With social media, you can position yourself as an expert, establish thought leadership in your niche, and set yourself apart from competitors to stay top-of-mind when customers buy. Niche domination isn’t quick nor easy, but a steady commitment to building your space in the marketplace can reap huge benefits.
Social media thought leaders Michael Stelzner (founder and CEO of Social Media Examiner) and blogger/speaker/author/consultant Mark Schaefer sat down together at Social Media Marketing World Conference to discuss how to position yourself as an expert in order to dominate a niche on social media.
Q. What’s the first step to positioning yourself as an expert?
A. Define your niche.
Mark: Finish this sentence: Only we (or I) _________. What makes you special? Why do customers love you? Why do they keep coming back? Go out and ask your customers. If you’re not sure what your niche is, start anyway, because you’re going to evolve.
A. Leverage your network.
Mike: My challenge was, I was known for one thing. I was typecast, like a childhood actor, as ‘The Whitepaper Guy,’ but it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I wanted to do more than a pivot – a leap into something new – but I knew nothing about social media. So I experimented at first by starting to talk about it to the audience I already had. Who is it inside of your network that can help you bridge that gap?
Q. How do you know if you have what it takes to be an expert?
A. Answer these 4 questions.
Mike: Plenty of people here are thinking, ‘I’m not Mark Schaefer. I can’t do what he does.’ Quash that voice inside your head.
- Are you willing to be a servant? Are you willing to put your desires to the side and service others, even if you may not receive anything in return?
- Are you willing to work really hard? Don’t think there’s an express pass. You have to be willing to work your butt off.
- Are you willing to produce something valuable? Content – written, audio and video – is key. It scales, while 1-on-1 doesn’t scale.
- Are you willing to remain humble and authentic?
A. Be yourself.
Mark: I interviewed 50 people for my book, The Content Code, and they said you’ve got to be congruent; don’t try to be somebody else. When I started blogging, I tried to be Chris Brogan, blogging 2-3 times a day, and it nearly killed me. To be original, you’ve got to be you – and then you have no competition.
Q. How much should you give away for free before you can earn money as an expert?
A. Give everything away.
Mike: When I was the whitepaper guy, I wrote whitepaper on whitepapers, called “How to write a whitepaper.” My editor said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this? You’re only going to empower your competitors.’ But that one whitepaper brought me 85,000 leads over 5 years, and built an entire business. I thought I gave away everything I knew in that 10-page whitepaper, but I went on to write a 300-page book on writing whitepapers, and I thought I gave everything away when I did that. Then I wrote so many blog posts I could have written three more books on whitepapers. My business grew to $600,000/year and I had people waiting months to work with me.
I gave everything I knew away – literally all of it – but no one will ever compete against me because no one is me. When you organize your ideas and give them away in the form of a blog post or a book, you’re becoming more refined in your craft. The process of documenting it to teach others makes you presentable on a stage; that’s what opens doors for you.
Mark: It’s not an intuitive business model – to give everything away – but that’s how you build authority.
Q. How niche is niche enough?
A. Niche enough to serve.
Mike: You can never be too nichey. The real question is: How big is the addressable market? Have other people written on this topic? Do your research; talk to your competitors. You can always start narrow and go wider. If you start out focusing on one niche but your expertise can apply to another, why not? The difference is figuring out a way to grow the audiences separately.
Mark: You can’t confuse people. If your audience expects something from you, you need to play in that sandbox. In this day and age, which is so competitive, you cannot let people down – ever. The power of the social web is creating content that moves, and the reason people move is because of trust.
Q. How do you get paid for your expertise?
A. Continually and steadily.
Mike: If you’re willing to be a servant, work hard, and create content that’s of value to others, consulting gigs will fall in your lap. It will come to you because of the equity and investment of creating content.
You do this work, and then you get successful, then you stop doing the work and the success dies. You have to continue to do the work, and that takes discipline. Allocate a percentage of your time to continue to refine your craft – maybe 20% during the crazy times and 30% during non-crazy times. You must continue your craft or you’ll be gone.
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