When trying to do anything online – whether it’s building a brand, promoting a product or service or simply trying to gain a following – people interact with people they like and trust. Therefore establishing your authority as a leader or significant contributor is crucial to building a community to interact with, and the key to getting noticed is to be seen as an expert in your field and niche.
Here are some tips to help you along the way:
Make sure you’re always putting out original content
To be seen as an expert in your field, it is vital to put out original and valuable content that can benefit people in your community. Whether it’s via blog posts, videos, podcasts or infographics, you can share insights, thoughts and expert knowledge in a way that makes people stop and notice. Some experts choose to be provocative and controversial, while others try to go broad or deep in their demonstration of knowledge and experience. Whichever style suits your temperament, it may be wise to keep your output as varied as possible in the beginning to assess which media works best for your community and then to try to creatively mix it up – so that your written words get noticed and your voice gets heard. If you have a team to back you up, all the better. Or you can outsource some of what you put out. For example, you can come up with the ideas and outsource to infographic designers if designing is not your area of strength.
Building a reputation as a thought leader
Speaking at events and conferences at which you express brilliant ideas and views in your area of expertise can help build your reputation as a thought leader. This can be combined with an optimal use of online resources like LinkedIn and Google+ which are great for building networks. Online speaking opportunities also exist through live webinars, podcasts, Google Hangouts and Livestreams. You can host your own shows or be featured as a guest on events hosted by others. This can be useful in opening your business up to new audiences. All the activities we’ve mentioned can be bolstered with social media promotion to get people talking about your business online and offline.
Interact with your existing audience and actually help them
As you are actually building a reputation to promote a brand or to offer goods and services you want people to buy (and not reputation for reputation sake, we hope!), your interaction with your existing audience should be perceived as useful and helpful. In other words, make sure you’re always replying to comments, answering questions and offering solutions in the interactions with your audience. As your brand becomes more prominent, this may get trickier to manage. But with tools such as webinars or even Twitter question and answer sessions (writer James Altucher does this with huge success) where your audience can actively get involved, you can still find effective ways to reach out to large numbers of people at once and truly share your expertise to serve them.
Tags: PR, reputation, reputation management
