How do you become an expert?

Aug 22, 2008

Being an expert helps you in a big way whether you seek a job opportunity, aspire to climb up the corporate ladder or simply want to be a successful solo entrepreneur. When you become an expert people refer to you, listen to you intently and take your word seriously. Even if they haven’t personally consumed your services they are prone to recommending you to their friends and colleagues if they are convinced that you are an expert in your field.

But how do you become an “expert”? There is no short way; being an expert actually means becoming an expert and you can only become an expert by gleaning valuable knowledge and experience and then using that experience and knowledge for the benefit of the others; it is not necessary whether you charge for your expertise or not. Take for instance writing professional content for the websites and blogs.

There must be hundreds of thousands of “writers” offering their excellent content writing and online copywriting services; and I am sure many of them do provide excellent services. But why do some writers get plenty of work and some just survive on the fringes? There are two factors, in fact three factors if you count the ability to write well too: your ability to portray yourself as an expert and the effort you put in promoting yourself.

The act of promotion requires a separate discussion but here we will focus on the process of becoming an expert. Personally I believe you are always on your way to becoming an expert – nobody can claim to be a through and through expert, but I am being rhetorical here. Here are a few points that can help you become an expert in a field like content writing and online copywriting:

Learn constantly

Well, this is a given; in order to become an expert you need to carry on learning no matter how much you think you know. There are always new things happening; perceptions are always changing; technologies are perpetually evolving and social and demographic transformations are always in the process of taking place. You need to learn how different people react to different types of writings. There are different words that elicit different responses under different contexts.

Recently I had to refund an advance because the writer to whom I had outsourced the writing gig kept extending the deadline and eventually the client, understandably, got fed up. After sending the refund I sent an SMS to the writer informing her to stop all further work on the project. Her SMS response was, “Wow! Do what you think is the best.” I’m not going to talk about the way she didn’t deem it fit to apologize even once, but just notice how she has used the expression “Wow!”. Do you say wow! when something bad happens? So you need to be very careful how to use appropriate expressions when writing.

Be socially active on the Internet

You will notice that most experts are also expert in the art of networking and communicating. They don’t shrug away from discussions, debates and even controversies; they are always more than ready to talk, even to total strangers. The more you interact with people the more you highlight your expertise and knowledge. Use various social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook to keep in touch with people. Interact on blogs and online forums and leave useful and productive comments there so that people are encouraged to reach out to you for further exchange of ideas and information. Without being a bug network with the existing experts and reputed people.

Give your best

When you’re taking up projects and working on them give your best to them because giving your best forces you to stretch your limits and go beyond the usual. Think how you can deliver more than what is expected. Give your special touch to the project. Don’t hold back your knowledge; use it if it can benefit your client. In fact delivering more than what is expected of you shows that you have great knowledge and you are not scared of using it for the benefit of your clients even if you’re not directly being paid for it. Most experts have this tendency to share their knowledge without expecting immediate returns.

Maintain a blog

Share your ideas and wisdom through your blog; your blog is a great platform to express yourself and establish yourself as an expert. Sharing knowledge does not mean you are losing money; if there are thousand people who will use your advice for free to further their business gains there will be 50 or 100 people who would like to hire you as an expert, that otherwise wouldn’t have known about you or your ability. The biggest advantage of maintaining a blog is that you can showcase your expertise openly and at the same time build highly targeted traffic for your business website. In fact there are many people who don’t have a business website and solely run their businesses and consulting services through their blogs.

Being an expert surely takes an extra effort. Projecting yourself as an expert is a lot different from actually being an expert. There might be short-term gains in projecting yourself as an expert but a long-term job security can only be ensured when you truly become an expert of your field.

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One Response to “How do you become an expert?”

Terry
August 28th, 2008 at 6:16 am
Thanks for this excellent post. I’ve been writing a dating advice blog since 2004 and enjoy decent traffic, but I’ve never made the time to fully exploit Facebook or other social networking sites.

Interestingly, another blogger told me just yesterday that I’m missing out, that social networking benefits traffic significantly more than SEO, article marketing, and so on.

Time to get cracking….