Expertise that Sells
Once upon a time, a consultant contacted me about possibly ghostwriting some informative articles that he could post online to display his expertise in his subject. He explained that this would be a relatively easy job. “All we really have to do is take some existing articles we like and change the verbiage a little so we can post them as ours.”
Well, no. Apart from the (I hope) obvious ethical considerations of simply dressing up someone else’s article and sticking your name on it without his permission, a generic article doesn’t do you much good. This is the Internet era. We have online articles coming out of our ears. Your readers don’t want more anonymous information — they want your information.
Here are a few tips for promoting your expertise:
Write your article. Not someone else’s, and especially not everyone else’s. You can create a piece that works for a general audience and still bears your individual stamp. that’s the point of posting an expert article — you’re the expert.
Sure, being the expert means reporting general industry trends and observations, but it also means interpreting them for your readers. I don’t need a financial expert, for instance, to relay the latest stock reports or unemployment numbers — I can get those myself from Google or Yahoo or wherever. What I do need, since I’m not an expert in that field, is my trusted advisor telling me what, in his opinion, it all means to me.
When I have industry experts in various fields explaining things to me in language I can understand, and advising me on how to respond to this information, I’m getting the direct benefit of these advisors’ expertise, and I begin to rely on them for all my needs in those areas.
And the expert — that’s you — gets more business.
Keep it short. If you’re boiling a thorny topic down into something understandable, condense it into the least we need to know. Give us a few good pointers, a brief rundown, or ask some leading questions to get us thinking in the right direction. If we need more information, we can contact you. That’s the the whole point of marketing — getting that phone call.
Brand yourself. There’s no point in writing an expert article if a first-time reader has no idea who the expert is. Always include a sentence or two about yourself in a little blurb underneath the article (most web-based article directories require this before they’ll post the article) and include your company email address or website link. Make it easy for the reader, once he’s dazzled by your insight into his problem or question, to click a link and start a conversation that might lead to business.
Which reminds me….
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WILLIAM REYNOLDS is a freelance marketing copywriter specializing in website content, print marketing copy, and radio/TV/video scripts for businesses. He can be reached through his website, www.reynoldswriting.com.
