Every coach, consultant or aspiring leader is publishing content and is competing with you to become the trusted authority in the market. This means that there is a lot of noise competing for the attention of your ideal audience. Fortunately (for you) most of the content published is low quality.
When you produce the right, high quality authority building content you can distinguish yourself from the noise generated by poor content and build a tribe of followers who will look to you to get their questions answered.
To separate your content from the masses, whether it’s a blog article, video or even a speech, it needs to contain these six essential elements.
Authentic & Transparent
Your content must be authentic!
Authentic in your voice, the way you describe situations and feelings, and your authentic opinions – even if they are “controversial”. Your audience will build a connection with you through your content and when the time comes for them to engage your services they will expect the “real you” to align to what they have experienced through your content.
A great way to be authentic and transparent is to share the stories of clients and your personal experiences (good and bad) with the lessons learnt on the journey. Many people shy away from the bad experiences – but I find that the mistakes and learning’s discovered along the way often creates the most powerful content.
Original and useful Content with a personal viewpoint
Sadly, many people fall into the trap of simply regurgitating the same content as their competitors. It might not be a direct copy, but the essence of the material is the same and there is little to differentiate their content from the content competitors are producing.
To stand out, the content you produce needs to have your practical and useful ideas with your own opinions weaved into it – even if your thoughts and opinions are a little controversial and challenging.
Give away valuable content that helps your clients solve a problem A common fear I encounter with mentoring and mastermind clients is the fear of “giving away the shop”.
Experts are concerned that if they publish their expertise in content that the clients can consume there will be no reason for someone to pay them for their services. I get it! But, the reality is different. In todays market place clients are unwilling to invest any money with you until they are confident in your expertise – gone are the days where they will “give you a go” for a couple of months.
They want results quickly and they will pay the right person to help them.
To demonstrate you are the right person you need to share some of your techniques, skills, and advice so that they can assess you before they engage you. The beauty of this plays out when they do speak with you – they are sold on you and your methods and the conversation is simply about the best way to work together to get results as quickly as possible.
Go deeper into a subject than your competitors
Aligned with giving valuable and useful content is the depth of information you provide. A large volume of content published only scratches the surface of the topic it is dealing with.
Take the extra time to produce articles, videos, or podcasts that go into much more detail with high quality explanations, references, and testimonials that support the ideas you are sharing in your content. You will be rewarded with an audience who will be more loyal and appreciative. They will be more likely to share your content more readily and this will assist you to get a bigger audience.
Quicksprout has published a study that shows that posts that have over 700 words get proportionally more shares on social media (and the really big action happens when the post is longer that 1500 words).
High Quality Images and References
Great, shareable content cannot be just words. It must be supported with superior images and graphics. Ideally this includes an “infographic style“ image that helps illustrate your key points and can be easily shared. It makes your content much easier to consume and aligns your content to the analytical people (who will read every word) and the visual consumers who will appreciate the images and graphics to understand your message.
A study by Blog Pro supports this concept with its study highlighting that 100 of the highest ranking blogs had a ratio of one image for every 350 words.
Consistent Tone, Format and Schedule
All your content should be consistent. Maintain a similar tone, layout, and structure to your content over time. As your audience builds they will enjoy and appreciate the consistency of tone, layout, fonts and the regularity upon which you publish. Whilst setting up your content structure and layout may take additional work for the first posts, the subsequent posts become quicker and easier for you to layout and publish.
Similarly, it is vital that you develop a publishing schedule and stick to it. Your audience will get accustomed to receiving new content according the schedule you establish, and this, in turn, will help encourage you to build a window within your weekly diary to prepare and publish your content.
Successful authority building content takes effort to produce and publish. Your efforts will be rewarded and you will build a loyal audience who will share your content with others and come to you rather than your competitors to solve their problems. If you want to become the trusted authority in your field check out the programs available at the Public Speaking Skills Academy.
