An expert roundup post is an article that features a panel of experts in a particular field who share their insights and opinions on a specific topic.
As an entrepreneur, you can use expert roundups to
- Get exposure for your business
- Build relationships with other experts in your field
- And generate high-quality backlinks to your website.
I’ve created expert roundup answers for three years. And I’ve helped business founders get their answers live on multiple sites. In the process, I’ve generated 100s of links a year in an ethical way. Most of them are from websites with over a 90 DA (domain authority) score.
As a result, I’ve helped increase the DA and brand awareness of several companies. And created compelling personal brands for CEOs through content.
(Disclaimer: unfortunately, most of them are nofollow links. However, even nofollow links can have a powerful impact on your business.)
In this post, I’ll share my best tips to help you answer expert roundups. Let’s get started.
11 best tips to answer expert roundup questions
You’ll find below my best tips that will differentiate your answer from everyone else’s and ensure that you get between 10-25 backlinks a month via expert roundups.
- Create time for answering roundup questions
- Pay attention to the details of the question
- Dismiss the emotional factor and extreme scenarios
- Don’t make grammatical mistakes
- Use actionable tips
- Share personal experiences when relevant
- Never promote yourself and your business
- Have a unique answer
- Learn marketing, psychology, and neuroscience
- Use the character limit
- Answer every question
1. Create time for answering roundup questions
Platforms like YEC, Fast Company, and others post their expert roundup questions once a week. While HARO will send you questions every day based on your settings.
If you have a profile on YEC, then your questions will appear early in the morning (for the US). So, if you’re in the Central Time Zone, they’ll appear at around 3:00 a.m and at 7:00 or 8:00 a.m if you’re in other parts of the country.
It’s a good idea to get started when the questions appear because many members will be competing with you to get featured in expert roundups.
Once you’re ready to start writing in your answers, use the following tips to ensure that your answers get featured as often as possible.
2. Pay attention to the details of the question
Some expert roundup questions are direct while others are convoluted. It’s important that you read the question carefully and identify the key issue you should address.
If you scan the question too quickly, you’ll misread it and create the wrong answer. And you’ll immediately get disqualified for this particular roundup question.
3. Dismiss the emotional factor and extreme scenarios
Some roundup questions try to complicate simple questions and make you overthink by presenting extreme and emotional scenarios.
Here’s an example question: When you’re on the verge of losing a client and potentially millions of dollars, how can focus on keeping them on without sacrificing time for your family?
Well, this example is a bit much but many expert panel questions can make you feel stuck through such scenario building.
If you can take out the shock factor or emotional aspect from the question, you’ll find a clear answer that you can give right away.
4. Don’t make grammatical mistakes
This is obvious. If you make a grammatical mistake in your answer, it’ll get rejected right away. You need to ensure that your answer is error-free and that you’re using the right language for your audience.
5. Use actionable tips
Your tips need to be actionable and clear. If your tips are vague or difficult to understand, you’ll lose the reader’s attention. And the website won’t feature your answer.
6. Share personal experiences when relevant
Your answer will be more memorable if you share a personal experience that’s relevant to the question.
Don’t be afraid to give real-life examples and lessons that you’ve learned since such answers will stand out and help others.
7. Never promote yourself and your business
When you’re answering an expert roundup question, never promote yourself and your business even indirectly. Don’t link to your website or blog or sound salesy.
The focus should be on providing value to the reader. If you’re able to do this, your answer will be featured and you’ll get backlinks to your website.
8. Have a unique answer
Very often, expert roundup questions are generic. For example, you’ll get plenty of questions about burnout, managing conflict, and the like.
However, don’t just send a generic answer. For example, let’s say that you have to answer a question about burnout as a business owner.
Many people will suggest meditating as a way to avoid burnout. Avoid this or if you do want to talk about meditation, say something unique like ‘Did you know that for every minute you meditate, you get 9 minutes back?’
Such an answer is unique, interesting, and more likely to get chosen over one that just talks about meditation in a generic way.
