How to Show Up as an Industry EXPERT On Social Media
As a business owner, everyone on social media is always saying to 'build trust' and 'be the expert' but how are you actually supposed to do that? Today, in this video, I'm going to show you some subtle ways to show that you are the expert in your industry without literally putting that in your bio. And I'll be walking through five different ways so make sure you watch all the way until the end so you don't miss out on any of them. My name is Megan and I teach business owners to go from confused to confident on social media. I help you gain a more loyal community, get quality clients, and build a more profitable business.
So let's get started. Number one, which is the most common way I see business owners gaining trust on Instagram, is by posting educational content. Things like valuable tips, how-tos, and guides will definitely help your audience get to know what you do, who you help, and how you do it. What's great is that people will naturally start to trust someone who teaches them something new so if you're consistently showing up on your social media platforms and teaching people things that they might not have known before or inspiring them in new ways they're automatically going to start trusting you without you even building a relationship with them. This is also great because people can take so much just from one piece piece of content this really demonstrates what it would be like actually working with you and getting the full effect of your knowledge and expertise. And according to a study done in 2021, 65% of respondents stated that they trust a business more if they provide them with educational content about their products or services. So keep that in mind when you go to create content, educational pieces should definitely be a big percentage of what you're creating.
Number two is engagement done the right way. I see a lot of people telling you to engage with other people's posts but I do have to say if you want to show up as an expert you have to be doing it in a different way. So what matters here isn't necessarily the amount of times you're engaging with people but your attitude and demeanor while you're doing it. While you're answering questions and participating in these conversations online on social media, you really want to be oozing confidence. You want to show off what you know and how confident you are in your ability to help your clients. So just a really quick example if someone comments "I love your content so much!" instead of just replying with a quick 'thank you' you should respond with "I'm so glad that was helpful, let me know what else I can post to be a better resource for you." Obviously both of these answers are okay but the second option really just shows off that you are really confident in your ability to help this person even further. And again, you want to be smart about when you do this. If someone's responding that they love your content and they're not a great client or customer for you, then just say thank you but if this person could turn into a client or customer down the road, you want to be a little bit more thoughtful in your response. And the last thing I'm going to say about engagement done the right way is that if someone's commenting really negative or hurtful things on your posts or any of your content out there I would simply just delete the comment. This person is trying to bring negativity into your business and you want to cut that out so just delete it and move on.
The third way that you're really going to portray yourself as the expert on social media is with your case studies. These are going to be real life examples of how you helped your customer or client go from point A to point B. This could be a before and after of working with a client, maybe it's a customer review, or maybe even make a video about what it's like to work with you and what the experience would be like for your customer or client. I think these case studies can be really fun if you work on getting creative with it. You can have your past customers and clients come in and do a video for you and in return you offer them 10% off their next purchase. Doing this will really help spread the awareness of what it's like working with you and it also makes a bigger impact when it's not coming directly from you, but from from the person that you actually worked with.
The fourth way you're going to show up as an expert is by providing industry updates. If you're always up to date on the insightful articles and the up and coming research or maybe even just industry trends, this is going to be perfect for you. By posting what's new in your field of expertise, people will start expecting that from you and look to you to provide these updates for them. They will also look to you for your opinions on these updates. If people are looking for you just for the updates imagine what influence you have on voicing your opinions about them and how much more people are willing to trust you based off these findings. Most of the time these updates are teaching someone something new so that's also helping increase trust as well.
And the final way I'm going to go over how you can become an expert in your industry is by collaborating. By partnering with another expert or a brand in your industry you're indirectly validating your expertise because someone else who's already seen as an expert is joining with you and collaborating. Your audience is going to think if that person's willing to work with them and trust them, then so should I. So to find someone that you want to collaborate with, you want to find someone who has a very similar target audience to you but isn't your direct competition. So for example, an esthetician and a hair stylist will probably have a similar target audience but they are not direct competition with each other. Once you find that person to collaborate with, you can create giveaways, contests, co-branded content, or you can create a webinar or live event together. So while you will be getting a lot more brand awareness by doing these, the other benefit you'll get is being seen as more of an expert.
If you're still struggling with what exactly to put in your Instagram bio to really have that great first impression for people visiting your profile, I do have a free template linked here where you can check and make sure that your bio is good to go and that you don't need to change anything. Thank you so much guys I will see you in the next post!
