In the competitive world of digital creators, you need to find a way to catch the attention of the people who matter. That might be your customers, media outlets, potential brand partners or more. In other words: the people who will bring revenue and awareness to your products.
The process of building your personal brand to become an authority figure in your industry involves careful positioning, consistency and a lot of confidence.
To tackle the question of how to position yourself as an expert, we learned from many of Thinkific’s expert creators & partners to get the inside track on the topic.
Skip ahead:
- Meet these experts who will help guide you
- What does it mean to position yourself as an expert?
- Finding your niche
- 10 tips to build a reputation as an expert
- Ready to become an expert?
Meet these experts who will help guide you
Before we get into the details about how to position yourself as an expert, it’s important to know which experts you’re getting your insights from! Learn more about these great people and what they each bring to the conversation.
Maya Elious
Maya Elious spoke at the Think in Color conference about how to position yourself as an expert, based on her own experience as a growing brand strategist and business coach. She has 15 years of experience helping thousands of customers with digital products, online courses, coaching programs, and live events.
Tonya Rapley
Tonya Rapley of My Fab Finance pulls on her experience coaching people to develop better financial habits, saying “we all have the potential to be the hero.” She was deemed the “New Face of Wealth Building” by Black Enterprise Magazine and featured as their cover subject in October 2013. Tonya co-presented with Maya at the Think in Color conference to share her insights on building a strong, confident industry reputation.
Jon Youshaei
Jon Youshaei is a former Head of Creator Product Marketing at Instagram and YouTube, and even has over 465K subscribers on his own YouTube channel. With his background in marketing and creator support, he’s got loads of insights about how to make content more impactful and confident to make you grab a strong industry reputation fast.
Amanda Robinson
Amanda Robinson, known as “The Digital Gal,” sparked her interest in digital marketing through a wildly successful $25 Facebook ad and then dove head first into understanding and owning her expertise in the digital marketing world after that. Since then, she’s launched her own Thinkific course “A Swift Kick in the Ads” to help other business owners understand how to launch and grow their advertising functions.
What does it mean to position yourself as an expert?
Think of a topic you’re interested in. Whether it’s yoga, investing, DIY or anything else, is there someone you look up to as an authority on that topic?
Chances are, there will be a relatively small number of people who you routinely go to for information. These are the experts you trust to tell you what you need to know about the field you’re interested in. You likely follow or engage with them on channels where they post a lot, like social media or blogs, to get their latest insights, too.
Now think about what makes you gravitate towards these people. What makes you trust them? What about them convinced you they were experts? Here’s three things that make them stand out.
Authority
First up, they have probably shown you that they know a lot about their chosen field.
There’s no getting around the fact that becoming an expert is hard work. An expert will know their subject inside and out and will be able to fluently explain and present information or ideas that reflect this knowledge. They’ll likely share thought leadership stories too, which are bits of content that are new for the industry and help it move forward.
It’s their authority and knowledge about a subject that makes their audience – including you – confident enough to invest time and money into learning from them.
Adaptability
A true expert will be up to date and responsive to current trends and discussions in their industry, meaning you’ll continually return to them to get their perspective on new challenges or opportunities.
For example, what does a social media expert specializing in Instagram make of the latest algorithm update? How does a leading music production expert rate that exciting new recording software? How can they help you do the things you’re interested in even better?
The experts keep their community engaged, even in a rapidly evolving and changing landscape. People go to them for guidance when things start to shift because they have confidence that they know what they’re talking about.
Audience
How did you first get introduced to that expert? It’s likely that they came onto your radar because other people were using them as experts first. For example, they have the most viewed videos on YouTube or they have top rankings on Google for an important question related to the topic.
Experts are only experts if other people believe they are. In the world of experts and authority figures, their audience matters.
Finding your niche
All experts need to fit into a niche. Further down, we’ll cover the benefits of having broad coverage of an area first before you jump into your specialization. But eventually, you’ll need to choose one or several themes that you’ll base your expertise on.
