”’You may be familiar with roundup posts. This content type collects answers to a specific question from different people in a particular niche. Roundup posts can range from as high as 100 featured respondents. For reference, here’s an example from Bloggingpro.
If you can read a roundup post in your industry, there will be familiar faces that jump out from the page. They are the influencers and icons in your niche. They have proven themselves to be the beacon of knowledge in your field of interest. Their respective advice makes the roundup post worth reading.
And, of course, some people got featured in the roundup post whom you haven’t heard of or don’t know. You’re probably wondering how the blogger thought of featuring them instead of you. In fact, you can make the argument that you’re more knowledgeable and informed than them about the subject matter.
Even though you’ve been working your butt off providing value to your target audience through your website or blog, somehow, it’s not enough to get you featured in roundup posts, let alone in one-on-one interviews!
Most business owners experience this problem. However, it’s a problem that can easily be solved by building trust and relationships
You simply cannot call yourself a subject matter expert if there’s no one out there who considers you as such. You need to impose your knowledge for people to realize that you truly are a master at your craft.
In this case, letting them know how much of an expert you are in your subject matter bridges the gap between you and your audience.
This gap is closed by the trust you demand every time you share tips and advice that will help people solve their problems about your expertise. By giving valuable information to a substantial number of people, it gives them the reason to put their faith in your words and bring them into practice.
At the same time, building trust gives way for you to form relationships with people. You simply can’t expect people to reciprocate in kind when they don’t know you nor think you deserve it. In other words, you need to make people believe in you and make them see that you are an exceptional player in your industry.
By developing trust and relationships, you can get more bloggers to interview you on authoritative sites!
If you have no idea where to start, read on to find out tips and tactics on how you can slowly build your online footprint to create a trustworthy and friendly perception from your peers and audience.
Contents
Create killer content
Showcasing your knowledge through content is one of the best ways to reach out to your audience. You should go as in-depth as possible with your content and provide unique insights to help separate yourself from the rest.
In fact, you should publish as many 10x content as you can. Not only does it allow you to create valuable content jam-packed with information for your target readers, but it also lets you leverage existing content from your competitors can create a much better version of them
More importantly, 10x content lets you leverage on on-page SEO to help your content rank on Google organic search. Instead of actively promoting your content tirelessly, Google rewards your great content by ranking on the first page every time someone searches for your target keyword. Without lifting a finger, your site allows people to see your content and click on it to help boost your traffic.
Promote your content
While SEO is an efficient way to get more eyeballs to your content, you shouldn’t rely on this tactic entirely. You need to diversify the ways that you can attract traffic to your content, so people will find you and acknowledge you as an expert.
An effective way to drive more traffic to your content is through blogger outreach. This tactic allows you to reach out to influencers in your field and get them to share or link to your content. Blogger outreach must be approached cautiously. You can’t send emails to people based off a template and expect it to work. You need to put a human touch to your blogger outreach to encourage recipients to respond to your email.
Write a compelling About page
About pages are one of the most overlooked and misunderstood pages on your site or blog. On the surface, this is the page where you simply talk about yourself so readers can know more about you.
However, it’s not as simple as it sounds. You need to structure how you want to present yourself to your audience in your page. Below are a couple of ideas to help you out:
Tell your story
Just like people can’t put down a good book, your About page should achieve the same effect. You need to share your personal experiences as to why you’re doing what you’re doing now and how you got to this point. Telling your story as it happened allows you to form a more human connection with your audience and makes them feel closer to you, something that your blog content can’t do.
Include your social media links
Your social media allows people to help in touch with your online activities. If you want people to connect with you through Facebook, Twitter, and others, then you need to include a link to those profiles on your About page.
Tell them that you’re available for interviews
If you want people to interview you, then you simply have to tell them that you’re available for one. Feature a contact form on your About page so people can fill that up if they want to interview you or if they have questions or inquiries about your skills. The contact form also allows you to communicate and engage with your audience.
Related post: 10 About Us Page Examples That Are Probably Better Than Yours
Let’s face it – people recognize authority. If you don’t have this leverage over your audience, then you’re not an expert that you think you are. At the moment, you’re nothing more than just a face in the crowd to them.
One of the best ways to show your authority to your audience is to show tangible proof. In this case, you need to feature social proof on your site or blog that affirms the authority you wield.
Below are examples of social proof that you should feature on your site.
“As featured in”
If people mentioned you on their sites, then use them as an opportunity to show people that you are recognized in your industry. You can simply link back to the sources that mentioned your name or brand. However, it would be ideal to showcase the sites that featured you in graphic format like the one above.
What you need to do now is identify the sites which mentioned or linked to your site. You can do this by creating an alert on Buzzsumo under the Monitoring tab for brand mentions, backlinks, content from a website and more.
You will receive the alerts in your inbox so you can be updated automatically. From here, you can filter the sites that you want to showcase on your site.
Social followers
If you have hundreds and thousands of Twitter followers and Facebook fans, then you need to show the numbers to the entire world. Turning people into social media followers and fans is a difficult thing to do, even if just requires them to click a single button. There are lots of factors involved in getting people to become social followers and keeping them as one.
