From [AuthorityMarketingPlaybook.com](http://AuthorityMarketingPlaybook.com) ============================ What is Authority? Why do I want it? ------------------------------------ Authority is your core asset as a consultant, making it easier for you to reach and influence prospects and customers. It enables you to earn respect and trust as well as income, so it's crucial for developing and maintaining long- term relationships. Authority means that anyone with a question or problem in your area of expertise will come to you first. Tangential to authority is persuasion. You can't build authority if you can't persuade your audience that you're worthy of it. According to Dr. Robert Cialdini, the foremost expert on persuasion, authority is one of the six principles of persuasion: 1. **Reciprocity** - People are obliged to give back to others when they've received something first. 2. **Scarcity** - People want more of the things they can have less of. 3. **Authority** - People follow the lead of credible, knowledgeable experts. 4. **Consistency** - People like to be consistent with the things they have previously said or done. 5. **Liking** - People prefer to say yes to those that they like. 6. **Consensus** - People will look to the actions and behaviors of others to determine their own. Using the  tactics of persuasion within your authority marketing strategies can help you influence potential customers. ### **3 TYPES OF AUTHORITY** **Best in Class** These are people who have risen to the top of their professions, and they're known for expertise. Their content is deep, and they've earned authority based on a track record. **The Simplifier** A Simplifier makes complex concepts understandable for a wide audience. Simplifiers tend to be proficient in their industries. Yet, they've probably also honed the ability to explain concepts by working with clients or other lay people for several years. **The Innovator** Innovators constitute the third group of authorities. These people are constantly on the edge, pushing the envelope by developing and testing new ideas for the marketplace. Innovators often appear contrarian or "out there" when it comes to their methods,but they deliver results. In digital marketing, these are the people who use apps to test theoretical concepts. For example, an Innovator may show off a new strategy for high-speed Instagram development. Or, it might be someone who shows you how to use a complex algorithm to optimize your content. Innovators bring forth new ideas, but the Simplifiers and Best in Class don't necessarily need to have new ideas to be successful. Most authorities are not talking about new concepts or ideas, yet they excel in explaining complex topics in creative ways, so that valuable information is more accessible to a wider audience. The Real Key to Authority ------------------------- The secret sauce that makes you an authority is ***personality***---or under Cialdini's principles of persuasion, likeability, and consistency. It's who you are. If a unique personality is missing from your content, then it will never build a dedicated audience. Personality is really difficult to describe in terms of what works and what doesn't, because everyone is different. Each person has an individual voice that can best reach a specific audience. An important part of authority marketing is finding that voice and the audience it speaks to. ### **FUNDAMENTAL RULES FOR AUTHORITY CONTENT** **Specialization is Key** [[Niching By Degrees|If you don't have a niche]], nothing you do will truly grow your business. If the message you send out is generalized, does that really showcase you as an authority? Your message must match your audience. Until you've clearly identified the target audience, your niche will be vaguely defined and your authority won't grow. Specialization sharpens your message so it reaches the target audience with pinpoint accuracy. **Authority is Relative** Authority is about your interactions and *with whom* you interact. A veteran barista may know the name of Starbucks' CEO and consider him an authority, but he probably doesn't know many tech gurus. Similarly, the barista is more impressed by a skilled brew than a stellar earnings report. That's why specialization is so important --- your authority must be relevant to your audience from the very start. At the same time, this also means you can tailor authority to fit your target audience. For example, if you're a marketer for lawyers, you don't care whether other marketers know who you are; you only need to get your message to lawyers. ***Your authority must be relevant to your audience from the outset.*** 18 Authority Plays We're Already Using -------------------------------------- We break our authority-building plays into two broad categories: - **Education and Career** tends to refer to things you already do to gain authority. - **Content and Community** generally refers to ongoing activities that build authority over time. ### **EDUCATION & CAREER** **1\. Go to a big-name school** -- Harvard, MIT, Oxford and similar well-known schools listed on your resume will give you more credibility in any field. You'll get a little more authority for passing through their rigorous qualification process. Even the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) from a prestigious university can bring you a bit of their authority, for a fraction of the cost. To boost your authority even further, you can tie together MOOCs for certification from that school. (See 3.) **2\. Get an advanced degree** -- MBA, JD, or Ph.D. lend credibility and authority to your name. The most valuable is a Doctorate degree. At least in the US, people tend to trust Doctors of any kind. **3\. Become certified** -- CPA, Inbound, Google Partners, Scrum Master, or any other well-known certification increases your authority in that domain. Certifications are often niche-specific, so choose them carefully. **4\. Sell a company** -- Don't just start a company, sell one. Selling a