The Ultimate Steps to Build Your Authority

Why should I listen to you?

To be credible, people must see you as an authority.

Being seen as an authority is about your confidence as the depth and breadth of your experience and knowledge.

if you feel like an imposter, it means you may not have enough knowledge and experience.  Ask yourself the following:

• What do I need to know to present myself as an authority in my topic confidently?
• How can I acquire that knowledge and confidence as quickly as possible?

It’s called being an authority on a specific subject. No one can be an authority on everything.

“Minimum Viable Knowledge” for Authority Status

Becoming an authority adds massive value to your business.  By following these steps, you can dominate any niche:

Step 1: Identify the world’s five top experts on a topic/skill and read one or more books by each expert. (You could also participate in their online courses, live seminars, or training programs.)

Learning from unqualified sources can stunt your growth. Learn from the best in the world and don’t just look for the most current expert.

Step 2: Apply what you have been absorbing you are unable to become a real expert on a topic until you apply your new understanding.

For example,

• you can’t become an expert on marketing just by reading about marketing; you have to execute marketing campaigns.
• You can’t become an expert on user experience and design just by reading about UI/UX; you have to design and manage user interfaces.
• You can’t become an expert on LinkedIn or Facebook only by reading books about social media; you have to use the platforms.

By using what you learn through your initial study, you’ll increase your understanding of the content and fill in some of the gaps found in even the world’s best books or online training programs.

Step 3: Summarise by creating a concise review sheet of the primary ideas and concepts. Identify the key points and distill the views of the authors and my professors into my own words.

A summary is easier to review. So, after you read your five books (or buy a course, attend a seminar, etc.) and once you’ve applied what you have learned, you should create a summary of your new knowledge.

This deepens your learning and leaves you with a very concise, valuable resource to refer to for years to come.

Step 4: Strengthen your mastery by teaching your findings to others.

You should, “teach” your topic by writing articles and/or delivering presentations about what you have learned. This will not only reinforce your skills, but it will benefit others who will then see you as an authority.

Expert Brand Positioning

It’s important to display your expertise in the public domain. Creating written content, webinars and videos is the best way to put your brand out there.

It’s important to keep up with the latest and greatest and post your content on your own social media channels to further your brand positioning.

Create Authority Content

It’s a long-term game.

You can’t just put out content for a few months and think that’s enough to be an authority. You’re building trust and leverage and this takes a while.

Slow and steady so make sure that you publish quality content regularly over a variety of mediums and use social media to build up your authority.

Here’s how to establish authority over different mediums:

Establish Blog Authority

One of the key components to building credibility with a blog is how often you post. Quantity will get you seen more often, get your name recognized, and can contribute to your videos and social media.

Here are a few tips to help build your blog 

• Find out what people want to know and write about it in a way that engages them and keeps them coming back for more.
• Keep your introduction short, to the point, and focusses your reader on what they need to know about the article and how they will benefit from reading it.
• Identify keywords that rank well on your subject matter.
• Look for articles with those keywords by doing a search. Your goal is to outrank those top articles.
• Create longer, informative, engaging content to do that.
• Make sure that you use your keyword in the first and last 100 words, use it every 200 words throughout the post and include related keywords to help define the context.
• Keep paragraphs short. No full-page paragraphs, 2-5 sentences for the majority of the paragraphs.
• Include subheadings that easily convey the benefit outlined in each section.
• Break up long blocks of text with whitespace and images.

Action:  Go and implement