58 Experts Share their Best Personal Branding and Authority Tips

When you think of or see a logo design, you usually think about the brand that it is associated with. While some of the most famous brands and logos in the world today are Pepsi, Starbucks, Nike, and Target… they weren’t always a household name. It actually took years of experience, business, branding and learning from mistakes to get to where they are today.

Before becoming the mega companies they are today, they all had to start from nothing. This is very similar to how things work on the internet. The super famous internet celebrities, YouTube stars and most popular sites on the internet all starts with zero site visitors, social followers, and revenue.

With all of this in mind, we wanted to get some feedback from some of the world’s top entrepreneurs, brands, bloggers and site owners on how they are currently growing their brands and online following — ultimately helping them get to where they are today and standing out from the crowd.

We sought out the experts and compiled all of their responses for your below — all 58 of them!

58 Experts Answer the Question “How are you actively growing your brand authority and online following?”

I use two main tactics: content and engagement.

Effectively creating and promoting valuable content creates awareness pulls in readers.

Engaging with new contacts builds further awareness and creates additional opportunities while engaging with existing contacts strengthens readership and reinforces brand authority.

Stuart Davidson – Stuartjdavidsom.com
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I tend to use a mixture of email marketing and social media.

I love email marketing and even though social media tends to get all the headlines good old trustworthy email still performs much better. I have a list that I actively build offering Digital Marketing Tips each week and use this to show off my knowledge and try to genuinely help people. I don’t use it for direct selling.

Giving people what they want in an email is quite a powerful thing to do and it has generated lots of leads over the years but more importantly, it helps with trust. Over time people get to know who you are, understand where your skills lie, and that’s very important in generating trust.

Social Media also helps me a lot too but I find it sits further to the top of the marketing funnel. This is the place I can find new interesting people to follow and engage with existing followers. Social Media helps me to build authority by showcasing some of my work and also direct prospects to my website.

When I think of the journey a new client could take I think social media to the website to a mailing list to lead. Sometimes the mailing list part is skipped and I get the lead straight from the website but a lot of the time trust and authority is built over time from my mailing list.

Jon Tromans – Jtid.co.uk

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This is easy advice to give, but hard to follow. I work hard to go bigger than other people in my space. Several times per year, I do something that is difficult and original. There are three of them:

1. Publish a book
2. Run a conference
3. Do original research

I’ve done each of these for years. They all started small, but they’ve gotten easier (and bigger) over time. The book, Content Chemistry, is in it’s the ourth edition. This was the fifth year for our conference, Content Jam. The research, our Survey of 1000+ Bloggers, was just published for the third time.

If you want to be an authority, you should do something that few others do. Do something that goes beyond what your peers are doing. Something difficult. You can start small, but have a big vision. Then keep doing it. It will get easier to create and promote over time.

Look at anyone who is a legitimate authority in any field. They didn’t do it by publishing a weekly stream of medium quality blog posts. They did it by going bigger! Your blog is just the beginning…

Andy Crestodina – Orbitmedia.com

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With a combination of on and off-line activity. We have a very playful brand. The Wild West angle gives us license to go all out with the cowboy style and we do that on and off-line.

We network a lot. We’ll head to shows and networking events in cowboy hats and boots with matching roller banners and business cards. This in part helps to gain organic search of our brand online.

I speak at many events about social media and content, too. This can range from schools to expos but every time I talk I make sure people know who Spaghetti Agency are and how they can find us. We get a good number of organic searches after a show or talk.

We use a lot of social media and content to drive interest to our brand, too. With blogs, videos, Facebook Live and guest posts like this one, we’re reaching new audiences and hopefully adding to our authority in the world.

We’re still using email marketing too, with two emails a week going out. The very popular Friday Digital Roundup is a very soft piece of marketing with around 90% of the content just aimed at entertaining our list. It reaches inboxes at 6am every Friday and keeps us in the minds of our subscribers. This has been one of the most successful pieces of marketing that we’ve ever done. Getting told at events and meetings without asking “I love your Friday email” is pretty powerful and great feedback too.

