Last week, we examined the idea of building authority your own brand by using someone’s content.
We saw that this is perfectly legitimate, and in the post, I briefly suggested four ways you could possibly begin doing this.
This week, I’d like to explore each of those four areas and reflect on how they can help to build authority for your brand.
Each of these strategies are legitimate, and you may choose to use all or any combination of them. Also, there are more than just these four ways. As long as you are following the guidelines I laid out last week, The opportunities here are endless.
Also, some of these methods are going to assume that you have built the platform which corresponds to the method. If not, however, you can still some version of each idea no matter the platform—you just may have to get a little creative.
Without further ado, here are four strategies you can use to begin building brand authority using someone else’s content:
1. Critique a Blog Post
If you are a blogger, one thing you could do is copy/paste some of the text from another blogger’s site, and provide your commentary underneath of it in a formal response. This is one area where you will DEFINITELY want to gain the permission of the blog author. Many writers are rightfully sensitive about any undesired use of their content, and have every right to protect it. However, a blogger who is open to varying perspectives should have no problem with this, and to sweeten the pot, you might consider allowing them the same courtesy in return. You could do something similar, for instance, if you have a podcast. Simply ask permission, and then play the audio on your show, starting and stopping and providing short commentary in between.
2. Retweet/Share Content
Some things go without saying. Anyone who puts content on social media has no problem with the content being shared—in fact, that was likely their goal of posting it in the first place. You could use a tool such as Feedly to gather all of your content in one place, and then use a tool like Buffer to share it across all of your social media platforms on your desired schedule. This way, you can share the ideas of other thought leaders and associate them with your brand in the mind of your readers. Psychologically, this is an important practice because it will help your followers gain an understanding of the type and level of content they should expect from your brand.
3. Post a Video Response
This is obviously exclusive to those whose platform of choice is a video provider such as Youtube, but “response videos” are enough of a “thing” to warrant their own point. Much like you would critique someone’s blog post or podcast, you could do the same thing in the form of a video response. In this age of widespread ideas, it’s important that we all keep each other honest. If you have an opinion—share it! Just because someone is more well-known and their opinion may seem to matter more to others does not mean yours is not important. Your perspective has value for your viewership, and they will appreciate that you weighed in on something important to you (and to them)!
4. Use Content as a Reference
Finally, and very practically, you should make it a habit to reference the work of others. Some blogs choose to use more formal referencing such as you would find in a book (with footnotes at the bottom), but many bloggers (myself included) simply provide text links throughout their content to the influencer who provided the idea. If you’ll notice, the words “Feedly” and “Buffer” above are text links which take you directly to those organizations’ websites. An influencer I reference often is Michael Hyatt, and when I do, I provide a link to the specific reference or just to his website (see what I did there?). It’s important to get into this happen since it is not only right from an ethical perspective but also benefits you by association.
[bctt tweet=”You should make it a habit to reference the work of others.” username=”northmacsvc”]
Though building a platform and a brand can be lonely at times, you don’t have to go it alone! You have more help than you did with the plethora of available content on the Internet.
Choose the content you will use, and choose it wisely. This strategy will help to grow your brand by association and credibility, and may even get you noticed! For instance, check out this post where I referenced Ray Edwards and he was kind enough to respond back personally.
You never know what kind of an impact you are truly making, and by using others’ content, you had better believe your influence will extend far greater than you could possibly imagine.
Discussion Question: Have you found these strategies effective in building your own brand authority?
