Building Brand Authority With the Content You Create

How can you establish your business as a trusted expert in your field? The key is building brand authority through strategic content creation.

In this episode of Talk Copy to Me, I break down what brand authority means and why it's crucial for small businesses. You'll learn practical strategies for creating content that showcases your expertise and builds trust with your audience. We'll cover:

• Identifying your unique area of expertise
• Creating content that addresses your audience's pain points and desires
• Incorporating data and real-world examples to boost credibility
• Maximizing your content's reach through repurposing and collaboration
• Measuring the impact of your brand authority efforts

Whether you're a solopreneur or running a small business, you'll gain valuable insights on using content to set yourself apart in a crowded market. Discover how to transform your content strategy to build lasting brand authority and drive business growth.

___________________________________________

EPISODE 134.

Read the show notes and view the full transcript here:
https://erinollila.com/building-brand-authority-with-content
______________________________________________


Want to join me and other small business owners to collect, organize and strategically use social proof in your business and marketing? Get on the waitlist now, and I'll let you know the second doors open up:

https://erinollila.ck.page/3ee1bb13e9

______________________________________________

Learn more about your host, Erin Ollila
Erin Ollila believes in the power of words and how a message can inform – and even transform – its intended audience. She graduated from Fairfield University with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and went on to co-found Spry, an award-winning online literary journal.

When Erin’s not helping her clients understand their website data or improve their website copy, you can catch her hosting the Talk Copy to Me podcast and guesting on shows such as Profit is a Choice, The Driven Woman Entrepreneur, Go Pitch Yourself, and Counsel Cast.

Stay in touch with Erin Ollila, SEO website copywriter:
• Learn more about Erin’s VIP intensive options if you’d like to learn more about how you can hire her to help you with your marketing efforts
• Reach out her on Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn.

