Watch my latest FREE webinar where I cover 7 Essential Tips for Generating and Retaining More Business Using LinkedIn? You can leave your feedback at my Marketing Mentor Facebook Page

Continuing the story about building your online brand and some of the key rules to follow, here is the second oversight that the expert on the subject of branding on the internet made.

Part 1 is here.

As a professional services expert, your role is to position yourself as a centre of influence on your area of expertise.

In other words, a hub of knowledge and information.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to provide articles and resources that your ideal clients will find of assistance, answering their questions about how to overcome the challenges they are experiencing.

Let’s say for example you are an expert in helping people get their website to be found on line.  Adding articles about what tools like “pay per click” is and how to start your own pay per click marketing campaign would be immensely usefulto your website visitor.

Very often I get asked why we should be writing these articles and not charging for the information provided.

Well you see, if you provide rich content that is immediately helpful, you can increase the liklihood that people will:

1. remember your business and even add them to their favourites in their internet browser
2. pass the link to others which will build your reputation and a buzz about your brand and your services.  In otherwords they are like an unpaid sales force for you.

This is turn will drive more traffic to your website and position you as an expert in your chosen field.

The expert in branding on the intenet had a number of articles on their web site, but the flaw in their offering was that for every article you had to submit your email address.

This is absolutely a deterrent to your potential clients.

Most often people do not mind poviding their email address once for a special report and then they realise that they will be added to your mailing list.  But they are unlikely to enter their email address for every article you offer.

An alternative strategy would be as follows:

- have a selection of articles on your web site

- have a restricted area on your website that is password protected with other articles for your ezine subscribers or your paid membership community.

When people visit your website, how can you ensure that you are providng content that is valuable?

Consider how you could write a short article each week, or if you blog, how can you repurpose your blog posts. 

My guess is that just doing this over 3 months you could have a very valuable selection of articles available – and with a little work you could turn this into a downloadable information product or even have the outline of your book written which we know is a a surefire way to stand out from the crowd and position yourself as the expert of choice to your ideal clients.