Have you ever heard of a little business term called “pre-framing”? Basically, this is how people perceive you before really knowing you.
If you know how to brand yourself as an expert in your field, you will be pre-framed by your potential customers as someone they can trust to teach them what they want to know.
The result of this is being able to sell books, products, courses, consulting, etc. to anyone without even having to actually sell.
Think about how celebrities get paid so much to endorse a product. People don’t care about a product near as much until they see someone they look up to using it.
For instance, if you see Angelina Jolie using a skin product, hundreds of thousands of women will buy it just because they see what she looks like and trust that it could help them get better skin like her.
If you see Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest NBA basketball player ever, promote a basketball training course, it would sell like crazy to anyone wanting to learn about basketball.
If you can start branding yourself as an expert or at least just position yourself like one in the customers’ eyes, you will be able to sell just about anything relating to the niche you are in.
Here are 10 effective ways to position yourself as an expert online and create that “celebrity status” to help you turbo-boost your sales:
1. Start A Blog
If you don’t have a blog already, it’s time that you go get one. In fact, I have an entire guide on how to set up a blog in 5 easy steps.
Why do you need a blog exactly? Blogs are simply the most valuable assets to businesses (especially online ones) in today’s internet age.
You consistently post articles on them about topics in your niche. You can solve problems people have in your niche, demonstrate your expertise through “how to’s”, etc.
A blog allows you to put your expertise in the form of content and share it with the world to give them a small sample of your skills.
It is by far one of the best ways to establish your brand as an expert.
2. Write A Book
Nothing sounds more expert-like than someone who has a bestselling book on Amazon, The New York Times, etc. Don’t just write a “me too” book that teaches the same things as many others though.
Instead, find a void in the marketplace, check forums and come up with a book that hasn’t been written yet that teaches strategies very few people know or have even thought of.
Make this book as valuable as possible and promote it like you’ve never promoted anything before.
Books that have several good reviews and teach a lot of valuable lessons, not only make you a little extra money on the side, but they establish your brand or your celebrity status as an expert in that field.
3. Videos
It seems like there are more and more professional Youtubers popping up all over the world these days making 6 figures or more just by entertaining or teaching people in their videos.
Youtube channels are great assets for branding yourself and getting traffic online. They allow people to actually see you and hear your voice around the world without you having to be there in person.
It allows people to connect with you even better than they would through your books or blog posts, because they can feel like they are right there with you, getting to know you.
It’s like becoming a small time TV or movie star. In fact, many actors and performers are starting off their careers these days through Youtube discovery.
Now maybe you don’t want to go the music or movie route, but you can achieve celebrity status as an expert in a certain niche by teaching valuable lessons in your videos.
Don’t worry about them needing to be Hollywood production quality or feel like you should hire a makeup artist to help you look your best.
People love to feel like you are more personable and are just like them, but more successful.
Keep videos low budget, short and to the point with some very valuable tips and you will be growing your brand in no time.
4. Testimonials/Endorsements
What better way to achieve celebrity status than to get endorsed by an expert who already has it? Having testimonials or endorsements from established people who others recognize, is priceless.
I recommend you start connecting with other industry experts on places like Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, etc. just to learn more about them and see if there could be potential to do business.
I’ve even known people that would boost their brand by making online products or courses while partnering with other experts just for their big name in the niche.
Anytime you feel you may have a chance to bring a big name in as an endorsement or through a testimonial, you have to take advantage.
Like I said, it’s not so much the sales process that makes money as the pre-framing of your prospects’ minds into thinking you are one of the best in your field.
5. Get Featured On Authority Sites
Not only is featuring experts as testimonials or endorsers of your business on your site valuable, but you being featured on their sites is as well.
Imagine just getting on a site like Entrepreneur.com, Business Insider, Forbes, etc. Just publishing a few articles on there gets you instant attention from a massive audience of people in your niche.
Become a contributor to other big name sites and it could be exactly what you need to get over the hump with your business.
