Create Great Content That Resonates with Your Audience

The first step is creating great content. This doesn’t mean peppering your website with keywords or flashy effects, it means sitting with your target audience (metaphorically or literally) and exploring the things that keep them up at night. What do they type into a search engine to help resolve their problems and meet their everyday needs? What are their values, their hopes, their fears?

By empathizing with your target audience, you can connect with them through content that will resonate:

• deep-dive blog posts
• quick video tips
• a podcast
• guest appearances on other podcasts
• newsletters
• social media
• community presentations
• editorials/guest columns in industry publications
• live connections at trade shows

This is a pretty long list, right? You need not master every channel and put out content on each one every day. It will serve you better to choose which apply best to your abilities and target market, then show up consistently for one or two. You cannot be everywhere all at once — though a great marketing team can maximize your reach by repurposing content for multiple platforms.

Nurture Social Proof to Establish Authority

Customers (and the AI agents who serve as their proxy) require social proof to consider someone an authority. Social proof is what others say about you. Simply put, we are far likelier to believe what others say about someone rather than believe what that person says about themselves. This is especially true in marketing. Every restaurant will say they have the best burger in town, so hungry customers will look to reviews and reputation.

Glowing testimonials, case studies and user-generated content (like third-party mentions on social media) are worth their weight in gold. Find ways to engage with your target market that will produce great reviews, Instagram posts and more. Then, as with your content, make sure these third-party mentions filter out to multiple channels.

Leverage Public Relations Opportunities and Get Involved

Leveraging public relations opportunities and partnerships is the next level of social proof. This means showing up in your industry and steeping yourself in the institutional credibility of experts around you. Join your local chamber of commerce, relevant business organizations and industry groups. Volunteer to speak on a panel for an industry event or host a lunch-and-learn for potential customers or other professionals. Speak on a podcast about what you know best (and trust us, however narrow your niche, there’s a podcast somewhere about it).

With time, your authority and reputation might grow to the point where you can be featured on local news when your industry knowledge is relevant to a story. Once one media professional has you in their contacts list, your information will likely be passed to others in the field. If you become a voice for your industry, your informed perspective might be useful to city or state lawmakers. This could mean speaking at public meetings or giving testimony to commissions. With great authority comes great responsibility, after all.

All of this takes time, strategic planning and work. And not everyone wants to become a thought leader for an entire industry. Many business owners simply want their company to break through the noise and become the preferred vendor for what they do.

Need Help? We’re Here to Guide You

If you’re not sure what to aim for, give us a call. Imagine can help you build authority. We can formulate a plan, find opportunities and guide you each step of the way. Our team of creatives has experience:

• launching company blogs and newsletters
• guiding companies through trade show participation
• building custom branding to help clients stand out
• preparing budding experts for industry presentations
• coaching first-timers on effective podcasting skills
• coordinating news interviews and other media appearances