successful business for a profit is the absolute best way to establish yourself as an authority in that that industry niche. You'll need to use another kind of authority-building play to verify your claims of success, but that's easy after everything you've already accomplished. **5\. Hold a high-level position at a well-known company** -- You don't need to be a CEO to have credibility and build authority, but you'll need to be at least a VP at a mid-market company of some sort. If you have a track record of success or attended a big-name school, you can probably still leverage a lower management position. **6\. Found or join a venture-backed start up** -- If you only joined a company instead of founding it, then your authority depends on being an early employee or a top-level staff member. If the company isn't successful or well-publicized, you'll need some good war stories in order to create content that builds your authority. **7\. Launch a successful public project** -- You can build authority through anything positive that you've done in public view. As long as you're able to talk about what you did, you'll build authority with those who hear about it. This authority-generating play must be publicized through outside channels. **8\. Teach** -- Ideally at a university, though a community college is a great starting place. Teachers still practicing their profession are well regarded in the business community and commonly recognized as authorities. **9\. Existing content** -- Maybe you've already written a book or hosted a successful podcast a few years back. As long as it's related or adjacent to your desired positioning, it's probably worth mentioning. ### **CONTENT & COMMUNITY** **10\. Host a podcast** -- There are several podcast formats that may work well, depending on your budget and current audience size. Podcasts are a powerful way to build authority---listeners can hear your voice, your passion, and your expertise. **11\. Publish a newsletter** -- It can contain either original content or well-curated content from outside sources, but we recommend original for better authority. As long as you publish the newsletter consistently and it communicates valuable information to your target audience, you'll build authority. **12\. Publish a blog** -- Specifically, publish fresh blog content on a regular basis. Create original articles about topics of interest to your target audience that are related your expertise and positioning. **13\. Publish a book** -- You don't need to actually write the words yourself, but the book must contain your knowledge, beliefs, words, and expertise. A bad book makes you look good when nobody reads it. A good book makes you an authority. **14\. Create an online course** -- Much like writing books, you'll build much more authority if you create a good course. Teaching someone about a topic is the ultimate way to establish yourself as an authority in their mind. Beyond teaching ability, you'll need a high level of expertise in your field to create a valuable online course. **15\. Write for a well-known publication** -- Forbes, Huffington Post, and Entrepreneur are examples of influential publications. There are dozens of popular online and offline publishers looking for regular contributors. Associating yourself with one or more of them allows you to borrow a bit of their audience to help grow yours. **16\. Speak to groups** -- Whether it's a Meetup, webinar, conference or networking event. Speaking to a group of people about a topic related to your positioning is a great way to build authority. Double your marketing ammunition by recording the talk and posting it online later. **17\. Be featured** -- In blogs, podcasts, digital media outlets, local radio shows, everywhere and anywhere your target audience is. We strongly recommend choosing and focusing on only one type of feature. That makes it easier to reach the same audience with your authority message. **18\. Become active and/or well-known in your community** -- As long as the community is composed mainly of your target audience, this is a great way to build authority. The activity could be a Meetup, subreddit, Slack channel, co-working space, or even a non-profit board. [[Niching By Degrees|Choosing Your Niche]] ------------------------------ When you try to be an expert on everything, you'll be an expert in nothing. Choose a niche---a focus---and build your authority around that topic. The following steps will be helpful to choose a specialty area. ### **STEP 1: MAKE A LIST OF YOUR STRENGTHS** Deep expertise is shown by several years of experience in a specific field, a relevant set of skills, and a record of consistent success.  Before you can position yourself as an authority, you'll need to discover where your expertise is deep enough. Ask yourself the following questions and then document the answers: - In which fields do you consider yourself an expert? - Which topics do you speak about most often in seminars and conferences? - What do you love doing most at work? - In which field do you want to be the "go-to guy"? - Which types of clients have you had the most success with? If there's a particular part of your work that you love more than anything else, add it to the list as well. Try to think of at least seven potential niches before moving on to the next step. We recommend a combination of topics, such as social media lead generation, as well as more general areas with a specific client type, like digital marketing for accounting firms. ### **STEP 2: THE TALK TEST** At this point, you must pass what we call the "talk test" for expertise for every niche on your list. Are you comfortable preparing a half-day workshop or giving the keynote address at a conference about each niche? If your answer is no, take that niche off the list. This test is to make sure you have the confidence, passion, and experience to create authoritative content in each field. ### **STEP 3: MAPPING THE COMPETITION** Now that you have an initial list, it's time to take a look at the competition. Start by writing down the major names in a particular niche. For example, if you're a motivational speaker or life coach, you'll write down names like Tony Robbins, Tim Ferris, or Gary Vaynerchuk. Next, write down anyone you know personally who specializes in one of your listed areas. The goal of mapping the competition for each niche is to figure out where each connection can be tweaked to differentiate you from the group.  "Social media marketing" may become "social listening and lead generation". "Sales" may become "sales management" or "new team dynamics". Even after adjusting your niches, you may find that a few of your fields are highly saturated with competitors. That's okay; it just means the market is big. Usually, the market is big enough for one more --- you. ### **STEP 4: RANKING THE OPTIONS** At this point, rank your top five favorite options with one as your first choice and five as your last. If you don't have five left, rank however many you have. The purpose is to eliminate any options that you aren't passionate about. We recommend ranking the options based on a combination of your expertise and enjoyment of the work, but you should never exclude an option simply because you don't like it. Once you have your top five options, note any that may overlap. ### **STEP 5: TALLYING THE RESULTS** If you haven't actually written anything down yet, you'll want a pen and paper for this last step. 1. **For any niches with overlapping topics,** subtract 1 point from their numerical rank. You can probably speak about both. 2. **If there were more than 3 major competitor names** in any niche, add 1 point to its rank. Your audience will most likely compare you to them. 3. **If you personally know 4 or more people** in a given niche, add 1 point to its rank. You'll have more competition in your network. 4. **If more than half of these people are local**, add 1 point to its rank. You're less likely to get referrals with a lot of local competition. The lower the score, the stronger the niche. ### **THE EXCEPTION THAT MAKES THE RULE -- GO WITH YOUR GUT** As a rule, we recommend moving forward with your lowest score. But, we also recognize one exception for those people who are head over heels in love with a higher-scoring option. This can happen if your favorite choice was bumped from first place due to additional competition. Go for it! Your extra confidence and passion will come through in everything you do, which means better content and more authority as a result. ### **TURNING YOUR NICHE INTO A POSITIONING STATEMENT** A positioning statement is a single sentence that describes what you do, who your customers are, and why they hire you. Call For Content's positioning statement is -- > We help consultants and business coaches build their authority and business using content marketing. If you're having trouble fitting your niche into this format, break it down even further -- > **I help....**\ >\ > Who are your ideal customers?\ >\ > **solve this important problem....**\ >\ > Why do your customers hire you? What difficulty are you helping them to overcome?\ >\ > **How do you do that?**\ >\ > What do you do exactly to solve their problem? Are you a tax accountant? A content marketer? A sales strategist? What do you do to solve their important problem? ### **PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER -- THE AUTHORITY ROADMAP** If you're working your way toward authority, at any given time you should be engaging in or preparing several of these plays. When you decide to become an ***authority***, you must first look back for any accomplishments relevant to the audience you've decided to reach. As you build authority within a highly-targeted community, you'll be able to expand your authority over related groups. ### **HOW TO USE AN AUTHORITY ROADMAP** The Authority Roadmap is a simple tool for evaluating your authority within a specific niche at any point in time. Revisit it once or twice a year to see how far you've come and update where you need to go. While it isn't an in-depth tactical document, the Authority Roadmap is a quick way to make sure you're on the right path to authority positioning. ### **HOW TO FILL IN YOUR AUTHORITY ROADMAP** 1\. Fill in your positioning statement in the upper right corner of the Roadmap 2\. In the **What I've Done** column, fill in any authority building plays relevant to your positioning that you've already accomplished. Be sure to include existing content even if you're still creating for that channel. 3\. In the **What I'd Like To Do** column, fill in any authority-building plays that you'd like to accomplish in the next 6 to 12 months.  Be realistic -- If you're a freelancer with 2 years of experience, you're probably not going to get an executive role at a large corporation. 4\. Finally, fill in your **What I'm Doing Or Working Toward** column with the authority-building plays you're doing now.  Compare them to your **What I'd Like To Do** column and see if there's anything you need to add so can reach your goals.  ## My Approach ### **CLIENT-FOCUSED CONTENT MARKETING** Our goal for the clients we help is to grow their authority and business. We measure the quality of content according to the quality of the traffic it brings. We define quality traffic as "Reads and Leads": - People actually read and listen to the content, and - Those readers (and many others like them) become valuable leads. Leads are inherently more valuable than reads, but both are necessary for authority generation. ### **QUALITY COMES FIRST, SEO IS SECONDARY** Search engine optimization (SEO) is necessary for ensuring your content shows up when people google your niche. When you start using content to position and market yourself, you may have little to no traffic from searches. That's okay. Most people probably aren't looking for you via search engines, so SEO isn't even close to the be-all-end-all of building authority. We don't recommend stuffing your content with keywords. Instead, focus on creating informative, shareable, authoritative content. By combining excellent content with email capture and social media marketing, you can build your contact list quickly. Then, as you create content and social proof over time, SEO opportunities will pop up. Take them as they come, but don't chase them. ***Focus on creating informative, shareable, authoritative content.