Your niche needs to be something that:
- You are passionate about
- You want to continue learning about for a very long time
- You already have an existing base level of knowledge
- You know where to get more training on
- You know why it interests you and the rest of the world
Examples of areas to specialize are:
- Financial advice
- Travelling on a budget
- Coaching a specific sport
- Teaching singing or dancing styles
- Cybersecurity
- Home DIY projects
As part of your research on a niche, don’t forget to understand the audience that you will be targeting. If you love the topic but don’t like the type of people you’ll work with (or vice versa), it will be hard to remain passionate about it in the long-term. Plus, you’ll struggle to build a network in the industry. So choose wisely!
10 tips to build a reputation as an expert
In the words of leading personal brand strategist Maya Elious, consistency means “building visibility.”
Maya first started out designing MySpace pages for aspiring models in college, before moving seamlessly into web and graphic design, and then to content and brand messaging. She argues that consistency in effort was one of the main things that got her to where she is now and helped her monetize her expertise.
“The people that come to me now trust me because I kept going,” Maya says, “not because of what I do or because I say I’m the best, but because I kept showing up for myself.”
Tonya Rapley recommends setting up business social media accounts as one of the first steps to positioning yourself as an expert. Then, start posting on a consistent schedule so that your audience learns that it is a place to reliably get new information from you. The platform that you choose doesn’t matter nearly as much as your consistent effort. Your following wants to know who you are, and the best way to do that is by always showing up for them at the same, high level of service.
Aim to create a consistent tone of communication across your website, blog and social media posts. At the same time, stay on topic with your business accounts and consider making a separate account or page for unrelated or personal content.
You can know all there is to know about a topic – which is awesome in its own right – but unless you’re communicating your knowledge to others, you’ll never be able to build a reputation as an expert.
Online forums, social media and publications are all buzzing with conversations about any and every topic under the sun. The more you can confidently dive in and make useful, valuable contributions to relevant discussions, the more you’ll be able to build a following for your brand. Check out Jon’s guide to creating content for your social media here.
The secret to how to come across as an expert is to be visible to the people who matter – including your audience, other authority figures and organizations that matter in your industry.
Tonya Rapley recommends using speaking engagements to be more visible in your niche and she has some great tips to help you land them:
- Reach out to organizers and ask if they’re taking submissions for speakers
- Connect with organizers on LinkedIn and send them a message
- Go to other conferences that organizers might be attending to network
- Consider volunteering your time for a relevant cause
- Contact online and print publications to contribute knowledge or ideas
When you’re first starting out with your business and trying to figure out how to build your reputation as an expert, you need to spend time creating a network. This helps you get more awareness, and maybe even some free word of mouth marketing!
You may have heard of the phrase ‘niche down’ – nowhere is it more relevant than in the quest for how to position yourself as an expert.
Niching down is about taking the time to explore your industry and figure out exactly where you can offer your expertise.
Maya and Tonya both highlight the importance of not rushing into a niche just because you think you need one. Instead, it’s worth taking the time to find your niche by figuring out where your expertise lies, what your passions are, where there is the most demand and what your audience wants to hear about.
Tonya’s company, My Fab Finance, started out as My Fab Fico and was solely about achieving a better credit score. “But as time went on,” she explains, “I wanted to talk about things other than credit. I didn’t want to just be ‘the credit person’ because I was learning about budgets. I was learning about debt elimination. I was learning about so many other things and I felt boxed in with the name ‘My Fab Fico’ and felt limited talking just about credit and credit scores.”
Once Tonya changed the name of her brand and expanded her focus, it enabled her to niche down into the broader world of finance and become ‘the finance person’ instead!
