Authority marketing is where you build a personal brand and “positioning” around your expertise. This will help you individually but will help your brand immensely by showing off the depth of your teams knowledge. By developing valuable content such as a book, a blog, podcasts and videos you will be seen as a better resource than your peers – particularly those that are not being proactive about sharing helpful content.
Google has numerous patents around the idea of who are experts and who is authoritative and trustworthy. Companies like Klout – while a potentially game-able system – track you personally in terms of how much content you create and how much you interact with others online. If you want greater online visibility from search engines and from social media, being a recognized expert will help you immensely. Like it or not, this is how the online world works.
If you take the time to build your reputation and authority, not only will you have better results online but people will respect you more. They will then hire you more easily, for larger fees, because they can quickly see that you are the go to person for what they are looking for. So recommit yourself to being an expert and do it in a way that others can see, not just in one-one calls and meetings with your customers.
Below are some of the top things you need to be thinking about while creating your own authority marketing roadmap.
- Branding via specialization and picking a niche to call your own
- Blogging regularly
- Writing a book, even if it is very short
- PR – media mentions
- Public Speaking and hosting events / seminars that show you are a dedicated thought leader
- SEO – “owning” keywords that are part of your positioning statement
- Social Media – being deeply involved in online relationships not just sharing content
- Link building with influencers via relationships
- Sales Influence – the power of being a niche expert with content to persuade
- Conversion Optimization – having ebooks / content offers, media mentions and various trust signals
- Building a platform and email marketing list
- Tracking and analytics to determine your new levels of influence
A few quick tips to get started
1. Use podcasting and video to streamline content creation (Also with influencers)
Doing regular podcasts where you interview other influencers in your space or your team members is an easy way to generate lots of content quickly. You can pay a company like Casting Words to transcribe the text and add the content and audio file via Soundcloud to your site/blog.
2. Comment on influencers work and retweet them, not just share content
If you merely share others content or even your own you will only get so far. Trust me as I have been there and done that and paid the price. It is imperative that you comment on others blog posts and retweet other influencers. Pick a half dozen experts in your nice that you respect and start connecting with them online regularly. Share their content without expecting anything in return. Eventually those relationships will build and you will have a content sharing army. Check out Buzz Sumo for finding influencers.
3. Get more media coverage using prleads.com and HARO helpareporter.com
Nothing says you are an expert like being featured in the New York Times etc. Get your story ideas in front of journalists. I got it the New York Times for my search engine and social media marketing seminar via HARO and so can you!
Keep in mind that it can take a couple years in some cases to fully build yourself up as an authority, even when you have been an expert for decades. But starting with podcasting in a niche, you can move mountains much more quickly than talking about eventually getting around to writing. If you are a systematic and dedicated writer or willing to pay for extremely high quality ghostwriting, that is great but don’t wait on the sidelines if you are not. Rome wasn’t built in a day and even ferocious kings of the jungle started as tiny, cute and fuzzy cubs. Do the basics, start small and you just might surprise yourself how quickly you make significant progress.
