Day 23 - How to Gain Expert Status In Your Field
Branding23
Welcome to Day #23 of the 31 Days to Better Branding series! To learn more about this series, click here to find link to the other days so you'll be able to follow along or catch up if you happen to miss anything. I am by no means an expert but after hearing a lot of the same questions, I figured other could benefit from a few lessons in branding. Hopefully it will give you a place to begin or even just a few tips to improve your business and bring you more clients. Feel free to add in your thoughts and what has worked for you in the comments!
We've been doing some serious heavy duty work and I hope you aren't overwhelmed at this point! I'll (try to) keep this short and sweet today.
There's one thing you can do in your business that can quickly earn you the title of expert in your field. It doesn't take a fancy degree or more money. You shouldn't have to bribe anyone or step on any toes. But if you do this one thing, all of a sudden your followers will start thinking about you, "Okay, this person knows what they're doing." They might even feel better about buying more from you because you do this. They don't have to hope that you'll do a good job, they'll know for sure. And all you have to do is this: share what you know.
That's right. Just teach what you've learned. All that research you've been doing to get to where you are, give that knowledge away to others. Share it for free at first and share often.
"But wait a second," you might ask. "Isn't that giving away all my secrets? What if people take my knowledge and become a better competitor?"
The fact that people might copy or imitate what you're doing should never keep you from doing your best work. You're still one step ahead because you're the only YOU and you're the one they're following. When you teach, you might be giving away "secrets" but you are also writing your own recommendation. It says to everyone who reads it, "I know what I'm doing. I'm good at what I do. I've learned the way things work." Sometimes there's no other way to give that impression other than to teach.
"But I don't know if I really qualify as an expert. I don't have a lot to teach," you might say.
If that's really true, than do some research and then share what you're learning along the way. You'll be growing your skills and your reputation at the same time. But I'd wager that you know a lot more than you think. So often we think that the info we know about our field is just "common sense." Instead we shouldn't assume that everyone has learned and read and researched the things that we have. You had to learn what you know at some point, so maybe someone not as advanced as you could learn from your lessons.
Homework: Plan to teach. Use your strengths and write some teaching posts, make some tutorials, host a webinar or twitter chat, put on a workshop, run an ecourse, etc. If you have a lot to great info to share, you might even be able to charge for your lessons and make some side change:)