Amanda Robinson also shifted her niche in her journey. At first, she focused exclusively on one-to-one coaching with clients and offered a wide range of digital marketing services from email marketing to Google Analytics and Google Ads. But over time, this didn’t allow her to scale and grow as she had hoped, so she switched to a one-to-many education approach that still supported clients while allowing her to grow her business. She also honed in on Facebook Ads, which helped her stand out as a specialist and earn more customer referrals.
Amanda shared about her experience, “I wanted the ability to take my skills from one-on-one client work to one-to-many. I realized that I had so much to offer, and I needed to find a way to make myself accessible to people without overwhelming myself and working around the clock.”
Here’s a few tips to keep in mind:
- Allow your brand identity to be broad enough for future expansion
- Don’t be afraid to pivot your brand or shift to a new specialty if there’s demand
- Take the time to figure out where your strengths are and who your most engaged audience is
Finding a niche is important to help you stand out from the crowd but if you’re learning how to come across as an expert, it’s a good idea to leave space to change your niche or narrow your focus over time. You can’t predict the future so don’t paint yourself into a corner right away.
The world is constantly changing. Experts aren’t just stores of knowledge – they’re highly adaptable people who can apply their existing knowledge and skills to new developments and shifting environments. As a result, they’re needed to help the industry innovate and grow, too.
“Everything is evolving,” says Tonya. “Content creation is evolving. The way we deliver content is evolving. Laws are constantly changing. Laws are constantly evolving. Current events are happening.”
Technology changes, competitor activity, world events, and consumer behavior all drive the changes that experts need to be aware of and adapt to.
If you want to come across as an expert, you need to keep studying news, podcasts, and your co-experts’ thought leadership channels as well. This will help you know what’s new, what’s relevant, and what’s important to your audience.
By reacting and responding to current developments and discussions, you can reassure your audience that your expertise is still relevant. Show potential clients that you’re offering not just your existing courses or digital products, but an overall mindset and method for engaging with new obstacles and situations.
There are fewer things more frustrating than Googling a question and finding out the responses don’t come anywhere close to answering it! Take a step towards being an expert in your niche by providing clear, simple answers to the questions or challenges that are top of mind for your audience.
Though it can be tempting to go beyond the simple answer to demonstrate your breadth of knowledge on the topic, it’s not what people want. Being able to convey a complex topic in a bite-sized format shows that you have a true understanding of the concept. People will see that!
Tonya explains this is also the secret to how to come across as an expert: “You need to learn how to distill what you want to be known for down into sound bites … .You don’t want people to get lost in a whole bunch of words. You want them to be able to say, “this is what she’s known for and she communicated it.”
Jon also suggests a method he calls “selling the apple before the orchard.” This means that it is important to engage your audience with a singular, compelling element (the apple) before diving into the broader context (the orchard). This prevents your audience from getting overwhelmed with too much information too early.
When you’re first getting your brand off the ground, it can be tempting to try and compete with existing brands on pricing just to get a few early customers in the door. Unfortunately, this might earn some short-term wins but it won’t help you succeed in the long-run.
Avoid discounting your digital services or trying to get customers in the door without thinking about the public view of your business. Instead, focus on the areas of your business that are exposed to the public, and invest in making them appear as though your offering is confident in its ability to deliver top results.
For example, price your courses to show the effort and expertise that you’ve funneled into them. And create a professional brand that draws in customers to a reputable, confident expert (you!)
This is how you show respect to yourself and your brand. And this is something that’s hugely important for digital creators.
As Maya explains: “When it comes to your pricing, think about what they are willing to pay to get this transformation in their life – in their love life, in their business, in their health, in their wealth. That’s what you want to think about.”
Something that Amanda did to convey her worth was to invest in professional branding. This helps her audience find her, understand her offering, and quickly feel that she will provide a high-quality service that is worth the price. Professional branding is a way to invest in your business now, so that you earn more business later. She explains, “You need to do two things: make it easy for somebody to tell a friend about what you do, and make it easy for your brand to have a professional, recognizable look. That brand recognition helps give people the ability to connect the dots.”
