Being a true authority and discovering your audience’s pain points go hand and hand. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t be a true authority and not know your audience’s pain points. In order to become a true authority with your audience, you have to relate to them and bring value. Doing that means knowing what their pain points are and providing solutions to them. Once you do that consistently you will then become a true authority with your audience. Someone that they can trust and rely on. When your audience trusts you sales are easier to attain. The first step is discovering their pain points.
Discover Your Audience’s Pain Points
Sure you can just ask your audience what their pain points are but sometimes they might not even know themselves. Whatever area is causing them the pain they aren’t experts in. They might know how to say what the problem is. Your audience might not know that they even have a problem. In order to get an accurate idea of what their problem is you have to do some research yourself. You don’t want to the wrong pain point. Once you find the right pain point that is unbiased you can provide a real solution. Here is how to find out what they are.
- Start typing your search in Google and see what questions comes up in autosuggest
- Quora and Reddit are great ways to find out the types of questions your audience is asking
- Seek out popular blogs that cater to your target audience / buyer persona and read the blog comments
- Join forums and discussion list in your niche to discover pain points
- Use social media to find out what issues your audience are talking about
- Do Keyword research
Your audience’s pain points are the reason they go to you for solutions. The more people feel that you genuinely care about solving their problems they will keep coming to you for solutions. This will help you build true authority with your audience. Click here to find out more about How to Identify Customer Pain Points.
True Authority
Once you have determined what your audience’s pain points are you can provide solutions that will help you build true authority. Nowadays people have easy access to all sorts of information online. There are blogs, books, ebooks, podcasts, etc. that your audience can turn to when they are looking for information that will help them solve their problems. In order to set yourself apart, build trust, and make your audience turn to you for help is building true authority in your niche. Here are some ways to do that.
Build a Blog with Great Content
Having a blog with great content can help you build true authority in a variety of ways. Having a blog can help you rank well on search engines such as Google if it is constantly updated. It has to be updated with unique and fresh content in order to rank well On Google. Not to mention that blogging is a simple way to share your knowledge and expertise to your audience. A blog helps to get your name out there to your target audience.
The sky is the limit on what type of content you can create for your audience. You can create reviews, infographics, videos, articles that contain helpful information that they will find useful. If you create an in-depth article in your niche you are demonstrating to your audience that you have the knowledge they need to solve their problem. If they feel that you are knowledgeable they will use your service or product instead of the competition. The more they turn to you the more authority you will build with them.
Guest Blog for Others
If you don’t feel up to starting your own blog you can guest blog for others. It is a great way to build true authority to your audience. When you guest blog you are creating content for a blog that your audience is interested in. It is a blog that speaks to your target audience. For example, if you want to build authority as a nutritionist you could guest blog on a health or fitness blog. You won’t build authority if you are a nutritionist and blog for a home improvement site you won’t build authority.
You also want to make sure that the guest posts you create are great. The content should generate shares, comments, and traffic for the blog you are guest posting for. Beware that not every blog allows guest bloggers or outside contributors.Check to see what their guest blogging policy is first. Then check to see if that blog has a good amount of traffic. You won’t build true authority blogging for a site that has no incoming traffic whatsoever. Your goal is to gain exposure. Once you have created your guest post be sure to share it on your social media sites. Doing so will boost your reputation and your authority. For more information on guest blogging click here to read Kissmetrics Ultimate Guide to Online Branding and Building Authority Part 1.
Social Media
Social media is another way to build true authority. It builds authority with your audience by providing an outlet for you to interact with and engage with them. It is also a great way to promote your brand. You can’t build true authority by only posting to social media once in awhile. What you put in is what you get out. Staying active on your social media profiles is important. At the same time posting too much on social media can turn your audience away. Personally, there were some people I used to follow on Twitter but I stopped unfollowing them because they tweeted way too much. Even on Facebook, I have hide posts from people because their posts were the only ones I saw on my feed.
Remember that not everyone is on every single social media site there is. Your audience might only use 1 or 3. Each social media site has certain demographics that are on it more than others. According to Omnicore 81% of Pinterest users are women.With that information, you would use Pinterest if your audience is women. Pinterest would be a great social media site to use to build authority with your audience if they are women.The trick to engaging with your audience on social media is to find out what social media sites they are on, how often, and when. Let’s say your audience is stay-at-home
The trick to engaging with your audience on social media is to find out what social media sites they are on, how often, and when. Let’s say your audience is stay-at-home moms then your best times to be on social media might be when their kids are at school or in bed. If your audience is working parents then your best times to be on social media would be when they aren’t at work or on a lunch break. To find out when and what times your audience is on social media and when research and analytics tools are needed. Facebook has a built-in analytics tool called Facebook Insight. If you have a Facebook page just click on the insights tab. Insights will tell you everything you need to know about who your audience is, and when is the best time to post.
Most importantly it is going to take time,planning, and research in order to not only build authority but discover your audience’s pain points. It won’t happen overnight. The two also go hand in hand. You can’t build true authority if you don’t know the problems of your audience. Knowing them is the first step towards true authority.