Above all, we tell our story. We share how we came to be, why we do what we do, and we add in the Wild West element wherever we can. An audience will remember your story far longer than your sales pitch, logo or blog. Tell the story well enough and often enough and you’ll stick in their minds long enough to be remembered when their ready to buy what you have on offer.

Being remembered or being at the forefront of your prospect’s mind is ultimately where it’s at, right!?

Graham Todd – Spaghettiagency.co.uk

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Sharing your contents with influencers of your own industry is a great way to grow your brand authority. This will not only allow you to reach people in your industry and acquire new followers, but it will also give you authority and status when compared with other industry players, and most importantly, your potential clients will be able to see this. Contents shared by influencers are more likely to go viral and will not only generate qualified visits to your website, but also valuable links that will increase the authority of your domain. Influencer marketing is an extremely powerful technique if properly implemented.

Iñigo Etxebeste – Glocmedia.com

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I believe that the best way to promote your personal brand online is through the consistent publication of your thoughts on the subject matter that matters to you and your audience, on new innovative ideas, and to share your unique expertise. But content isn’t enough. You also have to build an audience by sharing other people’s ideas and connecting with your audience online. Content + Connections!

Michael Brenner –
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My brand awareness comes through many aspects. I firstly use content marketing to build my authority as I mention above, using the various social media platforms to get my message out there.

I also get a lot of recommendations and word of mouth brand sharing as well, and this is simply based on doing a really good job for my clients.

I also have branded clothes, and lots of things for exhibitions to build the brand in the local area, plus I am constantly getting clients to review the services to help push the message this way as well.

Generally, my brand awareness comes through content marketing, with some paid aspects as well.

Ian Spencer – Isdigitalmarketing.co.uk
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Rather than writing about whatever comes into my head, I’m spending more and more time listening to my community about the challenges they’re facing. By helping people overcome those challenges, not only am I helping them and becoming more of an expert in their eyes, but others will likely have come across the same challenges and will look to my content again and again to help them.

Ben Matthews – Montfort.io
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1. I am writing what I believe is quality content.
2. I find like-minded bloggers on Twitter. I follow them and they follow me back and can see my articles.
3. I write for Lifehack.org, a high profile blog syndicated internationally. People see me there and approach me with opportunities.
4. I take part in expert interviews (like this one).
5. Guest posting has also made me more high profile. I have been approached with opportunities as a result of guest posting.
6. I include influencers in my articles. I tweet them the link and ask them to retweet it. They generally do which extend my reach.
7. I took steps to increase my Klout score.

Janice Wald – Mostlyblogging.com

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I have been trying to help everyone who needs some help in blogging, and this helping nature of mine helped me grow my brand authority quite well among newbies and fellow bloggers.
Also, I always try to write the content that solves people’s problems, issues, and queries. This does help a lot in branding.

I am not doing any extra activity for branding except adding more value to the Internet by writing useful content for the audience.

Atish Ranjan – Techtricksworld.com

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I would like to say that I am actively growing my brand by the quality of my writing since writing is what I do. That means trying to publish top-flight articles not just on my own blog, but also on major platforms I write for.

There is no question that these have brought me great writing leads for blogging, writing articles both online and offline, editing and even help writing for websites. It’s why I put a couple of my most important writing platforms up front and center on my LinkedIn profile. It’s why, when asked for samples, sometimes I just send my profile on those same platforms.

My other big activity is networking. I work with other bloggers and marketers to help each other out and collaborate on projects. And so I’ve done everything from writing 5,000-woird articles to editing ebooks, to ghostwriting blog posts, all because of building good relationships with other good people.

When it come to building a brand, it’s not all about neon signs – your brand with a small select group of colleagues is often the most important.

David Leonhardt – Thgmwriters.com

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I am the founder and digital marketing strategist at the digital marketing agency Bowler Hat. So I work on promoting the Bowler Hat brand and to a lesser degree my own personal brand. My strategy to promote the business is to detail our knowledge and experience primarily through content marketing. Whether that is through my column on Search Engine Land, writing on the Bowler Hat blog or the many contributions or guest posts I have made over the years (just like this one). I try to put ourselves out there and demonstrate what we know. Sometimes that takes the form of opinion pieces, other times it may be more directly actionable posts. We also create case studies and have testimonials, portfolio entries and anything we can use to pull back the veil.

