Building Your Reputation as an Expert in the Social Media World

Let’s leave Facebook alone for a minute. Hopefully by now we’ve all had an opportunity to shake our fist at our computers, or praise Facebook’s vision. Either way, we still check it every day and use it as a marketing tool. Each week we read about new start-ups in social media. Most of them are geared to mobile phone addicted hipsters and have little relevance to the business world. Today, let’s look at an exception to that rule.

Positioning Yourself as an Expert

Despite what populist blogs posing as media would have you believe, established media does matter. Most people still want their information about the world to come from credible, verified sources. The best way to draw attention to your organization is to serve as that credible source for the media. If you know how to use social media properly, you can position yourself as an expert without spending a fortune.

1. Linked In – this free social media service is the primary business networking engine in America. If you do not already have a Linked In account, start one immediately. Build a resume of your experience as an expert. List the number of times you’ve served on a panel or been interviewed with the media in the past. Ask members of the media who have quoted you in the past to write you a recommendation. Depending on how widely you want to extend your influence, consider upgrading to a Linked In Premium account to enable the Open Link function. This allows anyone in Linked In to contact you.
2. Klout – this free service scans through your social media sites – Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Foursquare etc. – and assigns a rank based on your influence. Connect this account to your Linked In account. Klout will determine the topics on which you are an expert and you can provide your score on your Linked In account. Members of the media can search for you directly through either service and can decide for themselves if you are the right person to interview. You can also get a sense of where you might want to improve your score. The more relevant information you post and the more people respond to it, the higher your score will go.
3. Concentrate your influence. If you are inclined to blog, choose one site and tie it to your accounts for the greatest influence. In other words, if you have a blog on WordPress, make sure to send it out via Twitter and Facebook so that it will reach the greatest number of people. This broadens your reach and improves your Klout score.

To some this may seem disingenuous, but if you have a story to tell, why not tell it? Everyone has expert knowledge to share. If fear keeps you from contributing your wisdom, everyone loses.