Top Digital PR Expert Explains Why You Should Be Building Author Profiles

Adam Docherty is a freelance digital PR consultant based in the UK, working directly with founders and marketing teams to earn high-authority press coverage and backlinks. With over 5 years of agency and freelance experience across travel, health, finance and e-commerce, he's spent his career figuring out what makes a story land with journalists, and how to turn that into coverage that actually moves the needle.

Journalists are getting pickier about who they'll quote, and it's not hard to see why. Fake experts and AI generated personas have made their way into pitch inboxes, and reporters are now checking who they're dealing with before they hit publish.

"The bar for proving someone is real has gone up massively in the last year or two," says digital PR consultant Adam Docherty. "If you can't back up your expert with something concrete, you're an easy pass."

That's where author profiles come in. Done properly, they answer every question a journalist might have about your expert before they even ask it. If your client, or your own business, doesn't have one yet, it's worth sorting out sooner rather than later.

What are author profiles

An author profile is a dedicated page that pulls together who someone is, what they know, and why they should be trusted. It usually sits on the expert's own website, linked from every article they've written, so anyone checking them out can find everything in one place instead of piecing it together themselves.

For digital PR purposes, it becomes the one link you send a journalist to prove your expert is genuine.

Why are author profiles important

Reporters don't have time to chase down proof of who they're talking to, so they need it handed to them. Adam Docherty puts it simply:

"A journalist isn't going to do detective work to prove your expert is real. That's your job, not theirs."

An author profile does exactly that. Rather than the journalist having to take a pitch at face value, they can click through and see the evidence themselves. It turns a pitch that might get ignored into one that gets a reply, often before a single email has even been exchanged.

What does an author profile need

The strongest author profiles tend to include the same handful of elements:

  • Name and job role, so it's clear who they are and what they do
  • Photo, putting a real face to the name
  • Years of experience, showing they've genuinely been in the field
  • Qualifications and education background, backing up their expertise
  • Personal info, giving some context beyond the job title
  • Social links, so journalists can cross check them elsewhere
  • Recent media coverage, proving they've been featured before
  • Internal linking, tying back to relevant content and helping with SEO

The media coverage point is one people tend to overlook. According to Adam Docherty:

"That's the section that actually seals the deal. It tells a journalist this person has already been trusted by someone else, so trusting them again is a low risk decision."

A mention in a major outlet, or an industry award, is often the single strongest bit of proof you can offer.

My favourite author profile

If there's one example worth studying, it's Bankrate's.

Their profiles are laid out cleanly, giving a journalist everything they need without making them dig for it. Each one includes the name and job title, links to socials, LinkedIn and email, years of experience, education background, and a running list of places the person has already been cited.

That last part is what makes it work so well. It shows the expert has form. They've been trusted before, and that history does a lot of the convincing for you.

Adam Docherty rates it for the same reason:

"Nothing on that page feels like padding. Every bit of it is there to answer a question a journalist might actually ask."

That's really what a good author profile should be doing.

What are fake experts

This is the part of the industry that's shifted the most. Journalists have started getting pitches built around quotes from people who don't exist, or who exist but never said what's been attributed to them. Some of it is AI generated personas built to look convincing. Some of it is simpler than that: made up job titles or credentials dressed up to sound official.

A common example is a fabricated "doctor" offering medical commentary, complete with a made up title, when no such person holds that role anywhere.

"Journalists have been caught out enough times now that they're checking everything," says Adam Docherty. "The days of a name and a job title being enough are over."

That's exactly why author profiles matter so much right now. They're not a nice to have anymore. They're becoming the quickest way for a reporter to satisfy themselves that the person they're about to quote is real, qualified, and worth featuring.

How to use author profiles when running digital PR campaigns

Once the profile exists, using it is straightforward. The simplest and most effective step is attaching the link directly in your pitch email.

Instead of asking a journalist to trust you, you hand them the proof upfront. A line as simple as "you can see [Name]'s background and previous coverage here," followed by the link, does most of the work before they've even started reading the rest of your pitch.

"That one link can be the difference between a pitch that gets a reply and one that gets ignored," says Adam Docherty.

When journalists are actively filtering out anything that looks fabricated, it's a small addition that carries a lot of weight.