Ultimately I am a big believer in that most advertising is you telling the world you are a rockstar yet content marketing is you showing the world you are a rockstar. We do great work and I want to show – not tell and that seems to be working great for us at the moment. This year I featured in the top 50 digital marketing influencers based on a survey by Onalytica so given that this is a something of a light touch as I am still very much a full time gigging SEO and digital marketing strategist – we are doing something right.

Marcus Miller – Bowlerhat.co.uk

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At the moment I am changing focus to SEO and have recently launched a course called – The SEO Success Formula.
As part of that, I have started writing a lot of SEO-related content (such as this epic piece on how to write seo content – with 2.7K shares), guest blogging on the SEO (like one on ProBlogger set to come out soon), changing what I talk about online in groups and in interviews.
Last but not least I have just started a new Facebook group designed to help content creators/bloggers get more love from Google – it’s called Crush It With Content (I would love to see you inside the group :>)

Ashley Faulkes – Madlemmings.com

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Having been in this industry for 20 years now, I know what it takes to start a brand and build a following. One of the best ways to accomplish this is through the use of a website or blog. Many people are focusing their efforts on social media or other platforms to build their audience, but when this is done, you simply don’t have full control. A perfect example of this is anyone who has millions of followers on Facebook but are now limited on how many of them can actually be reached without spending advertising dollars.

Instead, a better way to do this is to still build those social followings and profiles, but to then redirect and send that traffic back to your site. Once this is all set up and in place, you can then focus on creating great content, building a mailing list and deciding on how you want to best monetize your expertise and traffic.

At the same time, it’s also important to get your name out there. My preferred methods for doing this are interviews, expert round ups and guest blogging.

Zac Johnson of Blogging.org

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One of the tried and true ways of growing my brand and online following for Massachusetts real estate exposure has been building relationships with others in my field online. One of the best places for doing so has been Google Plus. Early on I created my own real estate group which has grown to be one of the largest on the platform with nearly 30,000 members. Every day there are helpful articles about real estate and social media shared within the group. Given the size of the group the exposure has become significant.

Besides creating the group, I share content daily – both my own and others. A big part of building relationships is the willingness to freely share others content. By building these relationships I have been able to get my content shared by a number of people over numerous social media platforms.

Bill Gassett – Maxrealestateexposure.com
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Remember the power of storytelling, sharing valuable information and insight, and creating and empowering conversation and use it in your communications. People can’t resist a good story. It’s an emotional connection bridge that is built into our human DNA. Social enhances it by allowing more people to share more stories about more of what they see, read, buy and use. Another thing to remember about stories is that people are already having conversation about you and your brand, and you can’t necessarily control that. Those who try to stem the tide of a bad story by trying to control the message find this out the hard way. However, you can INFLUENCE the kind of stories that are told about you by being involved in the conversation, transparent in your use of social media, and responsive to the needs of your friends, followers, and customers, both online and offline.

Ted Rubin – Tedrubin.com

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One word: Omnipresence. Think of companies like Apple. Nike. Coca-Cola. McDonald’s. Starbucks. If you see their logo or hear their name, you instantly know who they are, and what they represent. These companies have set the standards not only for the products they sell, but for their entire industry.

But in order to reach this level of influence, you have to be known and on people’s minds regularly. You have to be everywhere at once.

My company sells children’s products, but we don’t share the same goals as other children’s product companies. We’re pushing for omnipresence at all times. We post more than 10 times a day on social media. We reach out and work with influencers regularly. We include stickers of our company’s logo with all of our products. We publish on our blog 3x weekly, and have a forum that’s booming with growth.

We know exactly where our target market is and we go there, continuously providing value along the way. Not only are we at the forefront of these people’s minds when it comes time for them to buy the products we offer, but we’ve achieved a level of brand loyalty that wouldn’t have otherwise been possible – and it’s getting better all the time. Being introduced to the concept of omnipresence and pushing towards it has changed everything about my company and its position in the marketplace. It should be one of the #1 goals for every blogger out there.

