Article by Neil Patel, co-founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics

Grabbing the attention of tired readers is a difficult task. Compounding the problem is the wealth of prolific sites already successfully capturing the limited time of busy Internet browsers. But asserting your presence alongside the heavy-hitters is a very real possibility, thanks to the power of authority and its ability to shape the perception of the public. The key lies in finding your area of expertise, marketing it properly, and staying consistent until your work, and your knowledge, precede your firm, garnering traffic and sales in the process.

Find Your Niche

Every business has knowledge about a range of topics. From logistics, to management, to production, each company is charged with handling a breadth of responsibilities, and the know-how they glean is a useful resource for others. The problem is, others have already written about management, production is well-tread territory, and logistics has its very own science.

While your company knows a great deal about a number of topics, becoming an authority requires finding your specialty. Everyone manages employees, but does everyone sell competition-ready road bikes? By focusing your efforts on an area of niche expertise, you narrow the scope of your authority and create space in the Internet ecosystem especially for your efforts.

Know Your Target Audience

In the same way that your business covers a range of topics, but specializes in one area in particular, your customer base is largely relegated to a specific demographic. Everyone, aged teenager to senior citizen can buy a road bike, but your core audience, the individuals that keep you in business and purchase multiple products, are probably young, fitness savvy, and maybe even compete in road races on a regular basis.

Much like drilling down your area of expertise, your audience should be focused as well. It’s impossible to be all things to all people, and doing so alienates your biggest evangelists. Instead, tap into your knowledge and cater to the center of your clientele that’s most likely to respond to and share your unique information. There are others out there, ready and excited to hear what you have to say, but starting with your base is an important first step to reaching them. 

Generate Content

Now that you have a “who” and “what”, it’s time to leverage these resources. Content marketing, if you’ve never heard the term, is the practice of creating valuable and entertaining pieces of content (videos, text, infographics, etc.) that boost your reputation and engage your customers. What does this mean for your business? It means generating ideas based on your identified area of expertise and creating content that stems from that knowledge.

The key to doing so successfully, however, lies in understanding the importance of value. Your organization can spotlight its new products, but doing so without placing emphasis on what these products provide for your customers is a waste of their time. In every effort, look at what your content provides to your readers and highlight that. A self-indulgent piece about your staff’s own racing exploits is going to mean far less to viewers than a back-and-forth conversation about your communal enthusiasm for cycling.

Distribute in the Right Channels

Unread content is useless. It’s a difficult truth, but it’s a motivating one as well. Becoming an authority requires imparting a positive impression in the minds of viewers, and you don’t reach those viewers without distribution.

Again, we tap our customer base. Where do they exist? Are they Twitter fans or Facebook people? Furthermore, when do they interact with their social networks? All of these are important for creating a distribution plan. If your customers are working individuals, posting after dinner and around lunch time on their network of choice works with them, leveraging their peak usage times and enthusiasm to generate buzz.

Cultivate Your Reputation

With all the pieces in place, it’s simply a matter of time. Providing valuable, specialized information to the right eyes in the right channels encourages sharing, and delivering consistently high-quality content will curry more and more positive press over time. The greatest challenge for most businesses is sticking with the practice, but doing so not only consistently satisfies your biggest brand cheerleaders, it generates a wealth of material that others can stumble upon, rendering your business a valuable, prolific, and knowledgeable authority.

Cutting through the din on the Internet can be a real challenge, but finding your wheelhouse and strategically placing your information is a proven way to turn your shop into a resource for others. The practice takes time, but the rewards are many, and the business and traffic generated will more than compensate for your hard work when that authority turns into revenue.