Wisdom Whisperer PR Strategy: Educate Your Industry

The Wisdom Whisperer is a power­ful PR strategy. 

Giving advice is a form of art.

Whether you’re a lead­er giv­ing orders, an industry expert provid­ing advice to cli­ents, or a blog­ger offer­ing insights, there’s more to giv­ing people dir­ec­tion than just telling them what they need to hear.

It’s about advising in the spir­it of ser­vitude.
And that is what edu­ca­tion is all about.

Of course, edu­cat­ing your industry is also a great PR strategy — espe­cially for B2B.

Here we go:

Step 1: The Foundation

Some might think that edu­ca­tion is about hand­ing out good advice left and right. But giv­ing good advice and offer­ing guid­ance is difficult.

The will­ing­ness and abil­ity to serve will trans­form someone who gives good advice into a Wisdom Whisperer.

Why is ser­vitude so important?

Existentialism: Thought Leadership, Advisory, and Education

Regarding thought lead­er­ship, advis­ory, and edu­ca­tion, I often remind myself of the beau­ti­ful words of the Danish exist­en­tial­ist Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855): ¹Søren Kierkegaard. (2023, November 27). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard

According to Kierkegaard, ser­vitude is the found­a­tion for suc­cess for all aspir­ing thought lead­ers, advisers, salespeople, and educators:

“If one is truly to suc­ceed in lead­ing a per­son to a spe­cif­ic place, one must first and fore­most take care to find him where he is and begin there.

This is the secret in the entire art of help­ing.

Anyone who can­not do this is him­self under a delu­sion if he thinks he is able to help someone else. In order truly to help someone else, I must under­stand more than he — but cer­tainly first and fore­most under­stand what he under­stands.

If I do not do that, my great­er under­stand­ing does not help him. If I nev­er­the­less want to assert my great­er under­stand­ing, then it is because I am vain or proud, then basic­ally instead of bene­fit­ing him I really want to be admired by him.

But all true help­ing begins with a hum­bling.

The help­er must first humble him­self under the per­son he wants to help and thereby under­stand that to help is not to dom­in­ate but to serve, that to help is a not to be the most dom­in­at­ing but the most patient, that to help is a will­ing­ness for the time being to put up with being in the wrong and not under­stand­ing what the oth­er under­stands.”
— Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855)

Learn more: Existentialism for PR Advisers

Step 2: The Message

Every Wisdom Whisperer must, like an organ­isa­tion, have a Core Message and a Promise Filter. ²Early in my PR career, my per­son­al Core Message as a thought lead­er in the PR industry was that we must adapt to digit­al-first. That core mes­sage was present in everything I said and did.

By divid­ing the Core Message and the Promise Filter into Content Themes, the Wisdom Whisperer can cov­er sev­er­al top­ics without los­ing focus:

How To Create Content Themes

Let’s use a fic­ti­tious example of an IT company. 

First, the IT com­pany decide on a core mes­sage for their con­tent strategy:

Core mes­sage: We make IT easy to understand.

Then, the IT com­pany breaks their core mes­sage down into four busi­ness-crit­ic­al con­tent themes:

Q1 Content Theme: We make people under­stand the Internet of Things (IoT).

Q2 Content Theme: We make people under­stand busi­ness auto­ma­tion.

Q3 Content Theme: We make people under­stand cloud com­put­ing.

Q4 Content Theme: We make people under­stand man­aged services.

For easy plan­ning and boost­ing SEO with con­tent sky­scrapers, you can cre­ate con­tent pack­ages for each theme.

Using con­tent themes comes with sev­er­al upsides:

Learn more: The Content Themes PR Strategy

Step 3: The Structure

Every Wisdom Whisperer needs an online base­camp, wheth­er that is a brand web­site or a per­son­al web­site. To get any edu­ca­tion­al PR activ­it­ies across, the con­tent must be wisely pub­lished and dis­trib­uted for inbound success.

How can you share your insights in a struc­tured manner?

Step 4: The Narrative

For any­one in a pos­i­tion of superi­or­ity, be it a lead­er or an expert or both, accept­ing the role of a ser­vant is the true chal­lenge in every edu­ca­tion­al enter­prise. The Wisdom Whisperer must be ready to take the high road and seek the path with the most obstacles.

How can you achieve such a PR tonality?

