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<\/p>\nBeing perceived as an expert in your niche can play a great part in generating buzz, momentum and ultimately profits from your marketing efforts. If you’re a small or medium business, being able to establish mindshare (the perception of yourself or your company as a player in your niche) is a key strategy for newer players. Here are 7 tips to achieving that goal.<\/p>\n
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Content:<\/strong> Identifying key issues, especially challenges and problems within your industry and offering a solution to those questions builds your reputation as a problem solver. Experts are those with expertise at solving problems.<\/p>\n It also builds goodwill and encourage reciprocity and a “pay it forward” mentality from those who have benefitted from your advice (which leads to a viral\/linkbait effect if they distribute\/syndicate your content).<\/p>\n Content was one of the major issues that I discussed with veteran journalist and former editor-in-chief of Revenue magazine, Lisa Picarille<\/a>, for this week’s Friday Podcast. It’ll appear on Friday.<\/p>\n One of the easiest ways to brand yourself is by starting a blog and start putting out quality content.<\/p>\n One major issue I have with bloggers, especially affiliate marketing\/internet marketing bloggers is a tendency to excessively sell ad-space or run banners on their blog. If more than half the screen real-estate is dedicated to ads\/banners, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Are you more interested in making money, or providing information.<\/p>\n Looking at your signal-to-noise ratio (content vs ads) and maintaining a 80% content : 20% ad ratio will create a great user experience. Going beyond a 50% content vs 50% ad ratio is pushing the limits.<\/p>\n Guest author and guest post<\/strong>: If you’ve established a reputation and are seen as credible, take the next step to approach the top 10 channels\/outlets in your niche and offer to guest author on their site – whether it’s a news site, a content aggregator or a blog.<\/p>\n If you are known and the site publishes guest posts, you stand a good chance. If not, it’s back to step #1.<\/p>\n In the affiliate marketing context, specialist magazines like FeedFront<\/a> which comprises an online and print edition can provide great visibility.<\/p>\n Public speaking:<\/strong> Speaking at industry-specific events and related events are a good way of getting your name out there. It’ll also help put you in touch with potential partners.<\/p>\n I know some marketers are reluctant to go this route because of a fear of public speaking. If so, start small as many of these events have small group discussions or breakout sessions. If addressing a couple of hundred people sends your heart rate pounding, you might volunteer to be a discussion leader for a small group session.<\/p>\n Networking (and following up)<\/strong>: Whether you’re meeting people online, or at a face-to-face event, you’ll build up a network of contacts. The challenge that holds people back from more effectively leveraging on their connections is a failure to follow up. When was the last time you got an email or card within 24 hours of meeting someone?<\/p>\n If there’s a contact that could help you build your business, be sure to stay in touch, ping them when you have something relevant to discuss and the relationship will naturally develop.<\/p>\n Author a book:<\/strong> This may sound difficult, but if you’ve ever had a 2 or 3 hour conversation about a particular topic, that content you shared would easily fill a 200 – 250 page book.<\/p>\n On the average, speaking and consulting fees increase between 50-100% after you’ve had a book published (physical books, not e-books). So it might be worth the time and effort.<\/p>\n Build a community:<\/strong> Finding like-minded individuals and organizing them into a community is a good way to network, share expertise and work on joint projects together.<\/p>\n Finding someone to step up and set up a social network or forum is the major challenge because everyone is “always” busy. Instead of waiting for someone to take the first step, why not step up to the plate?<\/p>\n Integrity:<\/strong> This is the big one in my opinon. Do what you say. If you say you’ll do something, even if it’s as simple as sending out a list of bookmarks, you should do it. With the anonymity and virtual distance created by the internet, it’s easy to make a lot of promises and not keep any of them.<\/p>\n Instead, stand apart from the pack and followthrough.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n For tips on building your online business, check out the InternetMarketingCookbook<\/a>. For blogging tips, visit Secret Blog Weapon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Being perceived as an expert in your niche can play a great part in generating buzz, momentum and ultimately profits from your marketing efforts. If you’re a small or medium business, being able to establish mindshare (the perception of yourself or your company as a player in your niche) is a key strategy for newer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[1740,1612,94,1766,517,850,112],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}