An expert is somebody who inspires trust. Learn how to become an expert in your field with these 5 steps to fame, recognition and thought-leadership.
Are you frustrated with not being taken seriously as a coach, consultant or service provider? Are you looking for ways to make people sit up and see you as the “go-to” person in your industry?
As a service provider or a consultant, you will be greatly appreciated by your clients or colleagues. But if you do not brand yourself as an expert, you’ll be wasting your time trying to get an edge over your competitors.
Becoming an expert in your chosen field is the best way to create the maximum amount of success in your business. Becoming the leading authority in your industry can help you do that.
Why It’s Important To Become An Expert
People want to learn from an expert. Or else, why would anyone come to you for help and advice? As an expert, you can grow your brand in the eyes of your customers.
In every domain, there are people trying to get into business and make money from sales. But the top authorities in their field are the best examples of the experts that you want to be like.
They’ve studied their topic in detail, created results for their clients, and have done whatever it took in order to achieve success.
No matter what industry you’re in, you need to position yourself as an expert and learn everything you need to create results for your clients before you can expect to be successful.
People will look at you as a trusted resource with the right expertise to help them out and provide the solutions they need. In your industry, as long as you know people who need your help, you can achieve long term success.
.
5 Steps To Become An Expert In Your Field
An expert is somebody who can easily turn readers into sales because of the trust and authority they have established in the eyes of their customers.
Learning how to be an expert in any industry takes time and hard work. You need to make sure that you spend several weeks to months learning about your industry.
The hard part is actually establishing yourself as an expert. This article outlines 5 steps to achieve fame, recognition and thought-leadership.
1. Build Your Personal Brand
If you have a service to offer and someone goes to Google looking for what you have, then Google wants them to find you.
So make sure you have a significant digital footprint and an effective personal branding platform. Create a fast-loading, mobile-friendly and search engine-friendly website that attracts clients like a magnet and keeps them engaged.
Invest the time and effort to build a great website to present to potential clients. If you don’t know how to build your own website, you can hire someone to build it for you, or better yet, learn how to design it yourself with a professional WordPress theme.
You also need to engage with your potential clients via social networks, post engaging social posts consistently and offer useful advice to help them solve their problems. Grow your website traffic and promote it with blogging, SEO, link-building and paid advertising campaigns.
2. Publish a Blog
By publishing well-written, unique and useful blog posts of interest to your target audience on a regular basis, you can position yourself as an expert in your niche.
Blogs can help you brand yourself in a cost-effective way. Once your blog achieves expert or authority status, you’ll get more website traffic and higher rankings in Google and other search engines.
Blogging also helps you build trust with your customers as they’ll learn to see your blog as a reliable source of information when they need answers to their problems. It positions you as a reliable and customer-oriented expert who cares about your customers.
If you don’t have the time to write the blogs yourself, you can outsource your blog writing and promotion to experts who know how to create content that will rank well in search engines.
You should also post guest blogs on prominent publications such as Entrepreneur, Inc, and Forbes. This is not an easy task to do, as you’ll need to build relationships with editors and reporters to get featured in these publications.
3. Write a Book or Create a Course
Writing a book is the fastest way to gain credibility and establish yourself as an expert in life and business. Book-writing is a skill you can master even if you have zero writing experience. These free creative writing classes will show you how to get started with writing your book.
Have you ever noticed that the most popular authors, especially in the business niche, have coaching programs or services that deliver what their books teach?
That’s not by accident! Most authors don’t make a lot of money on their books – they make it on the upsell to their program that happens AFTER the book is delivered.
Unless you’re already a bestselling author, you should think of books as a branding tool, a lead-magnet to build a list or an expensive business card, and not something you can make a lot of money from.
In fact, you’ll probably end up spending more money promoting your book than you’ll ever see in royalties. As long as you understand that your book is just a vehicle to showcase your knowledge and authority (and not a source of significant income in itself), you should go ahead and write one.
Creating your own information products – like books and courses – is a very good way to scale your offerings and earn a passive income. You can learn how to start writing a book for beginners and become a published author.
4. Speak In Public
Public speaking in industry forums, general forums and conferences, will also show others that you know exactly what you’re doing. Anybody who does public speaking automatically demonstrates expert status to others in their field.
One of the best ways to showcase your speaking ability is to start a podcast and a YouTube channel. Learn how to start a podcast with free podcasting courses and tools to help you create an engaging and successful podcast that instantly brand you as the expert and drive loads of traffic back to your products and services,
See how I repurposed the content from the interviews I conducted for my personal branding podcast with a transcription service to turn words into text and published the podcasts to my YouTube channel.
If you’re an introvert who doesn’t enjoy being in the limelight but understands the benefits of video marketing, use these tips to create video content for introverts without ever appearing in your videos, and benefit from the power of video marketing to build your authority, brand and influence.
Many people are terrified of speaking in public, and if that’s you, know that you can learn how to overcome the fear and public speaking anxiety that make you want to run and hide.
Once you know what you need to know, build your online presence, and start speaking with confidence, you’ll start to be recognized as an expert in the industry, and people will look at you as a trusted resource to turn to when they need the services you offer.
5. Work The Media
Media interviews where you’re asked to answer questions about your background, experience, expertise in the industry, and how you can help others, are a powerful way to become famous, get recognition and build expert status in your field.
Learn how to talk in interviews with these television interview preparation tips and how to find the right words to use in an interview to double your business. Usually, they’re all very basic questions, but they can help you gain a great deal of attention on news websites or blogs.
Whether they come in the form of a print interview or are caught on video, media interviews are an amazing way to get a third-party endorsement to showcase your expert status.
You can take courses to learn how to become famous, how to get publicity, and how to become a media darling or PR darling.
The best way to create the kind of buzz you want to attract is by sending out a press release on your own. You can send out a press release by writing it yourself or get a professional writer to write about your newsworthy achievements.
Journalists are always looking for experts they can quote in articles and will contact you if you let them know that you’re willing to be quoted as an expert in your industry.
Subscribe to HARO (Help a Reporter Out) – a service that connects journalists with experts – and answer media queries that you’re qualified to answer.
Send them your media kit with your expertise, along with press releases, social media links and books that you’ve published.
Use these influencer marketing tools and resources to connect with celebrities and social media influencers to promote your products and services.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these steps to achieve fame and recognition as an expert and authority in your field. Now put them to use and start building expert status for yourself and your business.
Author bio:
Priya Florence Shah is the Group Editor at SHEROES and author of Devi2Diva, an emotional self-care book for women.
.