If You Are The Expert, Must You Tell Them?
A question being asked a few times this month by some of our authors: “Should you try to qualify why you’re qualified to be the expert when putting the article body together?”
Easy answer: No.
More complex answer: If I have to remind you that I’m an article writing and marketing coach, would you believe it’s true vs. if I just assume you know that I am because I keep educating and training you throughout the year with my articles, email newsletters and blog entries?
If you’re worried about being taken seriously, then the easy solution to your worries is that I recommend you go deep on your topic and write more about it than anyone else… and don’t worry if you haven’t told them that you are the expert. When someone sees that you have written hundreds or thousands of articles around your niche area of expertise, they will know you are the expert because only experts ‘go deep’!
You could tell your reader in subtle ways that you are the expert:
For example: If I’m a fitness trainer and I state in the article that one of the recommendations in my advice to you helped me to achieve a 12% body fat ratio, it becomes assumed that I’m the expert.
For example: If I’m writing about wind surfing in Bonaire and I state something like this, “One of the lessons I learned from being the leader of the Bonaire Sailing Team is ________”, you can assume your reader will know you are the expert.
For example: If I’m writing about car audio system building and I state something like, “Having just built my 7th generation car audio system, I can tell you that as you get older you still need thousands of watts in your car stereo design to achieve a nice clean and crisp sound stage unlike the ‘SPL blast your ears off’ stage that every young twentysomething goes through.” — you know that I’m the expert.
For example: If I’m writing about article marketing and I state, “As I drilled through 300,000 articles of insider data to determine the impact of various variables on an articles ability to attract traffic, I realized that __________” — and you can assume the reader knows I’m the expert.
Your Resource Box Plays A Big Role Here:
Directly below your article body is your resource box and this is where you remind them who you are, what your title or expertise is and a benefit to the reader if they visit your website, sign up for your free ezine or download your free report.
One way to mess this up is to mention every website you own that is unrelated to the topic you are writing about. Don’t make that mistake.
Conclusion:
I like the idea of not being blunt in the article body about my expertise and I just know that they will know I am the expert because I go deep on my subject matter and my resource box seals the deal by reminding them of my expertise and inviting them to benefit further from it.
It’s a fine line between coming off arrogant (something you want to avoid obviously) and knowing you need to state why you are recommending X, Y or Z strategy in your article.
What do you think?
I totally agree. I started a newsletter on search engine optimization and marketing specifically for Miva Merhant shopping cart users back in 2000. Other than occassionally mentioning results from clients, I don’t recall ever tooting my own horn or even advertising my services that much. Now I consistently hear from potential clients that everywhere they look and everyone they ask says Jason Henderson is the one for seo and marketing for Miva Merchant.
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