Stoic Philosophy for Public Relations

I’m inspired by Stoicism — and intrigued by the idea of trans­lat­ing clas­sic­al Stoic vir­tues (wis­dom, cour­age, justice, tem­per­ance) and apply­ing them to pub­lic relations:

The Wisdom Pitch

“A Stoic is someone who trans­forms fear into prudence, pain into trans­form­a­tion, mis­takes into ini­ti­ation, and desires into under­tak­ing.”
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Tell PR stor­ies of how organ­isa­tions can be wise and over­come obstacles that have stopped oth­ers in their tracks. Convey PR mes­sages on how to apply wis­dom, know­ledge, and experience.

The Courage Pitch

“We can­not choose our cir­cum­stances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.”
— Epictetus

Tell PR stor­ies of brands that nev­er back down in the face of hard­ships that would des­troy oth­er organ­isa­tions. Convey PR mes­sages of how an organ­isa­tion can be right­eous even when storms are raging.

The Justice Pitch

“Concentrate every minute on doing what’s in front of you with pre­cise and genu­ine ser­i­ous­ness, ten­derly, will­ingly, with justice.”
— Marcus Aurelius

Tell PR stor­ies of how organ­isa­tions relent­lessly can strive for hon­esty and trans­par­ency — even when uncom­fort­able. Convey PR mes­sages about how all brands, without excep­tion, can rid them­selves of dis­hon­esty and incompetence.

The Temperance Pitch

“It’s not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor.”
— Seneca

Tell PR stor­ies of organ­isa­tions that strive for high­er val­ues in a world where all oth­er organ­isa­tions suf­fer short­sighted­ness. Convey PR mes­sages of organ­isa­tions pre­pared to abstain from short-term gains to make the world bet­ter for all.

Learn more: Stoic Philosophy for PR Professionals

Step 5: The Resilience

Establishing and main­tain­ing rela­tion­ships takes time.

No one will become a Wisdom Whisperer overnight. Long-term resi­li­ence is crit­ic­al for any online edu­cat­or who wants people to listen. 

The secret to suc­cess is to stay con­sist­ent and offer valu­able insights repeatedly.

The Wisdom Whisperer

Being regarded and revered as a key industry edu­cat­or is first and fore­most a respons­ib­il­ity. Any pos­it­ive out­comes in terms of PR must be sec­ond­ary con­sid­er­a­tions. Teaching might not be your call­ing if serving a com­munity with your insights and know­ledge isn’t your Ikigai.

For the Wisdom Whisperer PR strategy to work, all shar­ing must always begin from a pure pas­sion for edu­ca­tion and servitude.

PR Resource: More PR Strategies

PR Resource: How To Identify a Good PR Strategy

The Magical PR Question

Your PR strategy should answer one simple question:

The magic­al PR ques­tion: Do we know how to win and defeat our competitors?

If your PR strategy fails to answer this ques­tion in the affirm­at­ive, it also fails to provide a roadmap to suc­cess. Winning is a cul­ture and a struc­tur­al asset.

“Competitiveness is derived from per­man­ent infra­struc­tur­al char­ac­ter­ist­ics of organ­iz­a­tion­al design, rather than just rely­ing on tem­por­ary stra­tegic assets.”
Source: Strategic Change ³Connor, T. (2007). A con­sid­er­a­tion of stra­tegic assets and the organ­iz­a­tion­al sources of com­pet­it­ive­ness. Strategic Change, 16, 127 – 136. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​0​2​/​J​S​C​.​789

Is win­ning that important? 

Yes, in com­pet­it­ive envir­on­ments and chan­ging soci­et­ies, win­ning is some­times the only way to keep up.

The Red Queen effect (men­tal mod­el). This meta­phor ori­gin­ates from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass. It describes a situ­ation in which one must con­tinu­ously adapt, evolve, and work to main­tain one’s pos­i­tion. In the story, the Red Queen is a char­ac­ter who explains to Alice that in their world, run­ning as fast as one can is neces­sary just to stay in the same place. The meta­phor is often used in the con­text of busi­nesses that need to innov­ate con­stantly to stay com­pet­it­ive, high­light­ing the relent­less pres­sure to adapt in dynam­ic envir­on­ments where stag­na­tion can mean fall­ing behind. ⁴Red Queen hypo­thes­is. (2023, November 27). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​R​e​d​_​Q​u​e​e​n​_​h​y​p​o​t​h​e​sis ⁵Carroll, L. (2006). Through the look­ing-glass, and what Alice found there (R. D. Martin, Ed.). Penguin Classics. (Original work pub­lished 1871.)

Learn more: The Magical PR Question