Becoming an online authority in your industry is a great way to help increase your sales. In this article, we will show you the five elements you will need to become an online authority in just 90 days.
This article will cover your content strategy, social proofing, Linking, and your offline presence. These four elements have helped many big names like Hiren Joshi establish their business and their larger brand.
Why it’s important to become an online authority
If you want to be heard above the busy noise of the web, becoming an authority is the surest way to achieve that. Especially as Google is now, more than ever, looking for authority figures to turn to.
With more than 3000 pieces of content being upload per second, the web is an incredibly loud and crowded space.
Customers aren’t sure who to turn to and Google’s main objective is to help people by serving up great content.
People who are thought leaders on specific topics generally rise to the top of Google. Provided they can take their expert knowledge and create easy-to-understand content that benefits other people.
I am regularly invited to share my views and expertise by Entrepreneur magazine, Search Engine Watch, Your Story, Digital Vidya, Social Media Today, Social Media Examiner, Jeff Bullas, Business2community, SEMrush and several others.
– Abhishek Shah
3 advantages of establishing online authority
The primary goal of establishing yourself and your business as an online authority is to profit financially while helping and serving your customers.
This primary goal can be broken down into three advantages for you and your business:
- Quickly gain the respect and trust of prospects and customers.
- Become an industry leader and gain respect from your peers.
- Gain more referrals (both offline and online).
Each of these advantages leads to more sales as well as other business opportunities. How do you achieve online authority? There are four elements you need to become an online authority.
The 4 elements you need to become an online authority in 90 days
These four elements (or categories) are considered the best way to quickly gain online authority.
#1 Content strategy
Authority content isn’t about the individual pieces of content. What makes authority content so special is the way the tactics of a content plan are put together into a larger strategy that gives you a result greater than the sum of its parts.
First, you need to create a lot of content in a short space of time. Then you need a way that you can optimise it, package it together and turn it into some sort of product. The final step is you need a way to share it around the web.
Broken into short actionable steps it looks something like this:
- Start a blog. You want this to be very specific, very niche to what you offer.
- Create very niche and specific content that will still be relevant in the coming years.
- Your website and old blogs are not static. Constantly update and optimize old content to get the most value from it.
- Create a content calendar. This will help ensure you consistently publish content every month.
#2 Social media strategy
If you want to be considered a thought leader, an online authority, you must be seen on social media. Being vocal on social media is about demonstrating your expertise through answering questions and generally providing value to your online audience.
Without a social media presence, it would be very difficult to establish yourself as an online authority.
The platforms you want to consider establishing yourself and your business on are LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. However, you really want to find out which social platform your prospects are on and go there.
How to use social media to help establish your online authority:
- Grow an organic social following. That means do not pay for followers for the vanity metrics. To become a thought leader, you need an audience of people who are engaging with your content.
- Create a schedule so your presence on your social channels is consistent.
- Learn and understand social advertising. This can help get your content in front of more of the right people faster.
- Interact with other influencers and online authorities in your industry. Relationship building on social media is one of the quickest ways to expand your network and increase your reach.
#3 Links
Links are not as important as they once were. However, if you’re looking to quickly build your online authority, then here is where links will help achieve that:
- Guest blogging. You should approach online publications and blogs in your industry with offers to create engaging, insightful content for them. This content will link back to you, which helps with your online authority.
- Connect with journalists, editors and PR agencies to cultivate opportunities for links on high-ranking sites.
- Interact with the blogs and content of other people in your industry. This should be done in the form of comments on blogs where you will want to bring something of value to the conversation.
#4 Offline presence
There are plenty of things you can do offline to help yourself and your brand online. Offline is where you can start to build relationships as well as a network of like-minded people in and around your industry.
The way to do this is:
- Go to industry-specific networking events.
- Be the host of your own networking event such as a meetup and invite other thought leaders to speak.
- Take speaking engagements to help people solve the problem your business is the solution to.
These four elements put together in a fine-tuned strategy can help you become a thought leader in just 90 days.
In order for this to work, you must be committed to creating a lot of quality content your audience is going to want to read, or watch, or listen to.
It won’t be easy. But the outcome is well worth the effort.
By engaging with your audience and your peers, online and offline you will start to establish yourself. Couple this with providing as much value and insight as possible and you will be well on your way to establishing yourself (and your business) as the online authority in your industry.
If you would like help establishing yourself as the go-to online authority in your field, contact Ally Digital Media to find out how we can help you.