Transcript

0:00

We talk a lot on this podcast about creating content and writing copy and getting all of your marketing assets in order. But one thing that I want you to consider when you think about what type of copy and content you need to create is how does the output reflect your brand authority. Or does it? Today on Talk Copy to Me, we're going to talk about building brand authority through strategic content. Last week, we talked about creating content hubs within Airtable, and I was so lucky to welcome Colie James onto the podcast for that episode. If you haven't listened yet, just click the pause button and go back and listen to last week's, because it really was a gem of an episode. Today, I'm going to take that a step further and we're going to talk about how the content you create will establish you as a trusted expert, will align with any brand messaging goals that you've created or a guide that you have to follow, and this episode will also serve as a bridge of sorts into our upcoming series on brand messaging, which is so good. And I'm really excited to share those episodes with you. So let's get started. What is brand authority? Brand authority is the level of trust and expertise that your business is commanding within your industry specifically, but generally overall in how you show up in your marketing. For small businesses, it's not just a nice to have thing. It's really a necessity. In the crowded marketplace that we're all operating in, whether you have an online business, whether you serve clients locally, e commerce, whatever you're doing within your smaller business, brand authority is really what's helping you set yourself apart from your competitors. It's what's helping your customers decide that they want to choose you and they want to work with you, whether they're purchasing products or hiring you for your services. And because we started this thinking like a business owner, I want you to pause for a second and instead think like a customer. When you are looking to buy a product or hire someone for a service, What would you rather have? A brand that you see advertised on a flyer that you have no information about, or a brand that appears knowledgeable, trustworthy, and that you've seen. in social media marketing, in your local area. If you picked the second one, that is brand authority in action. High quality, valuable content is your ticket to demonstrating your expertise and building trust with your audience. Brand authority is the level of trust and expertise that your business is commanding. And for small businesses, it's not really just a nice to have, it's honestly a necessity. Think about it from a consumer standpoint. If you are looking to purchase a product or to hire someone for a service, Aren't you gravitating towards the brands that seem knowledgeable or the businesses that seem trustworthy? I know I absolutely am. That is brand authority in action. And let's have an example here. Let's pretend there's a local bakery that is known for its specialty sourdough bread and sourdough bread mixes. They have built their brand authority by consistently sharing their bread making expertise, their bread making process, Educating their customers about the ingredients that they've chosen, and showcasing the final product, right, the loaves in action. As a result of this effort, they're not simply selling bread. They're selling trust and expertise. Or I don't know if selling trust and expertise is the right idea. They're commanding trust and expertise. But you might be thinking, how does content fit into this? Brand authority is its own thing that you're able to conceptualize or imagine. How do we go about actually commanding the brand authority with the content that we? Well, high quality and valuable It is about sharing knowledge, solving problems, building connections. And there's many different types of content that can help build your authority. Some of the examples are blog posts, articles, Case studies, white papers, ebooks, podcast episodes like these, YouTube videos, shorter videos like Reels, written content for emails, written content for social media, client success stories, and more, but just wanted to share some examples with you. The key. To building brand authority is consistency and authenticity. You do not build brand authority overnight. It really requires sustained effort and persistence to be able to provide the value that you want to give to your audience. And to get them to understand that you're going to show up consistently time after time. And to train them to show up as the receiving end, as your audience. So let's, let's talk about some strategies for creating authority building content. First, let's talk about identifying your unique area of expertise. What do you know better than other people in your niche? I'm going to pause here for a second because while this is a hugely important exercise and for some of my clients can be aha moments. Easy to answer. It's really kind of what drives our creative process forward because they can clearly identify what their unique selling proposition is. which you'll also hear of as a USP, what makes them stand out. For them, that's easy. But I would say the majority of my clients actually struggle with a USP more. And I'm bringing this up because if you're in the first group and it's helpful for you, I really want to encourage you to go out and really journal on this. Think about how you're uniquely standing out and what you know, what knowledge, what expertise you have that can, can showcase that. But if you struggle here, I want you to come back next week because I have Belinda Weaver on the podcast and she is going to talk all about how you don't actually need a USP in order to stand out and what you can do instead to stand out from your competitors without even thinking about USPs. But let's get back to the conversation. Besides thinking about what makes you unique, think about your audience. Can you research their pain points or struggles? Alternatively, can you research what their desires are? What's keeping them up at night in a good way? What's making them feel excited? These are things that can help you., understand how to create content that meets those needs. Whether you're creating content because you're trying to give them a solution to the problems that they're trying to solve, or whether you're creating content that excites them about those desires that they have, about those things that they're excited about. You can use all of those insights to create a strategic content calendar. Again, last week's episode with Colie James talked about the Ideating, organizing, storing, and planning all of your content, which is why I think it's really good to create some type of hub where you can do all of those things. And it's very difficult to use, let's say, a spreadsheet or a notebook,, or a project management system to do all of the above. But once you have these ideas and inspiration, you really do need to look at a calendar and plan out how to organize those ideas. Are there topics that are aligned? Obviously, let's put them together. Are there things that are foundational to other topics you can bring up? Using the sourdough baker as an example, you might need to first introduce what sourdough is, like the idea of how to create a starter, or like what a starter is to the process of sourdough, before you can show some of the more high level things that are related to baking, so you would put the foundational content first and then build upon it with that expertise and that knowledge once your audience feels a little bit more confident in the topic you're talking about because they have the information they need to better understand that, you know, higher thinking type of content later. You'll also want to incorporate some data and real world examples into your content. Doing this really builds that credibility and showcases that you're not just talking theory. You know, I think that's part of the problem that I see in this online business world specifically is that there's so many experts out there, but if you really do pay attention to the way that they talk or train or teach, you'll see that a lot of it is just theory. Theory, things that they have,, ideated themself, maybe things that have worked for them, but they haven't seen proven like elsewhere in other communities and other types of businesses. I think a lot of the time is it's people share their knowledge without backing that knowledge up. So if you want strong brand authority content, you're going to want to use The theory with the practical knowledge, with the expertise. And before we kind of move on from this section, I want to encourage you to collaborate. You know, often when we think about building brand authority, we think about our own businesses, our own selves, and everything that surrounds us is not part of our own brand authority, but collaborating with other experts in your industry is actually a really great thing to improve your brand authority. It expands your reach, both of your reach for one, and it adds a different perspective to your content. It could be that you both agree on one part of your expertise. However, there's a slight disagreement on something else and the way that you discuss what you agree on or disagree on is really going to strengthen that thought leadership that you both have and showcase that your thoughts are not just one dimensional, right? Like that you're able to see different perspectives and how you would put different perspectives into practice, things like