9. Learn marketing, psychology, and neuroscience
If you want to share unique answers, you need to be knowledgeable in areas of personal development and business too.
This way, you’ll be able to see the questions from different angles and come up with interesting answers that no one has shared before.
I spend hours a day listening to audiobooks and reading articles and books to make sure that I have something interesting to say. You should too if you want your expert roundup answers to stand out.
10. Use the character limit
Some expert panel answers will be short and some large. And you need to write as much as possible so that you hit the character limit without crossing it.
Whatever you do, don’t write answers that are too short. If a question has a 400 character limit, then don’t write 200 characters only. Write between 380-400 for your answer to get a shot.
Similarly, when a question asks for a long answer, write a long answer!
11. Answer every question
Except for the ones you don’t qualify for. Your best chance of getting featured is by answering every question. The more you answer, the more successes you’ll get. And you’ll see more backlinks to your website and find your brand name on major media websites.
There you have it. My short, sweet, and best tips for answering expert roundup questions to build your personal brand, get backlinks, and boost your website’s domain authority.
Why you should appear in an expert roundup post
Every serious business and entrepreneur needs to focus on PR to establish authority, trust, and expertise online.
If you’re a new business or even if you’ve been around for a few years, your audience will find it hard to trust you if they can’t find information that’s supported by third parties. Let’s break down the benefits of answering expert roundup questions:
- When you appear in an expert roundup post, your picture, name, and company appear alongside other entrepreneurs. This builds context and adds authority to your brand.
- Your expert roundup answers will appear on sites with high domain authority like Forbes, Inc.com, and more. These sites have 90+ DA and you’ll get links (nofollow ones, however) that increase your site’s domain authority too
- When your audience does research on your or your brand, you’ll name will popup on several third-party sites, verifying your business
- Make an impact on social media by sharing screenshots and links to your roundups and highlighting these events on your social media profile
- Establish yourself as a thought leader and build your personal brand
- Associate your face and a human touch to your business and win over more customers
In short, getting featured on expert panel roundups has a number of positive benefits. And some of them are hard to measure. However, there’s no question that if you want to create a strong foundation for your business, you need to get featured in expert roundup posts.
Where can you find expert roundup opportunities?
The easiest and best way to find expert roundup opportunities is to be part of an entrepreneurs’ networking site. And to join newsletters from major business websites so that you can get writing prompts and questions in your inbox. You can also find expert roundup opportunities in other industries.
Here are some networking and membership websites where you can find opportunities to answer expert roundup questions, get featured in expert roundup posts, and build high DA backlinks to your site.
- Young Entrepreneurs Council
- Fast Company
- Rolling Stone Culture Council (for music)
- Forbes Councils
- Forbes Tech Council
- Terkel.io
- HARO – Help A Reporter Out (various industries)
- Business Journals Leadership Trust
- SourceBottle
- Inc Masters
You need to be a member of sites like Rolling Stone Culture Council and YEC. And the membership fee for such sites goes from $1000-$2000 USD a year. You also need to be a founder of a business, an executive and have a business that makes $1M in revenue or funding.
However, HARO is free and Terkel has a free option where you can answer five expert roundup questions a month.
Start by joining these websites and filling in your profile. Don’t leave out any fields in your profile and add your website’s URL.
Grow your personal brand and business with expert roundup answers
Answering expert roundup questions is a Public Relations activity. But one that you can do from the comfort of your office chair.
It’s important to make answering expert roundup questions an important part of your marketing strategy.
Doing so will help you get more backlinks, grow your personal brand, and generate traffic to your website.
However, this post may have shown you that answering expert roundups is time-consuming and hard!
Also, did you know that the average cost of buying a link is $352.92. If you want to get 100 backlinks a year, you’d be out of pocket for $35,292! And this is a low estimate.
Instead, you can get many more links for the price of membership as long as you know how to create great content. If you want to drive your digital PR and backlink building to the next level, I can help you out. Reach out!
