| |
Posts Tagged ‘authority’
Sunday, October 30th, 2011
For several years now the search engines have been obsessed with ranking web pages based on popularity. They use link popularity and other measures to determine whether a web page is relevant and useful to a search query. Bill Slawski, who writes about search patents on his blog SEO By The Sea, recently wrote about a Microsoft patent that is based on measuring authority. How is this different?
I think it’s a good question because popularity and authority are not the same. For instance, Lady Gaga is one of the most popular performers in the U.S. and much of the world. But that doesn’t make her an authority on anything. She may know quite a bit about music, but simply being popular doesn’t make her an authority.
So what would make her an authority? According to Bill, any combination of several factors including
- Educational degrees held by the source
- Where those degrees were obtained
- Citations of the source in scholarly or technical works
- Number of publications associated with a source
- Number of social network connections and/or followers
- Whether or not the source is employed by and/or graduated from a well respected and/or highly cited institution
- Social networking information such as a number of posts relating to the source and/or a particular topic addressed by the source
- Number of patents held by the source
- Number of links to content associated with the source
- Number of articles citing work associated with the source
- Ratings and Reviews associated with the source
Measuring popularity is a lot easier than measuring authority. All you have to do is see how many people like something. But authority is a bit murkier. One website can be authority on a particular subject yet own a deficit on another subject closely related. Such is the nature of authority.
It’s nice being popular, but I think you’ll get more long-term mileage out of being an authority. Not only is that important for the future of search, but it’s vital for the future of online marketing.
Tags: authority, online marketing, popularity, search, SEO
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 4 Comments »
Thursday, October 27th, 2011
If you are a small business owner and trying to pave a path to your door for your customers to follow in getting to know you better and do business with you, then the one thing you should prioritize above everything else is writing a book.
That’s right. Writing and publishing a book will give you instant credibility. Here’s why.
When people hold something tangible in their hands, they know it’s real. When you have your name on the cover of a book, you become an instant authority. Remember, the first half of “authority” is “author.”
So become an author.
It’s not easy. In fact, it’s easier said than done. But it can be done. By writing a book on your topic and offering it for sale on your blog or website, you tell your prospects and your customers that you are a person who knows your business. You are an expert.
So what’s it take to be a published author? It’s easier than you think. You first have to write a book. Then you can spend a couple of hundred dollars to have your first 50 or 100 books published through one of many Publish On Demand publishers on the Internet (be sure to do your homework and find a reputable publisher). Then you start marketing.
If you want instant credibility, write a book. Put the authority in author.
Tags: authority, credibility, publishing, writing
Posted in Business Writing | 3 Comments »
Monday, October 17th, 2011
One of the best ways to improve your reputation and your stature among your peers is to become an author. Write a book.
But don’t just write a book for the sake of writing a book. Instead, come up with something important to say to people about your niche. If you can do that and do it well, you’ll become an instant expert in your niche and your reputation will shine far and wide.
So let’s get down to a practical level. How do you do that?
Start by asking yourself, “What do people in my niche want?” You must identify a need in the marketplace. You did that when you started your business, right? You’ll have to do it again when you write your book. What questions are people asking?
After you’ve identified the needs of readers in your niche area of business, make an outline. Keep your book tightly focused on a single topic. Your book doesn’t have to be a tome to be successful. It just needs to be good.
So the three most important things to identify before you start writing are these:
- The questions people are asking about your niche area
- The target market for your book (who is the ideal reader?)
- The narrowly focused subject matter of your book which deals with the first two points
Get these three questions answered and you’re well on your way to writing your first book and improving your stellar reputation.
Tags: authority, Reputation Management, writing a book
Posted in Business Writing | 5 Comments »
Sunday, June 20th, 2010
A company called Sysomos produced a report on who is following the top brands on Twitter. This is an interesting study because the report focuses on three types of Twitter heavyweights:
- Celebrity stars
- Social media marketing leaders
- News media
All the companies involved in the report have a high number of followers on Twitter, however, only the social media marketing leaders consistently attract Twitter followers with higher authority rankings.
Types Of Users These Twitter Users Attract
Most of the celebrity stars attract more users with low authority – 0 or 1 – while all of the social media marketing leaders attract a high number of followers with authority rankings of 4 and 5. The news agencies have a more diverse range among them. It’s interesting to note, though, that the online agencies attract Twitter users with higher authority.
This all makes you wonder just what is used to rank authority and why it’s important.
Factors used to judge Twitter authority include:
- The number of followers a user has on Twitter
- The number of Twitterers the user is following
- The number of updates a Twitter user has
- The number of retweets a user submits
- Other similar measurements
What Social Media Authority Is
If you look across all social media you will see similar stats. While some social media websites measure these statistics differently, or have their own unique stats, bear in mind that your social authority is measured by how well you engage your audience across all social media marketing outlets. Your social authority has less to do with how many people you connect with than it does with the authority of the people you connect with.
For instance, if you are like a celebrity star and attract a lot of low authority followers then you may not reaching your full social authority potential. Popular stars can get away with that type of Twitter following because their followers are likely not engaging with them directly. They are likely just following to listen.
On the other hand, if you attract a following of social media users who interact with you on a regular basis and have high authority themselves then you might have fewer followers overall but have a higher social media authority based on the level of relationships you are capable of developing on social media websites.
In social media circles, a high social authority means you are connecting and engaging. A low authority may mean you are just there to listen.
Tags: authority, Social Media
Posted in Social Media | 5 Comments »
Sunday, March 28th, 2010
The key to branding and establishing yourself as an authority in your niche is to speak with one voice across every medium in which you interact. That is more difficult than it sounds, particularly if you have other people working with you in your media campaigns.
First, the beginning. Establish your hub.