*** ### **YOUR UNIQUE VOICE** After creating an Authority Roadmap, it's time to create personas, develop targeted content topics, uncover hidden influencers, and find out which communities to target. That process starts with an interview...with you! Have a friend or confidant ask you the questions below and document your responses. This self-interview is designed to help you talk through the information you need to complete a ***Your Unique Voice*** (YUV) document. It's a combination of executive summary and brand guidelines for you content. You'll use your YUV document throughout the content planning and creation process to ensure your voice is represented and your content sounds like you and speaks to your customer base. **YUV Interview Questions** 1. Tell me about your business? A. Why did you found it? B. What's your elevator pitch? 2\. What sets you apart from the competition? 3\. How would you describe your ideal customer? 4\. Which types of customers see the most value in your work? 5\. If customers don't use your services, what do they do instead? 6\. Tell me about your most profitable customers? A. What are their biggest problems? B. Which are the most important? *(To them, not you) C. Where do they currently find content about those problems? D. How are they different from your other customers? E. What do you love most about working with them? F. What happens if they can't find solutions to those problems? G. What happens in their business that leads them to you? H. What are some common obstacles in their industry/market? 7\.  Tell me about your favorite customers of all time? A. What are their biggest problems? B. Which are the most important? *(To them, not you) C. Where do they find content about those problems now? D. How are they different from your other customers? E. What do you love most about working with them? F. What happens if they can't find solutions to those problems? G. What happens in their business that leads them to you? H. What are some common obstacles in their industry/market? 8\. Where (or to whom) do you go for business advice? A. For other life advice? 9\. What's your favorite part of your job? A. Least favorite? 10\. Tell me about your current marketing strategy? A. What's your message? 11\. What type of voice do you want to see in your content? A. Are you more of a glass half full or a glass half empty kind of person? 12\. What are your personal/company values? A. What do you believe in that makes you keep doing what you do? 13\. What sort of jargon, slang, or specific phrases do you use in your work? A. What do they mean? 14\. Are there any words or phrases you never use? 15\. Have you taken any personality profiles or assessments like Meyers- Briggs, DISC, or StrengthFinders? (Please include them if available) **YUV Headings Outline** After you answer the YUV interview questions, compile the answers into the Your Unique Voice branding document. Taking this extra step of summarizing the information is the best way to make this exercise useful. - About [Business] - About [Expert] - Starting my business -- Why, when, and how - The business of [industry/market] - My 5 best clients - Types of engagements and business models - My clients - Their quirks, and why I love them anyway - The important problem I solve - How I market right now, and my message - Culture -- How I want people to feel when they work with me - Writing style + tone -- How I like to sound - Purpose + Values -- What I believe in - Language, jargon and specific phrases I like to use, and what they mean - Words or phrases I never use ### **INTERVIEW YOUR CLIENTS** Next, have your friend or confidant interview your 5 best customers, as determined by the YUV interview, and share the results with you. Based on the interviews, create a specific profile for each ideal customer that includes the biggest problems they're experiencing (or experienced before working with you), their social media habits, where they look for advice, their interests, age, and any other questions you've always wanted to ask you but never have. **Client Interview Questions** 1\. Tell me a bit about your job. A. What keeps you up at night? 2\. How did you first learn about [Expert]? 3\. What is the biggest challenge you currently face? 4\. How has [Expert] made an impact on your business? 5\. What do you like most about working with [Expert]? 6\. Do you read [Expert's] blog? A. Again for other content? 7\. What other (industry name) blogs or publications do you frequently visit? 8\. What type of articles would you like to see more of? 9\. What's the best article you've recently read? 10\. Why did you choose [Expert] as your business consultant? A. Was there competition? 11\. Which blogs, newsletters, or podcasts do you follow? A. What about other media? B. Any other particular influencers/experts you seek out? 12\. When you have a tough problem at work, who do you ask for advice? 13\. Do you use social media? A. List networks B. Why do you use social media? (business or family) 14\. Which communities are you a member of? A. Online? B. Offline? C. Are you a member of industry- or role-specific communities? **Customer Persona Categories** - Name - Location - Age - Title - Married - Kids - Content I consume (Blogs/Newsletters/Podcasts/TV/YouTube, etc.) - Which social media do I use? - A. How often? - Who do I go to for advice? - What are my main job functions? - How long have I been doing my job? - What are my major goals at work? - How do I spend my time? - What are my biggest pains? - What's my worst daily struggle? - How did I find [Expert]? - Why did I buy from [Expert]?