This is a feat in itself, and you need your visitors to realize that. Once they see the number of your followers, then they will acknowledge that you indeed have clout.
Guest posts
Guest blogging is an essential tactic to your link building strategy. However, for the purpose of building trust and fostering relationships, it allows you to write content for another blog in the hopes of impressing the readers of the blog you’re writing for to visit yours. Aside from driving organic traffic, you can link to your site the guest posts you’ve written so you can use them as social proof.
This is helpful especially if you have written on authoritative sites in your industry. For example, getting content published on business sites like Inc, Entrepreneur, and Forbes is a pipe dream to some business owners. These sites don’t just accept any writer to contribute for them. However, if you have published content on those sites, then you need to tell people of your accomplishments.
Social media is another place that people can get to know more about you. While people usually follow you on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others for updates, there are areas on these sites where you can help explain yourself better to your audience and help them understand your cause.
There are three social media sites that you want to focus on to establish your authority in your industry.
Twitter’s bio section allows you to explain to people who you are in 140 characters. Despite the character limit, it lets you be creative and come up with ways to share who you are to people.
There are two ways you can approach optimizing for Twitter. The first approach is taking the social proof route. You provide tangible proof to people that say the kind of expert you are. Here’s an example from Jeff Bullas:
Let’s focus on his bio first. Everything that he says in it is true – he’s one of the top influencers in the different digital marketing practices, not to mention his blog is one of the most visited business blogs today. If you don’t know who Jeff Bullas is, his Twitter bio should color you impressed at the very least.
His Twitter cover photo is an extension of his bio as it displays the sites where he was featured in. Social proof emphasizes the accomplishments Jeff has achieved over time. If these don’t scream “EXPERT,” then I don’t think what will!
If you’re not a decorated expert like Jeff is, then you need to take a different approach to introducing yourself through Twitter. You can start by telling people what you’re passionate about. Doing so helps paint a portrait of what you are as a person and a professional in their eyes.
Here’s a perfect example from Pat Flynn:
The Smart Passive Income founder has a deceptively simple Twitter bio. But if you’ve gotten to know him through his work, then you know that he means every word of it in his bio. It also stands out from the rest due to the absence of hashtags, buzzwords, and links that are prevalent in most Twitter bios. Keeping it simple and straightforward can do wonders for your authority, as long as you back it up.
Related post: 7 Twitter Bio Ideas that Entice Followers (and Make You Unforgettable)
If you have a Facebook page or even a personal one, then it’s time for you to create a compelling bio to make people believe that you’re an expert.
The same principles for optimizing your Twitter applies to Facebook as well. The only difference is that there are lots of other details that you can fill out to help you stand out from the pack.
An example of a well-furnished Facebook bio page is Mari Smith.
A simple but detailed Facebook about page can go a long way in the minds of your audience. She also included some of her accomplishments to help provide proof that she’s one of the leading social media experts in the business.
People who haven’t won awards yet may feel a slight disadvantage when it comes to standing out on Facebook. This should encourage you to go the extra mile and do something special so you can be recognized by award-giving bodies for your efforts in your field.
The social networking platform for professionals should be your priority if you truly want to make an impression in your market.
One of the best features that LinkedIn offers is that people can recommend you for the skills you specialize in, as well as the testimonials from people you’ve worked with.
Here’s an example from Moz’s Rand Fishkin:
He has over a hundred recommendations for almost all digital marketing practices, thanks for the valuable content he’s been churning out for Moz.
However, the true measure of a professional’s value is the number of people who are satisfied with his or her work. In the case of Rand, there are other 15 glowing recommendations of his services on LinkedIn.
If you’re not on the level of Rand, you can at least ask for testimonials from your colleagues and people you’ve worked with over the years. If they honestly liked your services, then they’ll be more than happy to issue you one.
BONUS: Use MyBlogU
There isn’t a dedicated tool that allows you to participate in open interviews and roundup posts. However, if there’s a tool that is close enough to help you achieve these things, it’s MyBlogU.
The site is a place for content creators to crowdsource for ideas for their next post or project. Once you log into your account, you will see Brainstorms where you can send your ideas and get published along with the article with your name and link to your site. You can also create your brainstorms if you want to create content with the help of other users.
You can participate in open interviews that let you answer a set of questions that will be published as individual posts on their respective sites. This is the perfect way to actively build your authority especially if you don’t have a well-established online footprint yet.
Related post: How to Build Your Personal Brand Using #MyBlogU
Wrapping it up
The process of getting more interviews is a double-edged sword. You need to make people trust and believe that you are an expert. However, to do that, you need to develop an online footprint that you can use to support your claims that you are an expert.
It’s one thing that you think you’re an expert that deserve the recognition from his or her peers. It’s another to make people believe that you are indeed an authority in your field of interest. The road to glory is paved with obstacles and hardships along the way, so you need to prepare for a bumpy ride. If done correctly by following the suggestions featured above, you can get more interview requests from high-quality and authoritative blogs.
Hi Derek,
I understand the importance of being featured on various blogs and publications. There is no doubt that engaging with others in the same industry helps us to grab more opportunities.
After being published on the 50+ blog, I must say that your tips are actually effective. I have been following them for a long time and here I am now.
Thanks for sharing.
Gaurav