Building brand authority is something that can be highly beneficial for a brand, but it is not easy to achieve.
Once you have built it up, your customers will begin looking to you for information about your niche, trusting that the information you have is going to help them in some way. It is essential to keep in mind that building brand authority will not happen overnight, and you cannot stop working on it when you achieve it! This is a continual, ongoing effort to get and maintain your brand authority.
But how do you build up your brand authority? Here, we will go over some tips to help you build your brand authority.
Writing with Authority
When you are writing content to market your brand authority, you will need to write your content in a way that conveys that authority. If the content is time-sensitive in some way, put it on your articles so that people can put the content into context.
The structure of the content should be laid out in a way that makes it easy for people to read it and determine the context by skimming the article. It should be designed to be easy to read, and it should not have any grammatical errors in it, and your sources should be cited. Additionally, if an expert writes the article, include their name in a biography in the article.
While a call to action (CTA) is often included in blogs on websites, sometimes it can be more beneficial to leave it out and not try to sell your readers anything. Sometimes, only sharing your knowledge without trying to sell anything is a good idea. Being an authority means you are sharing your information, and sometimes including a CTA can taint that. When you finish an article, consider if you really need to include that CTA or if the writing would look best without it.
Make a Content Strategy
Using content marketing is a great way to build brand authority, but you need to create a content strategy to get the best results. This will allow you to map out the content you need to write to become an authority. If you go about your content marketing without making a plan first, you may have a harder time becoming an authority.
With a content strategy, you can determine which topics you need to focus on first and how to go about crafting that content. It will also help you plan ahead in your marketing so that you can design your content around the seasons.
Without a content marketing strategy, you will end up selecting topics at random that sound good but may not have as much value to your audience as you think it does. Take the time to put together a great strategy, and you will have a much easier time offering high-quality information and becoming an authority.
Answer Questions
To become an authority, you need to provide people with the information they are looking for, and to do that, you need to answer questions your audience has. You can begin doing this by creating content on your site that answers these questions, allowing you to start positioning yourself as an expert in your field.
To get started with this, you can find out what your audience wants to know through a combination of keyword research, engaging with your customers online, and speaking with your employees to learn what they think your customers may want to learn more about. Once you have some topics, see what other brands are doing to answer these questions and how you can answer them better.
When you have articles published on your site, if people post questions about it, take the time to respond to them and provide additional information. By doing this, you demonstrate that your knowledge of the subject goes well beyond the information provided in the article. Additionally, you can use the questions in the comments to give you new ideas for more content to add to your site.
Publish Original Research
Publishing original research is another way to help position your brand as an authority. You can release case studies, reports, or even the results of surveys. By showing your audience that you are conducting your own research, you give your readers new information and position yourself as an expert. Since you are sharing new insights about your niche, this can help you earn backlinks, which signal to Google that your brand is an authority.
Social Proof of Expertise
Highlighting proof of your expertise from third parties can also help show your audience you are an authority by showing them that others also think you are great at what you do. This type of content should be on your homepage, so visitors will instantly find it.
You can do this by reaching out to old customers or clients and ask them for a review or take some of your best reviews. If you have received any mentions in media outlets, put those on your homepage too. Doing this will give your audience concrete social proof of your authority.
Collaborate with Other High Authority Brands
This is another way to gain social proof that you are an authority. If you are working with other brands that are respected by your audience, it can help transfer some of the trust between your companies. Additionally, this will help put your brand in front of a new audience.
You can collaborate through content, referral programs, and linking your products together.
Conclusion
Becoming an authority in your brand is not easy, but it can be done with time and hard work. However, you do not have to do it alone! Seattle Digital Marketing can help you craft a content marketing strategy that will help position you as an authority in your niche. Contact Seattle Digital Marketing today to get started!