How Your Blog Can Help You Become an Influencer
Chris Mulvaney is the CEO of CMDS. I make things... I’m the creative entrepreneur with passion for (re)making brands and inventing solutions to problems no one knows exist.
“How do I become an influencer?”
It’s the rallying cry of marketers everywhere. How do we establish our brand as a trusted thought leader with a loyal following that will hang on our every word? What’s the secret recipe to become an influencer in your industry?
We’re here to tell you that there is no magic bullet. It might not sound sexy, but the secret to making noise in any industry is putting in the hard time to establish your brand as an authority in its space. It’s creating the content that your audience needs, and then getting it in front of them.
Content strategist Robert Rose puts it like this:
“Marketing is telling the world you’re a rock star. Content marketing is showing the world that you are one.”
Your blog is a great place to start.
Any brand would be hard-pressed to become an influencer without a voice. Being an influencer means establishing yourself as an authority, and there’s no better way to reach your market, build your reputation and convince others that they can’t live without you than by sharing valuable content on your blog.
How to use your blog to make your brand an influencer?
1. Provide real value.
Using your blog to push your own agenda is the fastest way to get everyone to ignore it. Gone are the days where you could get away with packaging your marketing pitch into neat little paragraphs and serving it up on your blog. Your audience is too savvy for that.
Instead, you need to figure out what your audience needs—what they are searching on Google to find—and use your blog to give it to them. Your challenge is to find unique ways to offer real value with your blog—to share your experience and your opinions to give your audience content that is genuinely informative, insightful or inspirational.
2. Stick with what you know.
An influencer is an authority on a particular niche—not an expert on everything. It may seem tempting to try to be all things to all potential customers, but you need to have the discipline to limit your blog content to what you know best. Depending on what your audience will tolerate, you might go rogue with an off-beat post from time-to-time just to make things interesting, but keeping your output inline with your core area of experience is the key to growing your influence effectively.
3. Get your message out.
The best blog content in the world can’t help you if no one is reading it. Leverage every avenue to get your content seen by the people who need it by promoting it across all social media platforms that make sense for your brand. Figure out where your target audience lives on social media–Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are probably a good place to start—and post compelling links to drive them to your blog.
4. Keep it green.
Remember, the more evergreen the subject matter, the more mileage you can get out of your blog content. While your blog is a great place to stay current and help your audience navigate news or new developments in your industry, it’s also a good idea to mix in content that will stand the test of time. Social media promotion of pressing posts will be reactive, but you can set a schedule to regularly promote your more timeless posts across social media to continually reach a new segment of your audience.
