Blogging For Fame, Credibility and Authority

This is the third post in my series about blogging for business. In the first instalment I talked about how blogs can help your business profit and in the previous article I showed the ways blogs boost your website traffic. Now I am going to talk about using a blog to generate more fame, credibility and authority.

First of all, what is “fame”?

I would define fame as being a situation where lots of people recognise you.

Society seems a little obsessed with fame. Fame for fames sake. The cult of celebrity where someone is famous just because. Famous for being famous.

This isn’t what I am talking about!

There are many business roles that require a professional make a “name” for themselves. Consultants, trainers, coaches, authors, speakers, etc. Famous here means being well-known in your niche or industry, and in a good way. You don’t need to be Brad or Angelina, in fact you don’t need to be known by thousands or even hundreds.

Just being known by the right people will achieve what you need.

In the past this was much more difficult to do. Even people with the best ideas and knowledge had to work way harder to get known. Now with the power of blogs the barriers have come down, the hardest part is competing with everyone else doing the same thing and demonstrating your expertise and value.

So how famous do you need to be?

Your first job is to identify who you need to be visible to, who they listen to and respect, what they are interested in, what they need, where they hang out and what you can do for them.

You will find that instead of having to impress a ton of people you only need to identify a small number of people who will then influence the rest. Much more focused task but not necessarily easier. Persuading those influencers can mean finding intermediate influencers, friends of friends as it were. This is all about networking, a topic we will cover later.

Once you have your influencers in your target you have to demonstrate you have what they need in order to get them on your side.

Demonstrate your experience, knowledge and ideas in your posts. Share your tips and paint pictures of what is possible. This isn’t about giving away your whole bag of tricks but you must provide value. Each article is like a free sample, when people try you out and find your stuff is good then you build trust and through trust and demonstrated value comes testimonials, referrals, higher profile and credibility.

People are lazy and risk-averse. If someone they already trusts recommends you, via links or word of mouth, that is usually enough for them to place some trust in you. Reward that trust and the whole thing builds. One referral follows another and the sheeple effect kicks in, links follow links, the rich get richer, your fame, credibility and authority builds.

This is social proof at work. You are the go-to person because everybody says so. Everybody says so because … everybody says so 🙂

You become a self-reinforcing authority. As you gain links you rise in Google, people link to the top results rather than research, which builds more authority and gains you more links. Before you know it you are top spot and can’t be toppled. Just be warned it is a steep hill to climb but so easy to roll back down on your ass. Reward trust and it builds, do anything to break that trust and the whole house of cards comes crashing down around your ears. Be kind to people on the way up …

As I said before, networking is crucial. This is what we will look at next – using blogs in professional networking – you have to work the net to net the work! 🙂