Skillsoft

Creative News Pitching and Nailing the Media Wishlist

The Objective

When Skillsoft connected with Escalate, the bar was set high. The Escalate team was tasked with upleveling the PR program through proactive pitching, creatively capitalizing on Skillsoft news and industry trends. It’s safe to say with 150% year over year growth our team blew up the media charts. We did so by focusing our efforts three ways:

  1. What’s Trending
  2. Creative News Pitching
  3. Nailing the Media Wishlist

 

The Strategy
What’s Trending

Escalate found success in partnering with Skillsoft to identify trends in skill management at the workplace, capitalizing on quiet quitting and quiet hiring thereby not so quietly establishing Skillsoft as the de facto thought leader in the corporate learning and leadership space. The year 2022 was a tumultuous one at the workplace. Following the Great Resignation was Quiet Quitting, explained here in this FOX Business & MSN article. No company had laid claim yet to Quiet Hiring, so the team capitalized on the term as the leading 2023 workplace trend in this CNBC video. Thinking one step further, the team offered up the right interviewing strategies such as behavior-based interviewing, landing this TIME article. In each instance, the team matched the right spokesperson for the right opportunity to earn maximum media mileage.

 

Creative News Pitching

The team worked hard to capitalize on Skillsoft’s news pipeline in creative ways to result in quality coverage and establish new relationships with writers. A story in Fortune’s CHRO Daily Newsletter successfully positioned a new product integration as a significant market driver. Another article in Forbes leveraged January National Mentoring Month to announce the roll out of Skillsoft’s mentor program. Using the news cycle to their advantage, this feature interview prominently positioned Skillsoft’s spokesperson as a mentorship expert and was the only expert quoted in the article.

Nailing the Media Wishlist
Finally, the team evaluated the media landscape on a quarterly basis and determined who we wanted to focus on reaching that quarter. This enabled Escalate to ensure it was tailoring its media efforts to match what the client wanted to see. For example, the team learned early on in the relationship that CIO was a very important publication within which they wanted to establish more awareness. The team’s understanding of the publication’s editorial strategy and strong pulse on what’s important to the magazine’s editors is evident from the results. In less than a year, Skillsoft was featured at least half a dozen times across a range of topics from IT leadership trends to defining the role of digital-savvy CIOs to nailing the CIO to-do list in year one.
The Results

News Generation

Media, Analyst & Influencer Relations

Multimedia Content Strategy & Development

Employee E-Learning
The Results

The third-quarter results were nothing short of remarkable, reflecting the strategic and creative efforts of the Escalate team. With a total of 58 pieces of coverage, including 22 interviews and an impressive 466,976,758 media impressions, Skillsoft’s presence in the media landscape significantly expanded. The coverage was strategically segmented across trade publications (core to the business), business publications, and consumer publications, ensuring a broad and targeted reach.

Noteworthy placements included prestigious outlets such as Fortune, Fox Business & MSN, and CIO.com, highlighting Skillsoft’s thought leadership and industry influence. This extensive media exposure not only amplified Skillsoft’s brand but also solidified its position as a leading voice in corporate learning and leadership.

In less than a year, Skillsoft was featured at least half a dozen times across a range of topics from IT leadership trends to defining the role of digital-savvy CIOs to nailing the CIO to-do list in year one.