James McAllister – Helpstartmysite.com

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I am engaged in many activities to build my brand and following. Of them, the activity at the core of my strategy is traditional public relations. As a public relations professional, it is important to me that I not only practice what I preach, but also understand what my clients are experiencing first-hand, so I can give them the help and advice that they need as someone who has been in their place. Doing so has made me much more empathetic to pre-interview nerves and other parts of the experience that general industry knowledge can’t replace. In my mind, the most effective step that anyone can take in building their brand authority is to write guest pieces for top-level publications. It not only establishes you as an authority with the readers of that publication, but also with your existing clients– who will feel validated in their decision to choose your services when they see you share an article from one of their favorite publications on LinkedIn, as well as potential clients, who may be deciding between you and someone else who doesn’t bring those same credentials to the table.

Brittany Bearden – AtlargePR.com

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I connect with many bloggers and influencers that contribute to my expert roundups.

I am often featured as a blogging expert. This helps me increase my visibility, get new followers and new clients.

Minuca Elena – Minucaelena.com

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Right now I’m focusing a lot on Pinterest, Facebook groups and videos. With Pinterest it’s mostly just making sure I share my posts and tons of other quality content across my boards and group boards.

With Facebook groups, I use them in a few ways. While I do participate in some blog boosting groups for extra shares, I like to focus on groups that are more about interaction and helping each other. Answering questions that new bloggers post and offering helpful tips has been really helpful in boosting my authority and visibility. These groups are also great for market research. I pay close attention to the questions that are asked, and I’ve even posted surveys in the groups to find out exactly what my target audience is struggling with.

Also, live video is huge for visibility. Lately, I’ve been doing free video mini-courses on topics like landing your first guest post, finding what your target readers want and using it to monetize and more.

Corinne Kerston – Corinnekerston.com

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Pretty simple. I share my daily life with my audience by making tons of posts about my life on social media. I constantly add people who are relevant to me and my industry as friends on social media and engage with them in any way I can. All emails and messages are responded and always try to help anyone anytime that I can. I also educate my audience by sharing my ideas and journey as a marketer with blog posts. I distribute these blog posts to my audience and help them with their own business as well. That’s really all I do and have ever done 🙂

Rafi Chowdhury – Chowdhurysdigital.com

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Promoting my blog contents through social media is the first option before me to grow my brand authority and online following. For this, I use mainly Facebook, Google+ and its various forums and groups. I use the share button provided on my page for this purpose.

Of course, I ask my fellow beings especially to my followers to spread the news and in reciprocation, I do the same for them.

Another strategy I follow is using hashtags on social media sharing. Of course, this is a good trend now found as a vital part of social media experience.

Yet another amazing thing I do is to share fellow bloggers especially the influencers contents on major social media platforms and content curation platforms with a catchy note and then I share that too via my social media accounts. And in many cases it is well acknowledged and reciprocated, even some of the top influencers reciprocate and to my surprise some even followed me on twitter, Fb, and G+ etc. I am sure their share will fetch a lot of traffic to our pages and it pave way to grow our brand authority. Yes, building and authentic relationship with influencers can spread our brand authority and online following along with it.

Philip Ariel – Pvariel.com

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I have guest posted quite often on other authority sites, which is a great way to increase brand authority but I don’t think it works very well for building traffic to my own site. For traffic building, I work with other bloggers and businesses and we share each other’s posts and promotions.

Jane Mountain – Myfiveacres.com

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I think in order to grow your brand authority you need to show that you understand the issues your audience is facing and come up with workable solutions for them to implement. This may be through a course that you offer (like my upcoming “Become An Email Ninja” course) or by understanding they don’t have the time to read a book so you provide them with a concise review that saves them time, and they can also determine if they want to buy the book. I’d like to think that my brand authority is growing through the great content I’m providing that covers everyday issues everyone who’s trying to get stuff done has, and by sympathizing with their problems and showing them a solution they will trust your voice and brand.