that. Moving on, let's talk about how to use the content to maximize the reach and impact that you have. Because creating great content is really only half the battle. You need to ensure that it reaches the people you want to reach. How do you go about doing that? That's a complicated answer. There's many ways to get content in front of the right eyes. Some you have more direct power over. Others you don't. But let's talk about some strategies. One strategy is repurposing the content that you have across various platforms to see what performs the best. For example, you could write a blog post and break that blog post down into a series of social media posts, an infographic, a short video. An email, starting with the blog post, allows you to get reach from SEO, , people searching the internet, finding their way over to your blog post. However, when we talk about the social media, , the video, let's, let's say the video is for like YouTube as an example and email, what you're doing is a two fold way of reaching an audience. You are sharing content in those areas, let's say. various social media platforms. Obviously you can get reach on social, depending on who is seeing your post. Email, you're getting a reach, , the right eyes on your content by the people who have already opted in to follow you. But the second fold part of this is not only are you sharing that new and repurposed content on those platforms in that way, You can also link back to the original blog post so they can see more of the content on a topic they're already interested in. We talked about collaborating and another strategy is to seek out, like, guest opportunities or speaking opportunities. For example, could you write guest posts for other businesses blogs? Can you be a guest on a YouTube show or a podcast? Can you speak within people's coaching communities? Can you speak at events? Doing all of these type of collaborative or, more visible approaches to content creation is directly putting you in front of new audiences. And in doing all of this, you're just immediately boosting the credibility that you have by showing up for these new audiences. I briefly touched on social media as a way to repurpose content, but you can also leverage your social media platforms to distribute original content. So content that you're not just repurposing. Again, you can do this by, , I don't know if infographic is the right word. It can be specifically for some platforms like LinkedIn or Pinterest, which I know isn't a true social platform. Bear with me here., but you can do other things like create carousels Create Reels. So, social media, we need to look at it as not just a broadcast, as a way to, like, shove out your content, but it's really about a way to start conversations. So as you do create new content in order to build brand authority, think about how you can open the door for a conversation to not just, again, like, Shout out all of the information you have, but to invite people in so that they can enter that door and have conversations with you about the brand expertise that you have., I also mentioned email as a way to share insights. If people are opting into your list, it really is one of the most effective ways to nurture relationships by sharing content, really quality content with your email list. They've already given you the nod that they want to continue to , get to know you better, that they trust you. And by sharing brand authority content with them, you're just building on that trust, especially if you're consistent with your email marketing. Okay, those are some strategies, but let's talk about one of the most important things that you have to do that people skip all the time. Measure the impact of those efforts. You know, we can say, "Oh, yeah, you know, I've had, a few guest podcast episodes this year, and I think people have come and purchased some of my products after hearing me on these episodes." How do you that? Consider some of these metrics, , as what you'd track to do that. One, engagement rates. Are people engaging with your content? Likes on social media, let's say. Comments on social media. Replies to your email. Comments on your blog post. Are they leaving reviews on your podcast or commenting on your YouTube channel? Those are all different ways to, think about engagement. Signing up for your email list, right? You get it. There's a lot of different ways when it comes to engaging and engagement rates., I kind of hinted at this at the last one, but is your email list growing? Is your social media following growing? Are you getting more downloads to your podcast? Are you getting more people subscribing to your YouTube channel?, following you on Pinterest? How is this all working? If you're seeing an improvement. That's how you're seeing that the efforts that you're putting in with building brand authority are working. One of my favorites is, , how is organic traffic flowing to your website? If you're putting in efforts to build brand authority with SEO best practices, go There are many different SEO specific metrics that you can track. One of them, the easiest one would really be is, are you seeing a boost in organic traffic? Are people finding you through search? Where are they going to once they found you? Measuring these things really help you make decisions about future content, but also they're giving you proof that the effort that you're putting in is working. And then, you know, we talked about this for email lists before, but, what's the lead generation look like once you've started producing content? Are you finding more conversions for things like your email list? Are you finding, , people reaching out via email? Booking discovery calls? Buying low priced products to test you out. These are all different metrics to check and see whether that brand authority is increasing based on the content created. Most of those were number related. But I really want you to remember that qualitative feedback is equally important, if not more descriptive, you know, so when people are replying to your emails or they're leaving reviews on your products, sharing testimonials,, after a service you've done. Leaving comments on social, any of those things, what are they actually saying? Don't just look for the numbers and the metrics to see that more comments have been shared. Really look at what they're saying when they're leaving these comments. Is there a way that you can improve on customer experience?. If you want to build that brand authority, you also want to have it be conversational., you know, earlier, what did I say that you can't, you have to like open the door. You can't just shout your content out at people that you really want to, , start the conversations. You're not just broadcasting your brand authority. That's really. Important, right? So if people are leaving you comments, if they're sending your emails, and you're just neglecting their reach out to you, your brand authority instead of increasing will decrease because you'll lose trust from the people within your audience., building brand authority really is a long term process. It's not something that you can kind of set up in one strategy package with a consultant and then implement, you know, scheduling out posts, automating your emails, and know that it's done for the year. That's, that's not how this works. You need to be persistent, and you also need to be patient. The results might not be something that you can immediately identify, but what's happening is your results are actually compounding over time. So, we've reached the end of the episode, and I guess maybe one way I'd like to kind of conclude this is once you've seen these metrics, once you've checked out the qualitative feedback, the data that you're getting, look at what the big wins are. Is there a specific type of content that really works for your audience? If so, double down. Is there a content that maybe it took a lot of effort to produce or a lot of finances to produce that doesn't seem to be delivering the ROI that you were hoping? Maybe that's where you decide you're going to kind of scrap a project. Let's say you're really working so hard to write blog content and you don't have the finances to hire it out, but you're just, You're considering it like such a slog, like you turn your computer on, you sit there with that blinking cursor on your screen, and you just can't do it. Maybe that's a sign that that's not the best way for you to show up and build your brand authority. So double down on what's working, scrap what's not, within reason, obviously, and, , continue because creating strategic content and building that brand authority is really about the consistent demonstrating of your expertise. by solving your audience's problems, , showcasing them exciting opportunities for their desires. And most importantly, it's about providing genuine value to them. It's a great way to build trust with your audience and position yourself or your business as a true leader within your industry or your field. Every single piece of content that you create is an opportunity for you to do this. So make it count. Don't waste your time, don't waste your finances on creating content that does not directly showcase brand authority, or it does not feel true to the brand positioning and tone that you hope to share with your audience. That's all for today. See you next week where we will have Belinda Weaver on the podcast, talking more about the good old USP and whether or not you even need it as a way to build this brand authority and connect with your audience.