If you want to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry or your locality there are some lots of things you can do so that you are seen as the ‘go to’ expert in your sector.

1. Update your LinkedIn Headline

Are you making the most of your headline? Why put Director or Owner when you have 240 characters to really position yourself? Use keywords to explain what you want to be known for, be clear about what problems you solve and what type of businesses or people you can help. Your headline follows you around you need to stand out and look credible.

2. Get a Google Business Profile

This free platform will enable your customers to find you on Google Search and Maps. There may already be a profile in your business name which Google has created from your website information. Make sure you claim this so you can manage it! Once set up, or claimed, you can add all sorts of information and post to it as you do on other social media platforms. But the most important thing is to collect reviews, the more reviews the higher up the search you appear. Find out more here.

3. Check your Website

Make sure your website is up to date, static websites don’t rank well with search engines. You need fresh content like news, new reviews, new pages and blogs (see 8 below). It is always good if you can manage certain aspects of your website yourself, so you don’t have to pay someone to do this. Get your website developer to show you how to add blogs, news and reviews.

4. Articles

Offer to write articles for local business magazines or websites or target your industry sector. Submit a story on spec or better still contact the editor and suggest what topical or useful subjects you can write about.  Keep it simple, not too much jargon but make sure it adds value and don’t be overly promotional. You can offer solutions, refer to other people you have helped and end with a call to action and link to your website.

5. Speak at Events

Offer to speak at local or national events, there are always numerous conferences, seminars and networking groups looking for good quality speakers, usually unpaid.  Find a topic that will impart some useful information and don’t be afraid to give away some knowledge. You can raise your profile, demonstrate how you can help people and use it to subtly promote your business or a product such as a book. You can even create an event around your sector and ask a few like-minded businesses to support you.

6. Enter Awards

Awards are a great way of adding external validation and credibility to your business.  Even the process of entering awards means you have to find or create case studies, testimonials and evidence to support your application, building up a nice bank of information as you go.  There are lots of social media opportunities as you enter, get nominated, shortlisted, attend an awards ceremony or even win an award.

Organisers need people to apply to make the awards worthwhile and you would be surprised that numbers-wise, competition might not be that high as it is pretty time-consuming, although this is something you can outsource.

7. Write e-books

Creating a bank of useful downloadable information and ‘How to’ advice is a great way to differentiate yourself from your competition. You can start with a three or four-page document, put a few of these together and you have your chapters for an e-book! They make great lead magnets on your website (get people to sign up for your newsletter and send the download for free) or you can use them in your social media or newsletters. If you want to provide a hard copy it is a lot easier and cheaper to self-publish these days. Have a look at this advice from Amazon.

8. Blogging

If you have a website, it’s good to blog about problems that people have and how you (or others like you) can help them. How often is up to you but even once or twice a month is a great way to provide new content for your social media and drive traffic to your website.  Use catchy titles and keywords, lists and ‘how to’ blogs work well in search engines. Aim for 400 words plus, and include bullet points, internal and external links and an image or two. Don’t forget to use tags and other tricks to help search engines find your content. If you don’t have a website you can put this content into your LinkedIn profile as an Article.

9. Get More Reviews

Reviews are part of your social proof, they are what other people say about you and your business, not you and therefore have much more credibility. Always ask for reviews just after you have completed some work. Send a nice email thanking them for the work with links to where they can leave a review. Google is the best place to have a number of reviews but equally, you need to build up reviews on Facebook and recommendations on LinkedIn to be seen as an expert.

10. Email Marketing

Email marketing is a very cost-effective way to regularly stay in touch with customers and website visitors with offers, news, updates and other information. Email open rates are quite good compared to the reach of social media. Your database is your information, unlike your social media platforms which could be hacked. Obviously, you need to be GDPR compliant, if this is a concern to you there are lots of useful resources on the internet.

These simple steps will help you improve your reputation and profile and lead you to be recognised as an expert in your field.

If you need help writing award applications blogs, press releases, newsletters or articles please get in touch!

[email protected] www.connect-consultancy.co.uk

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