6 Guaranteed Ways To Position Yourself As An Authority
6 Guaranteed Ways To Position Yourself As An Authority
There are so many choices and options today when people are looking to solve a challenge or problem. So just how do they make that choice?
They go to the trusted expert or authority who has established a relationship with them and has proven their expertise on their topic.
So when your community needs someone that offers the products or services that your do, will you be the authority that they turn to?
Perhaps you are unsure on how to establish yourself as an authority on your topic?
Fear not.
I’m going to share six guaranteed ways you can position yourself as a trusted authority with your community, industry and/or topic.
6 Key Strategies To Become an Authority On Your Topic
1. Focus on a Niche
Don’t be a Jack-of-all-trades and master of none.
If you want people to see you as authority, specialize in something. Pick a niche that narrowly focuses in on your ideal clients and what they need or want.
For example, while I provide a variety of social media marketing and content marketing services, my specialty and what I’m best known for is LinkedIn. This is where 80% of my focus and energy is spent and what many people recognize me for. In fact when I went to lunch with someone recently they told me “when I think of LinkedIn, I think of Melonie Dodaro.”
The benefit of being so specialized is that you can really hone in on solving the specific challenges and needs of your ideal clients.
With this level of specialization, you’re also better able to personalize your message to speak directly to your ideal clients and connect with them emotionally, which is vital to your success in becoming an authority.
Remember, people want and expect personalization today. They want a message that speaks directly to them and their needs.
So how do you choose your niche?
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you:
- If you look at your industry, is there a gap that needs filling?
- What unique skill or value can you offer your customers?
- What’s your ideal clients biggest need or challenge?
- What problems or needs have your existing customers shared with you?
Don’t be afraid to experiment until you find the right niche for your business and community.
2. Choose the Right Channels
Once you’ve chosen your niche, you also need to select the right channels to share your knowledge and expertise – you don’t want to waste your time sharing your knowledge in places where your community isn’t spending time.
While you’ll always want to have a website full of helpful content and to build an email list (two things which you own and control), you’ll also need to determine which other online channels are being used by your community including which social media channels.
Do they spend their time of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat or somewhere else?
You also need to consider how your community prefers to consume content. Do they prefer articles, graphics, podcasts, videos, live streaming, eBooks or another form of content?
Knowing this will not only increase the engagement around your content but it’ll also help you choose the right social media platforms to attract the right audience.
3. Provide Real Value
What do I mean by “real”?
By real, I mean it needs to be seen as (and experienced by) your ideal clients, existing customers and community at large as being of value to them.
What you think has value is meaningless – it’s all about what your community values.
Always ask yourself, “What’s in it for them”.
At the end of the day, people all think WIIFM (what’s in it for me) when they’re looking at what you or anyone else is providing.
Consider it from their perspective – if there’s no clear benefit for them, then they’ll most likely not waste their time as there are so many other options competing for their time and attention.
Depending on your goal, industry and community, some great ways to provide value is to create content such as:
- blog posts
- infographics
- podcasts
- checklists
- reports
- whitepapers
- eBooks
- videos
- webinars
It also means not holding back. Share your best knowledge with your community.
You need to give them your best insider tips and tricks.
Now you may worry that by giving all your knowledge away that they won’t need you or that you might lose potential sales.
The opposite is true.
Those who will take and use your information to help themselves, often would not have been able or interested in paying for your services. But by establishing yourself as an authority to them, they’ll happily recommend you to others – others who will happily pay you.
By providing those with the desire to pay for your products or services with the information they need to make an educated decision, you’re not only working to establish yourself as an authority, but you’re also building up the kind of trust that makes you a natural choice when they’re ready to buy.
4. Be Consistent
Consistency is a key component to establishing your reputation as an authority and building the trust that comes with that reputation.
Being consistent proves that you’re not a fly-by-night operation here to lure them in and take their money.
Reliability shows your community that you’re a professional as well as an expert on your subject matter.
You must show your commitment to consistency in several ways.
Start with having consistent brand and a voice that you use in all of your content and marketing materials.
This helps people to get to know you and easily identify anything created by you.
It also requires you to be regular in creating and posting content that helps them to be more successful. Additionally, your community needs to know that they can count on you to reply to their messages and comments in a reasonable amount of time.
5. Engage Your Community
You can help cement your position as an authority with your community by being open and engaging with your community.
This doesn’t just mean responding to comments and answering questions, you also need to ask your community what’s important to them and what they need, and then follow through based on that conversation.