Your hub is your home on the Web. It is the place where you want all of your traffic to concentrate. It’s where you want everyone who wants to know more about you and your brand to go for the best information and a direct route to your sales team. Your branded company website is your hub.
Some companies establish a blog as their company website. Others have a static site with a blog attached. Either way is OK, but you’ve got to make that determination early on. Don’t change it midstream. Pick a path and stick to it.
Next, use your blog as a voice of authority. That is where you teach, lead and draw. You teach people what you want them to know about your expertise. You lead them to a place where they are ready to make a decision and buy from you. You draw them in with quality content. A blog is the perfect mouthpiece for anyone who wants to brand themselves as a voice of authority in their niche.
All of your social media should be centered on one thing – teaching, leading, drawing. You can teach through social media, but not to the extent you do on your blog. Go lighter. Give people a reason to go to your blog for more information.
By the same token, you want to lead people to a place where they are ready to ask for more information. They’ll find that information on your blog and your static website. Finally, draw them in with great social media content.
Branding online is about drawing people to you through great content that they want to read and interact with. That content serves to brand you and make you an authority in the mind of your audience. Draw them deeper and closer to your hub with great content delivered from a branded authority – you. If you do that well, you’ll succeed at online marketing.
Tags: authority, blogging, Branding, Social Media
Posted in Branding | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
The title of this blog post can be read two different ways.
If you thought I was asking
Should you blog OR engage in article marketing?
or
Should you do either of these – blog or engage in article marketing?
then you’d be right.
The real question before marketers today is not whether you should engage in one form of marketing over another, but whether either form of marketing is effective and which are the most effective for your type of business. It’s not an easy question to answer.
Both blogging and article marketing have their benefits. Some people claim that article marketing is dead, but I don’t think so. I think it is dead if you don’t how to do it. But if you can take an article and put that article on the right website with a solid author’s resource box and a link back to a powerful sales page, you make that article pay. Effective article marketing does three things:
- It establishes you as an expert in your field.
- It builds link popularity to your website.
- It drives traffic to your most important landing pages.
Blogging, too, has its benefits. A blog on your company website should do the following three things well:
- Establish you as an expert in your field.
- Add fresh and unique well optimized content to your website on a daily basis.
- Pre-sell your products and services
The goal of every marketer is to determine what your biggest needs are in terms of your marketing and then perform the tasks that will most likely deliver those benefits.
Tags: article marketing, authority, blogging, link building
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »
Monday, March 22nd, 2010
You’ll hear the word “Authority” a lot with regard to online marketing. The gurus encourage you to make yourself an authority in your niche by marketing yourself in certain ways, namely, through you blog, articles and other content that establishes you as an expert in your field. But is that enough?
Simply writing articles, blogs and other content and putting your name on them does not establish you as an authority. You have to back up the first impression with impressive results.
Authority is a word that means you have power, a kind of power that involves influence. It means that you command respect for no reason other than your power to influence others to follow your lead. But where that come from? Your byline? Your name? Your reputation?
In essence, authority comes from perception. People perceive you to be a knowledgeable expert. To establish that perception in the minds of your audience you need three things:
- Knowledge – Yes, knowledge is important and you can demonstrate articles with a byline, but that is only the beginning.
- Skill – You must possess a definable and valuable skill, one that people need and that you have. The must be marketable and valuable.
- Sales Panache – You need to have an ability to sell yourself. All perception is based on the perceived having the ability to sell the perception. If you want others to view you as an authority on a subject then you’ve got to be able to present yourself as an authority. Knowledge and skill and alone will not do that.
Being an authority is important to being successful. It takes creating a perception and that involves sales work. Knowledge and skill are only the beginning. The wrap up in the sales process.
Tags: authority, content, sales
Posted in Reputation Management | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
Technorati has been tracking blogs online since the Dark Ages (almost). It is one of the Web’s recognized authority on what is happening and where. Right now.
Technorati has a ranking system that is one of the most accurate determinants of authority there is. Better than Alexa. More trustworthy than Google’s PageRank. And more interesting than most people’s Facebook friends list. They call it Technorati Authority.
Basically, Technorati monitors your blog to see how many other blogs in the blogosphere are linking to you and discussing you. Their ranking system tracks and reports inbound links from the past six months. Each website linking to yours is counted once, not each link. So if there is a blog that links to you daily then that blog is counted only once during the past six months and credited toward your Technorati Authority.
Authority is reported as a number, straightforward. If you’ve had 125 websites link to you in the past six months, no matter how many times each site has linked to you, then your Authority will be 125. Pretty simple, right?
Now Technorati Authority doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not a website is trusted by the search engines or a business is worth consumer trust. It simply measures how often other sites and blogs link to yours. It’s a measure of worth based on Google’s maxim that a link is a vote of trust. Can Authority be manipulated? Sure, about as much as anything else. But if you consider what it purports to be then you can get an idea of how much your blog, or any blog, is worth to others in the blogosphere by counting how often that blog is linked to from its competitors, suppliers, customers, and other websites.
So how do you get started tracking your Authority? First, you’ve got to sign up for a Technorati account, and you’ve got to have a blog. After you start your blog and sign up for a Technorati account, you need to claim your blog. That’s another post, but the instructions or on Technorati’s website. It isn’t hard and doesn’t take long.
After you’ve claimed your blog, you’ll want to start networking with other bloggers and getting them to Fave your blog at Technorati. Be nice and Fave theirs too. This will spread the word about your blog and as you network with other bloggers in your niche you’ll build more links. Soon, your Authority will rise and as your Authority rises so will your blog chutzpah.
Click HereTo Fave Small Business Mavericks.
Tags: authority, blogging, technorati
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 4 Comments »
|
|
|
|
| |
|
