Keith O’Brien is a content marketer, digital strategist, and problem solver. In addition to running his own content and marketing strategy consultancy, he works as a Sr. Editorial Strategist at Jmac PR, where he helps Jmac clients express themselves more effectively through thought leadership byline articles.

We connected with Keith on his pivot from journalism to marketing, the importance of executive visibility, and how executives can use the power of social media to reach the largest possible audience.

Talk a bit about yourself and your background

I’ve worked in the intersection of editorial and marketing for the past decade. Before that, I was a journalist. So I’ve been working in content my entire career, with a focus on B2B—so companies influencing other companies, whether they’re buyers or partners or suppliers, and really helping organizations and individuals within those organizations crystallize their thinking and express it in a clear, concise and persuasive way.

What drove your decision to pivot from journalism to marketing?

For one, the journalism I was focused on was in marketing. So I was really enticed to take a step into that world and participate in it instead of just covering it, and also to have the opportunity to help larger publications. From a consultant and agency perspective, I could influence how those larger publications were thinking about social media and digital content, moving beyond the sort of subscription-based walls of their publication to thinking how they could use their expertise to influence a larger audience, especially through all of the new avenues available through the online environment: social media, podcasts, blogs, chat rooms, message boards, Reddit. 

So it was a great opportunity to take everything I had learned as a journalist and apply that to my clients. From there, I just continued to find companies that have important things to say and sometimes struggle exactly how to communicate them, or just need someone to help them hone  their messaging. And so for the past couple of years, I’ve run my own consultancy working with a number of clients to help them take advantage of the information ecosystem and create new ways to get their message out there through organic content.

What are your responsibilities for Jmac?

I work with several Jmac clients to create byline articles that help readers understand a new perspective, or contemplate a new way of doing things. John and I are both aligned that executives at companies have a great opportunity to use their expertise to influence and inform readers and publications. If they had enough time in the day, many of Jmac’s clients could create wonderful pieces themselves, but a lot of times they are just looking for help. Where I think I really provide value is understanding what an executive is trying to say, how they want to say it, and doing the work to get it to a place where they can look at the final product and add their flourishes or an anecdote that’s relevant to them. And so the final product is very much from them—I was just there to help them execute.

Why is executive visibility important?

People are increasingly concerned with how company leaders feel about the news of the day and cultural issues. For executives who have a strong voice, it is crucial to use it to express how they feel: ways of working, DEI, sustainability, CSR, all of these things. It’s important for executives to communicate their perspective (and therefore the company’s perspective.) Also, the sort of rough-and-tumble nature of social media gives everyone a voice, so if you’re an executive and you’re not participating in that conversation, then the rest of the world decides what your company stands for instead of you, and no one should know better what your company stands for than you as the executive. 

John and I try to encourage executives to think of their content output as a complete representation of themselves. Not everything has to be straightforward marketing of your business or sales proposition. What are the things you’re passionate about? What are you interested in? And how does that tie into your overall business? 

Increasingly, executives are extremely visible whether or not they create content, just by virtue of the fact that there’s more media out there. There’s more coverage of companies and their executives, and people will continue to make decisions that could cost your business millions of dollars—billions, even, if you’re large enough. John’s clients really understand the impact they can have by communicating their thought leadership in social media, in bylines and in blog posts, and so it’s great working with him because he and I are very much aligned in how companies can use content to present a fully formed picture of themselves and their companies.

How can executives determine which publications might be the best fit for their voice?

Publications have a wider palette of content they’re interested in than you might think. The most important thing is identifying a perspective that gets their readers to think. As a former editor, I can tell you that the biggest determinant of whether I gave a pitch a second thought is if it made me stop and say, ‘Oh, I didn’t think about things that way.’ So we counsel our clients at Jmac to look at a topic that they’re interested in, and see if there’s something they believe that’s contrary to whatever the conventional wisdom is. I find that good journalists are very aware that they don’t know everything, and are constantly looking to be challenged. 

Of course, a company’s primary interest is in reaching their target audience. But the nature of social media is that you don’t necessarily need to go to the publication that has the largest audience of potential customers. If you reach the right publication with the right message, you’re going to get all those readers sharing with their friends on social media, who might be your end customers. 

So from a content perspective, I really like to focus on identifying the most interesting message and the publications we think would be interested, and start there—knowing that a well-written piece with a cogent argument will find the largest possible audience, many of which are potential customers.