Make an effort to celebrate the wins of individuals with your community, as well as share the content that they create when relevant and appropriate.
Being the authority on your topic doesn’t mean that it’s all about you or that you know everything.
Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know the answer to that but I’ll look in to it for you.”
6. Build Relationships With Experts & Influencers
Finally, make a regular effort to reach out to other experts and influencers both in your niche and in related niches that target the same audience.
There are numerous benefits to this.
As well as aiding and providing additional value to your own community by introducing them to someone who can help them (in an area that you don’t), there’s also the chance to be introduced to the community of the expert you are collaborating with. This is a fantastic way to expand your reach and gain even greater authority in the form of social proof and third party credibility.
A great place to begin is by visiting their blog. Check out their content and if you think there’s value in it, leave a comment and/or share it with your community. This introduces your community to them and is a nice gesture to send traffic their way.
You may then want to reach out on social media, particularly on a platform like Twitter, where you can start or join a conversation with them in a natural way.
Remember to approach this process slowly. It can take time to get on their radar and build a relationship with them, but the investment of this time and effort can really pay off in the increased authority and community size you gain.
Wrapping Up
While it takes time and work to position yourself as an authority on your topic, the benefits you’ll receive will be worth the investment.
As the trusted expert, you’ll be the first choice in the minds of your community when it comes time to invest in the services you offer. This is because you’ve not only helped them to know, like and trust you, but you’ve also clearly demonstrated the expertise that proves you can help them solve their challenge or problem.
To provide the best possible result oriented solutions available we have created the following websites and divisions to work in unision and under the umbrella of RCS Technology Soltutions, LLC : RCS Online Solutions , RCS Digital Marketing, RCS SEO Solutions , RCS Website Solutions , The Best Website Company , The Best Internet Marketing Company , RCS Managed IT Services, RCS Computer Solutions Besides that we have dedicated services for Boston, Massachusetts as well including The Best Website Company Boston & The Best SEO Company Boston . RCS Technology Solutions, LLC is powered by Digital Marketing and Website Expert Ronald Couming who has been providing expert solutions for more than a decade. Please contact us with any questions or help regarding our services fees at 001-978-606-5432 or email at info@rcstechnologysolutions.com
Author Link: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/6-guaranteed-ways-position-yourself-authority
The Hottest Landing Page Trends of 2016 So Far
The Hottest Landing Page Trends of 2016 So Far
As you may know, we at Wishpond eat, sleep, and dream landing pages.
We’re always in a mad rush to bring the hottest technologies and trends to our landing page builder and lead generation tools to maximize the ROI our users get from their marketing. The more value you’re able to provide to your landing page visitors the higher conversions you’ll see.
Since we spend countless hours staring at, building, and optimizing landing pages we thought it would be cool to tell you about the hottest landing page trends we’ve seen in 2016 so far.
Landing Page Videos
The impact a video has on the conversion rate of your landing page can be huge – a video explaining your product, for example, is the next best thing to having the product directly in your consumer’s hand.
Videos are effective on landing pages for a few reasons:
- People are inherently lazy – Watching a video is easier than reading a long description. A landing page video will save the viewer time and provide an added element of entertainment.
- They’re entertaining – People have been watching TV for ages for a reason and this makes it a comfortable format to consume.
- High quality production raises the credibility and legitimacy of your company – Nothing compares to a well produced video when it comes to building confidence in your consumers.
Let’s not forget that videos can also be displayed in other formats. Many business now use video backgrounds on their landing pages that play automatically upon entry.
SquareSpace is known for their beautiful website templates and the landing pages they use are the same. They’ve created a video background for their landing page to show off their easy-to-use website builder as soon as you land. landing page trends 2016
Airbnb shows off their flair for design and community building with a background landing page video.
Free Tools on your Landing Page
Having a free tool on your landing page for visitors to instantly test a small portion of your software is a hot trend for companies that deal in that offering. It gets your visitor’s foot in the door and helps them to clearly understand your business and the value of engaging with you.
CoSchedule, a scheduling tool for content marketers, has a free tool that lets creators test their headlines for effectiveness. The free headline tester tool attracts their target audience – content marketers – and prompts them to upgrade to a paid plan to take action on their headlines.
BuzzSumo, everyone’s favorite content discovery tool, allows visitors to perform free content searches but locks out list items beyond the top five as well as the advanced features unless you’re a paid user.
Landing Page Popups
Now that many web users have become accustomed to browsing online, we’ve developed what is called “banner blindness”.
