you have complete control over choosing keywords
for your experts. Each expert profile can also include your organisation’s logo,
a backup public relations contact name and number, and a photo of the expert.
As well as listing your expert profile/s on Expert Guide, our clients are promoted
in the following ways:
- Organisations with more than one expert on the site can list their logo on our homepage
display
- We will send out an Expert Alert to subscribing journalists and visitors when you
join to advise them of your participation
- You can submit research/expertise-related media releases to us to display on our
homepage
- We will remind you and your experts quarterly to check your profile online and submit
any changes
- We will let you know how you are going every quarter, by sending you hit statistics
for each of your experts.
Q What are the most
popular topics people search for?
Every year, visitors search for tens of thousands of different keywords and phrases on Expert Guide that span areas including
education, health, the arts, science, technology, law, politics, media, popular culture, and history. When there is a big news
event such as an election or natural disaster, we see a large number of identical searches looking for experts related to that
news event. In 2010, some of the most popular topics on Expert Guide were: Afghanistan, Facebook, social networks, climate change,
weather, water, China, immigration, economics, and psychology.
Q Can you guarantee
me media coverage or other contacts?
We make every effort to promote Expert Guide and ensure the site continues to be
easy to find, easy to use and achieves high numbers of hits. In our most recent client survey,
around 70 per cent of responding organisations said they were definitely
aware of an enquiry generated by Expert Guide. However, we cannot guarantee that
our visitors will choose to contact you or your experts. Your hits depend on the
keywords you list and whether individuals are searching for someone with your expertise.
Q How many hits does
this site receive?
In 2010, Expert Guide had 442,804 visitors from Australia and overseas. These
visitors resulted in almost 6.5million hits.
Q How do you get so
much traffic?
Expert Guide is promoted directly to professionals we are trying to attract (such
as journalists), and through other web sites these professionals use. However, we
also make Expert Guide accessible to the world by programming the site so all experts’
profiles can be found through google and other search engines. This means our experts
can be found by people anywhere in the world.
Q Who uses this site?
Expert Guide is accessible to all, but is particularly tailored for use by the media
and other professionals seeking experts. Some of our key visitor groups include:
- Journalists
- Government representatives
- Speakers’ agencies
- Lawyers
- Academics and researchers
- Business and industry.
Q Do I have to list
my/my experts’ personal contact information?
No. How much information you display is up to you. We recommend that you list as
much information as possible, but you can choose to display only one central administration/public
relations contact for all your experts if you want all enquiries coming to one number.
Q Can individuals
list themselves, or do I have to belong to an organisation?
Each organisation on Expert Guide is registered by a central contact (often the
PR/media manager) who can verify the expertise of the people who are listed for
that organisation. The central contact also acts as a backup contact for enquiries.
This system ensures that the affiliation of experts on Expert Guide can be verified
and that experts have the authority to represent themselves as members of the organisation.
If you are an individual looking to register, you will need to provide us with a
central contact for your organisation who can verify your identify.
Q I belong to a small
organisation and I’m both the PR contact and spokesperson. Can the central contact
be both the PR contact and sole expert?
Yes, this is possible if you are a sole operator of your own business or are the
sole contact in a small organisation. We reserve the right to verify your identify
and decline subscriptions at our discretion.
Q I am an expert with
a large organisation (eg. a university, research institute, etc) which is not listed
on Expert Guide, and I would like to be listed. Can I sign up as an individual and
say I’m from this organisation?
No, not without verification. If you are in this situation, simply contact your
organisation’s PR/media contact and ask them if they will verify you. Then
contact us with your details and the details of your verification person.
We can sign you up after verifying your identity with your employer.
Q If I list my details
here, will I get spam email?
All email contact information on this site is hidden from view, and visitors can
only email you through an email form. This means that the person emailing you doesn't
actually view your email address. This protects your privacy and also ensures your
email address does not get added to spam lists.
Q I can’t afford to
pay, but I’m still an expert. Can I subscribe?
Expert Guide offers a free subscription for nonprofit or small organisations that only wish to list onex
expert. Please note that these accounts do not provide any additional services that paying members receive,
such as the ability to publish media releases or receive Ask and Expert alerts.
Q I don’t want my
competition to be listed – can I have exclusivity?
No. People use Expert Guide because the site makes registration available to all
organisations who could potentially offer experts. If exclusivity is granted, it
will detract from the credibility of the site and as such, people are less likely
to use it. So exclusivity will not increase your chance of media or other enquiries.
Q How are listings
ranked in the search results?
When a visitor uses the keyword search facility, the expert listing that most closely
matches the search term/s is displayed. If several entries match the search word/s,
these entries are then displayed in alphabetical order, by surname of expert. In
this way, all organisations, whether they be regional or metropolitan, large or
small, have an equal chance of their experts being displayed at the top of the list.
Q I need to communicate
with journalists and users of Expert Guide. Can I advertise on the site?
We are always interested in developing partnerships that will benefit our clients
and visitors. If you belong to an organisation that wants to communicate with our
visitors click here to contact us.
Q I have a question
that isn’t covered by your FAQ. Can you help me?
Just Contact Us to submit your question and we will
either respond to you directly or post the answer here.