When I was first starting out in business, I asked a wise person about where I should focus my efforts. Should I spend more on advertising? Should I increase my product line? I had so little experience and wasn’t sure what to do.
The wise person responded that I should think spend my efforts doing the things that an expert in the industry would do.
At first I wasn’t sure what that meant until I spent some time thinking about it. Now, it’s what I do and I recommend for every small business owner – whether you’re starting a new business or growing an existing one – to figure out what experts in your field would do and do that!
Although every field is different, there are a few standard practices that every expert in every field does:
- You could hold seminars and give speeches on your topic. Many industry experts enjoy a lucrative sideline that includes talking about the thing that they’re good at. Even places like Home Depot, the “go-to” store in the home improvement industry, provides seminars and workshops for do-it-yourselfers. You may not start out by giving a lecture to a crowded theatre of thousands, but perhaps you could begin by hosting a small workshop at your local library or Chamber of Commerce. The publicity may be minimal at the beginning, but it will be good, focused publicity to the people you reach, and if you keep offering these seminars over and over, you’ll build up your reputation as the local “go-to” person on your industry.
- Write for textbooks. This may be a little more difficult if you don’t have textbook writers in your Rolodex, but if you find that there are a few leading names out there, ask to contribute when they do an updated version of an industry-leading book. If you’ve published ebooks online or even a print book, you’ll go a long way in building up your legitimacy when you approach your industry’s textbook writers.
- Write books, ebooks, reports, etc. Writing for industry textbooks is a long way off for most people, so the first place to start is to write ebooks and reports (and eventually print books) on your topic. Imagine how good it would look on your basket-weaving site if you said, “John Smith is the author of 3 books on basket-weaving.” Suddenly, you’re not just John Smith the basket-weaver, you’re John Smith, the author of basket-weaving books. That’s a lot of credibility and people pay more when there’s credibility on your website!
- Consulting is another lucrative sideline for those who become the industry-leading experts. Perhaps they have built up a very successful business and now have time to spend helping others in similar business situations. If you still own your business you may not want to consult on direct competition, so you may want to consult on the industry to non-competing businesses. For example, if you are own a business on basket-weaving, perhaps you can consult for other small businesses in the handicrafts industry to help them get off the ground. It’s a similar industry without being your direct competition.
- If your small business is mainly based online, you’ve probably heard about Google’s quest to rank “authoritative” sites over sites that directly sell something. By providing some of these expert- level services, like speaking, writing, and consulting, you’ll easily turn your site from a sales site into the authoritative site that Google loves.
While these are the basics that experts in most fields do, there may be other things that experts in your own industry do. From customer advocacy to government lobbying to creating industry sourcebooks, there are so many opportunities for you to pursue. You’ll build up your reputation and credibility and you’ll build up your business at the same time!
