Position yourself as an expert.
The secret is in the content.
I was just starting out online. It was a long time ago. I’d been an academic, where I was known for research as well as teaching.
My first website was about career change. And I knew everyone who came to my site had one question.
“How do I know you can help me with my career?”
After all, I wasn’t a psychologist, counselor, or HR person. I hadn’t trained as a life coach.
I did have experience helping mid-career professionals with careers. Lots of experience. But I could not point to something like, “8 years with the career change company.”
I needed credibility. I needed an answer to the “so what” question. I needed to answer the question in every client’s mind: Why should I hire you? How do we know that you are an expert?
What I did was create content. LOTS of content. There wasn’t much else I could do.
Over time I discovered how to use content to become credible to my audience. After all, they had every reason to be skeptical at first.
I figured out what I now call the 6 Pillars of Content Credibility. They’re not what you might think. They include consistency, but also originality, amount, and relevance.