Katy Whitton – Flippingheck.com

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To grow my online authority and brand I am focused on doing the following activities consistently:

• creating blog posts and videos to review products I use in my business
• doing FB Lives to share lessons & mistakes I’ve made
• posting lots of short “how to” videos to my FB page and group and YouTube channel

Drew Burks – Onlinelifestyle.info

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I do a lot of manual work. By this I mean email outreach. Every day I spent a lot of time contacting people from my industry and ask them for some favors. It could be just a retweet, participating in expert roundups, ask for guest blog opportunity etc. In fact, emails work very good. If you publish very quality content then you need to work hard on promotion. Also I read many SEO and marketing related articles to be aware of the recent trends in the niche.

Evgeniy Garkaviy – Morak.com

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Building a brand and following on the internet is tough, yet easy and straight forward at the same time. It’s tough because the competition you need to get through is quite intense and saturated. Yet it’s also easy because of the many opportunities and massive amounts of people accessible through different platforms.

I’ve found that one of the best ways to grow a brands authority is through blogging. I’m working on a blog post about that right now as a matter of fact. If I have one recommendation for any online businesses it is to blog, blog and blog. Customers love to read about what you are up to, what you are doing, and what is going on with your company. I like to call it “authority through transparency.” Other than that, I stay very active on a lot of online forums such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Inbound.org, Reddit and a few other places. At this point, I spend about 3-4 hours per week dedicated to promoting our brand online, I wish I had more time. The great thing is that our staff is starting to promote us online through their own social profiles, so that really gets the ball rolling rather nicely.

Patrick Coombe – Elite-strategies.com

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Becoming an authority within your space is something everyone should strive for. When I first started with online marketing and business, I was unknown. However, as I grew my expertise and following, things really started to come together. It was then that I realized I needed to focus more on narrowing my niche down and focusing on what I do best — which is ultimately connecting with others, forming new relationships and being an industry leads in the world of “online business and finance” news. Today I now write for some of the biggest sites in the world, including Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur and many more.

John Rampton – Due.com

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While helping people on social media and forums I never think if they would visit my blog or buy my products or not. My sole objective is to help them and guide them for a better option.

In my first a few meets with people I never invite them to visit my blog and just try to give them my best possible free services to solve their problems. As a result many of them request me to give them my premium consultancy to start a blog and make it successful.

In the beginning I didn’t get much offers but by growing my brand consistently without following an aggressive business strategy now I have to be choosy while accepting the orders of blogging consultancy because of their higher number.

Mi Muba – Beamoneyblogger.com

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I have worked really hard improving my writing. I’m an average writer…maybe a little above average now. Because of it, I write articles for other websites. Big ones. Plus I’m very active on the major social media networks. I spread a lot of content around. I generally share 5-6 articles for every article of my own I share

Joel Libava – Thefranchiseking.com

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One of the first rules of social media I learned was to build a following by following. The method is simple to find people who would be interested in the topics you post then follow them and engage with them. Often a percentage of them will follow you back. There are two methods you can use to find this captive audience: The first requires leveraging your competitors. The more your business resembles theirs the more likely their followers will be the types of people who would be interested in your business as well and will be the types of people who will end up following you back. The best thing about this first method is your competitors have created potentially large lists of follower candidates, so it is a quick means to building large lists for yourself. The second method is similar to the first it involves searching for hashtags or keywords which relate to your business’s topics or services. After searching follow or reply to the active people if they do a lot of posting within the same topic then follow them and their followers. Generally, this second method takes more time, but still it can be very effective. As you start building your following the process will get easier and more people will naturally follow you as long as you post great content.

Allan Pollett – Allanpollett.com

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To grow my brand authority and online following, I use several different strategies; creating a coherent brand, participating in roundups (very meta!), guest posting on authority sites, and publishing own posts that align with my goals. Over the years, I’ve realized just how important it is to a) offer value in everything I do, b) effectively niche down and c) be consistent with how I want my brand to be perceived in order to grow my brand authority. Another key point is the content promotion; instead of waiting for your audience to come to you, you need to be out there and actively promote your content and brand.