Experts can be a lot like influencers. Working on the same channels, educating the same audience, and hopefully trying to earn some revenue.
And influencers hold a lot of power. Approximately 69% of consumers say they trust an influencer’s recommendation before making a purchase.
However, if there’s one consistent red flag for potential customers, it’s when a self-styled expert tries to do a hard sell of their services or expertise. It can make your audience feel like you’re more in it for the money than you are for the knowledge-sharing, which creates feelings of disloyalty (ultimately negatively impacting your reputation as a great industry expert).
Focus on these soft selling tips instead:
- Radiate calm confidence, not desperation or dependency.
- Prioritize building your profile and establishing your expertise
- Let people come to you and offer recommendations when answering questions
When you’re positioning yourself as a go-to person in your industry, there may be times when you’ll get a call saying “Hey, we have a segment coming up and we’re looking for an expert to speak about it tomorrow.”
If you want to earn the label as an expert, you need to be so familiar with your content that you could talk about it with 10 minutes notice – with ease.
Be aware that as your profile grows, people will assume that you can also talk on related topics to your specialization. For example, if you know about green energy, you’ll be able to talk about electric cars. While these assumptions can sometimes be true, often they won’t be. And you need to be honest about it.
Here are our experts’ top tips for speaking about your niche:
- Be familiar and comfortable with your chosen topic
- Be ready to talk about it at short notice
- Know when to turn down opportunities that are beyond your area of expertise
- Know how to break down the big topic into smaller ones (remember Jon’s approach to “Selling the apple before the orchard”)
- Embrace conflict by understanding the controversies in your niche
When people are looking for an expert to speak on their particular topic, one of the first places they go is Google. They will search for certain terms to find a relevant expert.
The good news is, you don’t need to be a marketing expert to pick up a few basic search engine optimization (SEO) principles that can drive more traffic to your website or social media account.
Here’s a few quick tips:
- Repeat similar keywords that are relevant to your business across your website pages and blogs
- Post new content at least once a week
- Make sure your website loads fast
- Optimize for mobile (a lot of people use phones for research)
- Don’t forget to share your updates and products on social media or other websites
- Leverage paid ads on search engines or social media
When you think of the experts you look up to, how do they project themselves? If their expertise was questioned or doubted, how would they respond?
The process of how to come across as an expert is as much about your behavior as it is about your social media profile or your content.
A big part of creating confident energy with your audience is optimizing your set-up when speaking on digital channels. Jon shares these tips to improve your confidence on camera:
- Be mindful of your posture. Sitting versus standing can have a big impact on tone. Try standing for an upbeat presentation or sit for discussions that need a more thoughtful approach.
- Ensure your camera is sitting at eye level to mimic an in-person interaction. Being at the same eye level as your audience makes them feel like you’re on their level and ready to engage in meaningful conversation. Use a tripod or books to make sure it’s at the right height.
- Use audio and video recording tools that record high quality footage. It would break your flow if you needed to stop your presentation for a livestream that was cutting in and out. And your audience is tuning in to hear what you have to say, so make sure they can hear it with ease.
Ready to become an expert?
These professional tips from Tonya, Maya, Jon, and Amanda are ideal to help you learn how to come across as an expert and how to position yourself as an expert in your chosen industry or niche.
Don’t worry if you don’t see results right away. When Amanda shared about her own growth journey, she recommended setting goals for your future but “don’t get discouraged if you set yourself a six-month timeline and all of a sudden a year from now, you’re not where you want to be. Stick with it.”
Do you use your creator platform to teach your audience new things? Then you’ve come to the right place. The Leap caters specifically to creators who want to monetize their knowledge and expertise by transforming them into digital products. That’s because our authoring tool is kitted out with everything you need to create the best and most engaging digital learning products, from mini-courses and guides to tutorials and challenges.
This blog was originally published in June 2022, it’s since been updated in July 2024 to include the newest information.