Banner blindness describes the fact that we now, totally subconsciously, ignore the advertising and calls to action placed around the content we read. We’re bombarded with ads all day so we’ve developed the tendency to ignore everything that’s not immediately important to us.
To fight banner blindness and the new desensitized nature of users we have popups. Popups are effective because they demand the attention of your visitors. Whether it’s to claim an offer or to close the popup window, popups force visitors to act in some way — snapping them out of their tunnel vision.
Jeff Bullas has a visually effective entry popup – also known as a welcome mat – that visitors are presented with right when they land on his blog. He offers up a free ebook filled with tactics and tips to grow your web traffic. This welcome mat allows him to present his demonstrated value right away (5 million visitors a year) and collect emails for his email list.
Popular global menswear retailer, Frank & Oak, employs an entry popup to let their visitors know of any current sales and promotions. This is effective because provides immediate value to visitors before they begin their shopping experience.Ronald Couming, Ronald E. Couming, Ron Couming, Website, Website Design Billerica, Website design Boston, website conversion, SEO, local SEO, Search engine optimization, internet marketing, digital marketing Boston, digital marketing Billlerica, email marketing, SEM, Social media, Conversion, Website traffic, PPC, infograpics, Internet marketing Boston, best website company Boston,
Interactive Design
Websites and landing pages are not as ugly as they used to be. Many are now fully interactive experiences that take visitors on a journey through a brand’s story.
A basic or poorly designed site is increasingly a sign of a brand which doesn’t care. It leads to high bounce rates and poor user experiences – not to mention subsequent penalization from Google. Modern web users value fast response time, appealing design, and refined functionality on the websites they visit.
Freelance designer James Barnard observes:
“Users are far more web-savvy than marketers tend to give them credit for. It’s a given that a landing page should be well designed, meaning that poorly crafted sites stick out like a sore thumb.” If good design is assumed and users are wise to the standard trend of big and bold call to actions, “then we have to appeal to them at an emotional level.”
We’ve seen that web users make decisions based on their current mood, so the more your landing page can do to get a visitor into the right mood, the more conversions you’ll see.
BEOPLAY, the portable speaker by Bang & Olufsen, uses a completely interactive product landing page with moving parts and incredible imagery to present their new speaker. The BEOPLAY website takes visitors on a visual journey to explain the form and functionality of their new speaker. Bang & Olufsen, a brand known for their eye catching design and flair for the minimalistic, aims to create a landing page experience akin to the portable speaker they so excellently designed.
It’s now commonplace for brands to create unique buyer experiences from discovery to checkout so that their customers are fully invested in their purchasing journey.
Thank You Page Optimization
After visitors have converted on your landing page they should be presented with a ‘Thank You’ page outlining the next step in your sales process. Thank You page optimization is an often overlooked opportunity to further your relationship with visitors.
Your Thank You page has huge potential for your visitors to…
- Gather more information on your audience
- Share your website/product/service with their friends and family
- Increase your sales with upsells and conversion prompts
- Gather customer service feedback
Social Media Examiner optimizes their Thank You page for further conversions by:
- Having a video that explains how to allow their emails to reach your inbox and avoid spam filters
- Suggesting other content they produce, like their podcast
- Having calls to action to share their website with your friends
- Having links to blog posts you might be interested in
Wrapping Up
As the web continues to evolve and become a more complex system of communication, user behavior will change as well.
The smarter and more aware users become, the more they will be skeptical of what is presented to them online.
The fact is, most of the online population are impulse shoppers (I can’t tell you how many useless things I’ve bought late night on Amazon). The more you can do to keep your landing page looking up to date, clear, well-designed, and engaging, the more your visitors will convert.
Experiment with these six hot trends today and bring your landing pages into (the second half of) 2016.
To provide the best possible result oriented solutions available we have created the following websites and divisions to work in unision and under the umbrella of RCS Technology Soltutions, LLC : RCS Online Solutions , RCS Digital Marketing, RCS SEO Solutions , RCS Website Solutions , The Best Website Company , The Best Internet Marketing Company , RCS Managed IT Services, RCS Computer Solutions Besides that we have dedicated services for Boston, Massachusetts as well including The Best Website Company Boston & The Best SEO Company Boston . RCS Technology Solutions, LLC is powered by Digital Marketing and Website Expert Ronald Couming who has been providing expert solutions for more than a decade. Please contact us with any questions or help regarding our services fees at 001-978-606-5432 or email at info@rcstechnologysolutions.
Author Link: http://blog.wishpond.com/post/115675436714/the-hottest-landing-page-trends-of-2016-so-far