Camilla Hallstrom – 99smartideas.com

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We are actively posting new articles on our blog and participating in expert round-ups like this one! The more people that link back to our content, the better we can help spread the word about AfterOffers.com and help website owners grow their email lists and add a new passive income source to their websites. We also regularly mention other influencers in various industries in the hope that they may find value in our site and recommend it to their followers.

Tim Bourquin – Afteroffers.com

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Right now, just publishing regularly, even if it’s only once a month. After you do the hard work up front, your subscriber list can kind of grow on its own.

If I were just starting or wanted to grow more aggressively, then I would do a lot more guest blogging and also publish more often.

Brian Lang – Smallbusinessideasblog.com

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Branding is all about the message or service that is delivered to the end customer. When I think about my favorite companies and brands in the world today, I think about the ones that I personally relate with or love as a customer.

This is the same mentality you need to take when building out your own brand or following online. So many people are focused on growing these massive lists and social followings, yet many of them are just junk subscribers or followers. The real value is in your audience that actually cares about what you have to say, offer, or sell.

With all of this in mind, to build a real brand and online following — focus on what you are actually providing to your audience.

Brandon Johnston – BlogReign.com

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Content creation and promotion. Our company’s resources are focused on content marketing as our primary channel for marketing our services and generating leads for the business. This core activity allows us to be more robust with strategies we are implementing each and every month on the site.

The key is to be more strategic with how you create content assets, such as producing one excellent/comprehensive resource on one topic, promoting each of them massively to your target audience (influencers and bloggers), using Facebook ads to retarget your blog visitors and get the initial traction, so and so forth.

Venchito Tampon – Sharprocket.com.ph
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My main tips for growing your brand authority and online following is to publish content that brings value to my audience and engaging as much as possible on social media. In terms of brand authority, it also helps being connected with social media influencers, especially when it comes to sharing your best content with their audiences. Being as active and engaged as possible on social media, though, is one of the best ways of growing both your following and your online authority.

Lilach Bullock – Lilachbullock.com

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I show up as who I am. That means you may catch a video where I am fired up and drop a couple curse words, my hair might be flat on one side, and you might catch me with a glass of wine in my hand while teaching! The Writing Whisperer brand is all about helping others become thought leaders in their businesses—and THIS begins with embracing who you are and showing up as the REAL you. People like that. They want that. They want to be able to relate to you. It’s so great to be me!

About 6 months ago, I started a little experiment. I wasn’t sure if it was going to work, or not, but I went for it anyway. Are you completely sick of Facebook groups that are the same-o, lame-o? I was, so I set out on an adventure to form the Facebook group I wanted to be a part of. I wanted a group where people were introduced when they entered, and where self-promotion was not allowed. I wanted a group where the community rallied around one another and pitched in to help when someone needed it. I wanted a group where the members had to stay active in order to remain as part of our lovely space. And I wanted a place where I could do live trainings—on topics that my members requested. I have created this lovely space, and it’s called the Content Strategy Lab. The number of business owners in the group is not huge; however, the quality is spectacular, and these members are my best referrals and clients! Yes, it was scary, yes it takes time, but I have created something really unique and I’m very proud of it. My members don’t like when I call it a group—they prefer I use the word movement. We are busting myths about business and showing up as who we are—the good, the bad, and the ugly. (Want to join us—we’d love to welcome you with open arms!)

Outside of these two key components of my brand, I have developed a quiz that is helping entrepreneurs become highly successful with their content marketing. First and foremost, the content they are creating must be in total alignment with their personality type. Far too often I see entrepreneurs forcing themselves to write, or create video, or design images, when it just doesn’t match who they are. I call this content misalignment, and I’ve created a tool that helps people determine their top two content personality types. I know that when business owners are easily creating custom content that brings them joy, magic happens. They attract their ideal clients. They don’t get burned out. And most importantly, their content is authentic and keeps prospects and clients coming back time and time again. This quiz alone has changed the face of my business over the past few months. It has given me a voice in the “content world” and allowed me to break some stereotypes, barriers, and myths focused around content. ~ M. Shannon Hernandez, Founder of The Writing Whisperer

M. Shannon Hernandez – Thewritingwhisperer.com

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I’m actively growing my personal brand and authority by doing great things (like breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales records) and then writing about what I did and how I did it. There are a lot of authors out there that write about what they “think” will increase sales. And a lot of what they say is great – but it’s not tested in the real world. When I write, I write from experience in running growth and marketing for several ecommerce and SaaS companies.

