At Earned Media, we often consult with industry professionals who lend their expertise to our content, adding depth, context, and validation.
Expert sources are crucial for ensuring accurate, reliable, and insightful content. We have a thorough vetting process that ensures the credibility of our experts — which leaves us feeling confident about the accuracy of what we publish.
Why we vet expert sources
Expert sources are critical in our content creation process, offering insights based on extensive knowledge and experience in their chosen field. Their expertise helps us dive deeper into complex topics, validate our content, and provide our readers with practical, trustworthy advice.
However, we also recognise that the title ‘expert’ can be misleading — so we have implemented a vetting process to ensure our expert sources are authorities in their respective fields.
Our vetting process
- Credentials and qualifications: The first step is verifying the expert’s qualifications. We look for advanced degrees, certifications, or other formal training relevant to digital marketing — but we also value real-world experience and achievements in the field.
- Reputation and track record: We investigate the expert’s reputation within their field, including professional history, contributions to the field, publications or presentations, and feedback from peers and clients.
- Independence and bias: We assess potential conflicts of interest that could influence the expert’s views. For example, we’d be wary of an expert paid by a company to endorse its products. Our goal is unbiased, objective information for our readers.
- Availability for follow-up: We prefer experts willing and able to engage in dialogue about their expertise — answering follow-up questions, clarifying complex points, or discussing the latest trends and developments in their field.
Our commitment to finding high-quality, expert sources is one of the ways we ensure we provide trustworthy, reliable content. By sourcing credible and authoritative experts, we can give readers high-quality information that helps them succeed.
This policy works alongside our Editorial Policy and Fact-Checking Policy.
Want to be a source?
If you’d like to contribute expertise to a future Earned Media article, email nick@earnedmedia.com.au with a short note about your background.