Establishing yourself as an expert in your field online isn’t an easy task. The competition is high and so are the expectations of your target audience. No matter your industry, whether you own a retail shop, a fintech or a restaurant, authoritative entrepreneurs or businesses with proven expertise are more likely to attract customers and achieve sales. Keep reading to find out how to stand out from the crowd and increase your business’s credibility.
Share your knowledge and experience, and in turn, earn more trust and authority.
Posting educational content is a reliable method of establishing yourself as an expert in your field. It will help raise awareness of your brand and increase your online following. It is wise to avoid focusing heavily on selling; you should instead use your platform to tell engaging stories that demonstrate your unique understanding of the challenges faced by your target audience.
You can’t please everyone, so make sure you choose the most appropriate niche for your business and focus on it. This approach will help you establish your brand as a leader in your specialism and will help you cater your content appropriately to your audience.
The popularity of social media has made it much easier for businesses and entrepreneurs to achieve expert status. It gives you the perfect opportunity to highlight your knowledge and stay in close contact with your current and future customers.
Establishing a presence on social media allows you to answer questions posted by followers, inform them of your work, and discuss specialist topics related to your niche. To reach the right people, you should focus on the platforms most suited to your demographic. For example, LinkedIn is more business to business centred than other platforms.
You should also offer helpful advice and content valued by your audience. If your social media strategy targets professionals, you can use social media to share links to informative blogs. LinkedIn has a feature that allows you to post articles so don’t hesitate to post your blog on both LinkedIn and your website!
Follow influencers in your field and keep educating yourself on the latest innovations. While you do your research on what is being written and talked about, try to find knowledge gaps that your readers would be interested in and be the first to write about them.
Simply writing social media and blog posts might not be enough in this day and age to elevate your brand to its full potential. Varying the type of content you share will make your online presence more interesting and will increase your engagement. Use your most read or best-received articles and delve deeper into the subject matter.
Implementing creative advertising campaigns is also a great way to make sure you get enough exposure. You can use PPC, Facebook ads or LinkedIn ads, just to name a few. The place you choose to promote your business should be chosen carefully as Instagram is more suited to a younger audience while Twitter is likely to have an older age demographic. Make sure you are using the right tone and language depending on your readers/followers.
Collaborating with other businesses can help to generate further exposure for your by extending your visibility to include their audience base. Make sure you reach out to businesses with relevant sites within your industry to guest post on. The best sites will have strong backlinks, traffic and social following.
Your aim is to build a large but targeted audience, supplying them with the content they are looking for. By posting your content on other business’ or influencers’ sites, you can grow your audience base and establish yourself or your business as an expert in the field. Don’t forget to link back to your blog or website to increase referral traffic and boost your SEO!
Get your name out there by organising a virtual conference. Identify the top businesses, bloggers and influencers in your field and reach out to them. You can then create a schedule of interviews featuring these experts and can choose set topics for them to discuss. Organising an event like this does often require a lot of work, but once it’s done, you’ll have plenty of content to keep your users interested and you could massively increase your brand awareness.
If you get invited to a conference or event to speak on a certain topic, don’t hesitate to use this opportunity to promote your expertise.
One of the best ways to be recognised as an expert in your field is to prove your knowledge and skill through your success stories. By adding a case studies section to your website you can give potential customers insight into your ability to deliver quality services. Make sure you write detailed and insightful content that will get a potential customer’s attention.
If you have won any awards or obtained prestigious accreditations, make sure to mention it on your website, on social media or in a blog post. This will show your audience that you really know your industry and specialisms.
Great content comes in many forms beyond the written word. Keep your audience engaged by providing them with infographics, video and images. You can use this content to show that you truly know your craft in a memorable and impressive way.
The bottom line is this: you are looking to build a "relationship" with your target audience, therefore it will take some time to be considered an expert in your field. Be patient and don’t get discouraged. Keep your audience in mind at all times, as at the end of the day, they are the people you need to impress in order to reach expert status.
At Blue Frontier, our dedicated team of digital marketing specialists can help you elevate your brand by boosting your website traffic with best-practice SEO techniques, can assistant with creative and tailored content marketing, digital PR, PPC and social media. To find out more and get the support you are looking for, please get in touch with our friendly team.
Digital Marketing Executive
Wiktoria lives to create, she is a marketing postgraduate who loves social media and content creation. Customer satisfaction and driving engagement is at the heart of her work. She has worked with different clients including fintechs, affiliate marketing agencies and NGOs for over 3 years to grow their brands, as well as provide them with original and creative content. Since joining Blue Frontier, Tori has focused on content creation and social media marketing.
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