William Harris – Elumynt.com

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I’m actively growing my personal brand and authority by doing great things (like breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales records) and then writing about what I did and how I did it. There are a lot of authors out there that write about what they “think” will increase sales. And a lot of what they say is great – but it’s not tested in the real world. When I write, I write from experience in running growth and marketing for several ecommerce and SaaS companies.

Bill Burniece – Highpayingaffiliateprograms.com

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By being as prolific as possible.
I try to create as much quality content as I possibly can each week.
I put out 2-3 blog posts a week, 1 podcast a day, 2-3 YouTube videos each day and plenty of other content and I do it consistently.
Over time all of this adds up and creates a snowball effect.
It’s very difficult to not be successful at anything you do if you are extremely prolific.
I’ve found this strategy to work in almost all environments.

John Sonmez – Simpleprogrammer.com

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One of the most effective methods I’ve ever used to grow my brand and online following has been to participate in live video broadcasts and podcasts. These shows, with their expert panelist formats, gave me easy and rewarding opportunities to demonstrate my authority to someone else’s audience.

Today, I am exploring the use of guest blog posts to achieve the same result.

Either way, the concept is the same. Find a medium for demonstrating your expertise in such a way as to reach a new audience.

Mike Allton – Thesocialmediahat.com

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The best way to grow is to have a goal, work on it long term, helping others wherever possible. That’s why I’m sharing with you here.

Warren Whitlock – Warrenwhitlock.com

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Three and a half years ago I (mostly) stopped blogging and started a weekly newsletter instead. In a sea of social media, I’ve found it to be an effective tool for connecting with readers, highlighting important news and staying top of mind.

Amy Lynn Andrews– Amylynnandrews.com

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I run a good amount of Facebook ads, constantly add value to my tribe, building relationships and answer questions within my private Facebook group of over 16,000 active entrepreneurs and just stick to my zone of genius – sales funnels.

Stephanie Nickolich – Stephanienickolich.com

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One of the first rules of social media I learned was to build a following by following. The method is simple find people who would be interested in the topics you post then follow them and engage with them. Often a percentage of them will follow you back. There are two methods you can use to find this captive audience: The first requires leveraging your competitors. The more your business resembles theirs the more likely their followers will be the types of people who would be interested in your business as well and will be the types of people who will end up following you back. The best thing about this first method is your competitors have created potentially large lists of follower candidates, so it is a quick means to building large lists for yourself. The second method is similar to the first it involves searching for hashtags or keywords which relate to your business’s topics or services. After searching follow or reply to the active people if they do a lot of posting within the same topic then follow them and their followers. Generally, this second method takes more time, but still it can be very effective. As you start building your following the process will get easier and more people will naturally follow you as long as you post great content.

Allan Pollett – Allanpollett.com

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Content is really important of course, write and talk about that ‘thing’ you’ve considerable expertise in and rise above the noise. That’s your foundation.

Then, create a list of your top influencers, those people you want to interact with and ultimately to either share or be involved with your content. Add these people to a twitter list (or similar), and start sharing their content, leaving comments as you go and generally adding value where you can.

Another top tip – don’t be an ass kisser. Support them of course, but add value, even if it means being the contrarian view to theirs. You’ll get far more kudos for doing so, and the people that aren’t receptive to it are probably not worthy of your list – so strike ‘em off!

It takes time but eventually you’ll be invited to share your opinion and instead of being stuck staring up at the summit, you gradually take steps towards it.

Ed Leake – Midasmedia.co.uk

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My latest venture is into podcasting, which is a format I enjoy. It’s awesome for meeting amazing people, creating lifelong friendships, building a network, JV’s, list building and creating super-fans!

