How to Blog for Your Way to Expert Status

Welcome to National Book Blogging Month 2017! This year the focus of the event is on blogging your way to expert status. Your blog provides you with a way to prove your knowledge, experience, and expertise. It’s a vehicle for moving you into thought-leader status. That’s why this year during National Book Blogging Month (NaBoBloMo) I want to encourage bloggers and authors to become authorities by producing 30 days of blog posts—preferably posts you can turn into a short book. Ready on to learn more. And be sure to follow all the April posts to help you blog your way to expert status.

You want expert status, and you’re wondering how to achieve that coveted state sooner rather than later. No worries. Your blog can help you become an expert…fast.

However, you have to know how to blog in a particular manner to gain authority in your target market. It doesn’t happen by blogging willy nilly or writing about your recent vacation or bike accident…or by posting once each month.

No. You have to blog with focus and purpose. And you need to publish posts consistently and regularly.

Use the following five blogging strategies to become an expert:

1. Focus on Your Topic

To achieve expert status with a blog quickly, focus on one topic and one topic only. Choose your area of expertise, and write about it…day in and day out.

You can write about related topics as well, but everything you publish on your blog should come back to your primary subject or area of expertise. For example, if your experience and knowledge base lie in running marathons, you can write about marathons, running, training for a marathon, a marathon runner’s diet, running injuries, preventing injuries during a marathon, and so on. Everything you write should logically connect to your primary subject and area of expertise: marathon running.

When I began this blog, I was not an expert on blogging books or blogging. But I had an idea based on my knowledge of how blogs worked, the publishing industry and the blog-to-book deal trend.

From day one, I only published posts about blogging a book on this site. That’s it. I wrote about blogging a book, blog a book, book blogging, blog-to-book deals, blogging, bloggers, authors, and publishing. I rinsed and repeated…over and over again (and still do).

Five months after my site went live and I published my first post, I had number one Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) status for my keywords (blogging a book, blog a book, book blogging, blog-to-book deals). Anyone looking for information on these topics found me quickly. My site was visible at the top of the first SERP.

My site has retained that coveted spot in the SERPs.

And from that day forward, I was considered an expert on blogging books, blogging, and even marketing books. I hadn’t been before…I blogged my way to expert status.

You can do the same if you stay focused on your subject. Don’t get off track or purpose. And don’t worry about whether or not you previously had expertise or knowledge on the topic. Just prove you have it now—in every blog post.

2. Publish Posts Often

Too many wanna-be experts publish posts once every two weeks or once per month. A few publish once per week, but even that won’t get you to your goal of experts status—at least not quickly.

For quick expert status, publish posts twice a week at a minimum. To make fast headway in the Google SERPs, publish posts a minimum of three times per week. (Five times per week gets the job done faster.)

I published posts here on this site three to four times per week for five months. That gave me the visibility I needed for people to easily find me if they searched the Internet for anything related to blogging books. (That’s the benefit of #1 Google SERP status.) I then continued to publish posts here twice per week for many years. (Now I publish once per week, and that retains my SERP and expert status.)

On one of my other blogs, www.writenonfictionnow.comI published posts five days per week for a year. I then scaled back to three times per week for several years before I backed off to twice a week and, most recently, once per week.) This made me a leading expert in nonfiction writing and publishing.

At www.asthespiritmovesme.com I published once per week or so for some years and then slacked off. When I decided I wanted to increase my expert status in the areas of personal growth and high performance as well as practical spirituality, I scaled up. I published posts three times per week for a year. I then backed off to twice per week. This frequency helped me develop more visibility and showcased what I knew. In other words, it made my site more discoverable in the SERPs for my keywords, and it gave me increased expert status—as well as more readers per day.

If posting so often sounds tough, remember this: After six to twelve months, you can taper off. But before you do, create a great foundation of posts for Google to index. Push your site up in the SERPs. That will keep your site discoverable.

The more discoverable you and your site become, the more likely you are to be seen as an expert. All those blog posts showing up in a Google search tell searchers you know something. All that valuable content says “expert” to those who see it.

3. Publish Posts Consistently

To quickly become an authority in your target market—lets say in six to nine months—you need to publish posts regularly and consistently. That means you must pick a schedule and stick to it.

Decide if you will publish on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, for instance. Then let you readers know. They will come to expect them—if you follow through with that schedule.

A professional does what he or she says. Part of developing your authority involves sticking to your word. Plus, you want your readers to come to rely on your information and to seek it out regularly.

4. Offer Valuable Education

Experts are…well…experts. They know something about something. Assuming you know something about a topic, you have to share that knowledge via your blog posts.

Authority blogging requires you to write posts that educate and inform. They have to provide tremendous value to your readers.

Think of it this way: You readers will follow your blog because they want the benefit of your expertise. They want to learn from your experience. They need what you have:

• Answers to questions.
• Solutions to problems.
• “How-to” advice.
• Knowledge.

They want to learn from someone who has been there and done that and can tell them how to avoid problems and achieve success.

If you can do that, you’ll be seen by your readers as an expert.

However, some authorities gain that status on the tail of other experts. For instance, many bloggers and podcasters interview other experts. In the end, they become thought leaders in that area in their own right.

I utilized this tactic as well. I gathered 30 experts each November for many years and asked them to write about nonfiction writing and publishing during my Write Nonfiction in November Challenge. I continue to ask for tips and video interviews with knowledgeable people in this field, and that has educated me and increased my authority in this area.

5. Publish a book

Last, but not least, consider writing a book on your blog. You even can book your blog. Or, at the very least, write and publish a book.

Authors are immediately considered experts. The fastest way to achieve authority in your target market is to release a book based on your knowledge.

However, your blog will make you discoverable quicker than a book (and be read more). So use your blog to write a book—even a short ebook—that makes you an authority. Then turn your blog content into a book.

Why not get that ebook blogged this month during NaBoBloMo? It’s a perfect opportunity to do so…

Before you begin your authority blogging activities, plan out a book (or many books) and write it on your blog. A blogged-book plan provides extremely on-topic, focused content and helps you write often and regularly. When you finish the book, edit and publish it on Amazon or with another distributor.

Between your blog and book, you’ll be an expert in no time.

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