6. Become A Specialist
I read one time in an amazing book on success (I’m pretty sure it was in Think And Grow Rich) that if you try to start out being a jack of all trades, you won’t get very far.
It said if you instead become a specialist in one certain area, you will create a name for yourself and can later expand on that after gaining credibility.
For instance, instead of being okay at social media, content marketing, SEO, PPC advertising, email marketing, copywriting, website optimization, video marketing, etc., you could specialize in just content marketing.
After you have mastered content marketing and gotten so good that everyone knows you as the content marketing guru of gurus, you could then expand into another area and master it as well.
It would take you so much longer to get good at all areas of internet marketing if you just get better at all of them a little bit at a time. If you put all your focus on one strategy, you will make huge strides in your progress in a fraction of the time.
It’s better to be the master of one thing than pretty good at 20 things. As you’re trying to figure out how to brand yourself as an expert in your field, remember it’s the specialists that get the most recognition.
7. Answer Questions On Quora Or Yahoo Answers
Another easy way to become an expert is to just help others solve their problems in your niche. Sites like Quora or Yahoo Answers have places where anyone can ask questions about any topic.
When you create a free account on one of these, you can start searching for questions related to keywords that you know most about in your niche and answer just a few a day.
Before long, people will start upvoting your answers, following you and getting curious about who you are. The whole point is to just help people in need of answers to their problems.
The branding and following are just a bonus that comes along with helping them. With Quora and Yahoo Answers, you really get to see what a successful business is all about again.
It’s about helping people and solving problems for them in a way that provides tremendous value to their lives. If you focus on nothing, but making money, you won’t do too well.
8. Give Valuable Insight On Forums
This is kind of like what you do on Quora or Yahoo Answers. In forums, you just find discussions on different topics related to your niche and contribute valuable insight to them.
For instance, Warrior Forum is known as one of the better forums for marketing or internet entrepreneurship. People will ask questions, discuss what they think about certain strategies, share reviews of courses, etc.
Just try to bring something to the table every time you answer a question or contribute and over time, you will develop a reputation as an industry expert.
9. Become An Authority On Social Media
When it comes to branding yourself as an expert in your field through social media, you first need to make sure you cut out some bad social media habits.
After you feel like you know how to not shoot yourself in the foot on social media anymore, there are some things you can do to show your expertise to the world:
- Share your blog posts (but don’t spam them) on your social profiles.
- Share your Youtube videos on your social profiles.
- Have a professional picture of yourself on all your social media profiles.
- Have a link to your main website and get it verified on your profiles.
- Share great tips or quotes with your followers a couple of times a day.
- Provide social proof every once in a while of some success your business had or even achievements you’ve earned as the owner.
- Have a picture of yourself with an established person in your industry on your profile.
These types of practices on social media can really start to brand you as an expert in your niche and the more people that are exposed to your profile or posts, the more business you’ll get.
10. Use Proof When You Get Results
What sounds better…
- Our business has been very successful the last few months
- Or, our business has created a minimum of a 50% increase in sales for every client we’ve had in the last 3 months
I’ll bet you picked option 2. People like specifics, not broad claims. But, when you give specifics, you also can back that up with proof to give your business even more credibility.
You could have a screenshot of the numbers you created from an analytics site like Google Analytics or a video of a client showing the results they got with your business’s help.
People tend to not believe anything unless they see it. People tend to be skeptical these day and specifics backed by proof are powerful for your branding.
This establishes a trust between your potential customers and your brand that combined with your celebrity status as an expert, creates a one-two-punch that can almost guarantee big sales numbers.
Conclusion Of How To Brand Yourself As An Expert In Your Field
If you start working on developing a celebrity status by just being everywhere online when it comes to your niche, people will start to see you as someone that can solve their problems.
You don’t have to develop some kind of futuristic, complex sales funnel to make a lot of money with your business. You just need to learn how to brand yourself as an expert in your field. What are some other ways to brand yourself as an expert?
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