Ben Austin – Stopstartdo.com

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I find that the best way to actually build, grow and sustain a brand is to be there for your readers and customers. There’s no better form of gaining their trust if not to really help them and being honest when you can’t.

Show your audience or target market that you’re trying to offer them the best answers or solutions to their questions or problems and you’ll be rewarded, even if it takes you longer than expected.

There’s this first rule in Marketing: is it harder to get an old customer back than it is to get a new one. Don’t try to take shortcuts because they are just “highways” towards disaster. If you can’t do something they ask or don’t know the answer, tell them straight up. People appreciate sincerity and honesty and will relate to you, nevertheless.

Growing a brand strong enough to stand the test of times is nothing more than building honest and trustworthy relationships with the ones that matter the most for your business: your readers, followers, and customers.

Louie Luc – Buzznitrous.com

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Currently, I’m publishing content weekly with a focus on video, and with the help of my content manager I’ve been able to streamline a lot of my activities.

Arman Assadi – Armanassadi.com

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I keep on moving every day. Show up to work in my office and I blog about the things my readers love to read about. In my core business I am a sexologist and relationship therapist and I have a Q&A on my site where people can ask me questions. And I make sure future potential readers can find my online work in the search results.

Maj Wismann – Majwismann.com

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I’m doing two things: Making things that I think are truly better or more unique than competitors, and two, focusing on my email lists instead of social media. I’ve almost completely stopped using Twitter, FB, etc. I post personal photos on Instagram and that’s it. Perhaps that’s not smart but I don’t think the risk is high and I don’t really care. Email’s engagement is orders of magnitude higher than social and I still build email lists both at growthrock.co and growandconvert.com. I think the long term benefits of this far outweigh a big social following.

Devesh Khanal – Deveshdesign.com

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We focus on relationship building at a granular level with those who are peers in our industry. Since we focus on Social Media that can affect SEO (Google Plus) and work with most agencies, we are always present where they are.

Ben Fisher – Steadydemand.com

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I continue to produce quality content that is targeted to the audience I have. Producing quality, helpful and targeted content on a regular basis is the best thing you can do to grow your brand and following online.

Add to that I make myself available to people to answer a question or two, I reply to all comments on my blog and across ALL Social Media platforms.

I also keep all my SM platforms active and filled with helpful targeted content from myself or other people I respect.

Growing your brand and following takes real work and time each and every day, but if you put the time in to stay in front OF PEOPLE on a regular basis over a long period of time, you will see results, real results, long-term results.

John Paul Aguiar – Brainymarketer.com

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We’re doing a lot to build our brand authority and online following. The first is maintaining balance. I feel sometimes online marketers fall into the “loud and dull’ trap. Where they let their skills fall dull since they over-focus so much on self-promotion. Instead, I hope to maintain the balance of keeping our skills industry-leading and adding more cogs in our marketing machine. This way, we don’t take away from our paid traffic skills.

Second, it’s demonstrating expertise. We manage a lot of AdWords and Facebook Ads campaigns on behalf of our clients (over 1m/mo), and we have a ton of details and stories to share from our experience. We aim to start rolling out “behind the scenes” content sharing actual stories, from actual campaign managers so our readers can get actionable, relevant advice from the field.

Once that tone and balance is struck, we hope to improve our content production schedule with: Written Blogs, SlideShares, YouTube Videos, and in-person speaking engagements. It’s always a privilege to share practical, actionable, online marketing education to businesses.

Michael Erickson – Searchscientists.com

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I use Twitter a lot, not only to share links to my blog posts but I also take the time to scroll my timeline and engage with and chat to the people I follow.

I blog on both SEO (my own blog) and State of Digital (a renowned multi-contributor digital marketing blog), which has helped to get my name out there.

Also started to run a local SEO meetup this year called Cardiff SEO Meet. We’ve had 3 events so far. Although it’s a local event, I’ve noticed that it’s helped my personal brand online – not only locally but nationally and even globally.

Steve Morgan – seono.co.uk

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