What is one way to expand and build your influence online?

To help you expand your online influence, we asked business leaders and influencers this question for their best advice. From publishing on LinkedIn to engaging where clients are involved, there are several tips that may help you build your influence online.

Here are nine ways to expand your influence online

• Share Your Knowledge With Everyone
• Utilize Social Media
• Publish Articles On Linkedin
• Support Others To Supercharge Your Online Influence
• Strategic LinkedIn Campaigns
• Engage Your Audience Beyond The Explicit Interactions
• Start a Youtube Channel
• Engage Where Your Ideal Clients Are Involved
• Focus On Inspirational, Educative, and Informative Content

Share Your Knowledge With Everyone

To build your online influence, it's important to establish yourself as the expert by providing information whenever and wherever possible. If your subject matter knowledge is contained to your own website and social channels, you won't get anywhere. Fortunately, services like Terkel and HARO make it easy to ask questions posed by other professionals in a quick and easy format that benefits both the writers and the intended audiences. Plus, this provides opportunities for linking back and becoming more searchable... thus expanding your presence. The result is internet street cred!

Lisha Dunlap, University of Advancing Technology

Utilize Social Media

A stronger presence on social media is a must these days.  Any business that wants to grow and stay relevant needs to have a strong social media presence.  LinkedIn is an easy way to get the word out about the new ventures that your company is partaking in.  Open job postings on LinkedIn tend to draw a higher quality candidate as well.

Shelbey Grimes, Trinity Air Medical

Publish Articles On Linkedin

LinkedIn is a powerful networking tool to help stay top of mind within your current connections. By publishing articles on your personal profile, you can connect with others outside of your core connections and become a thought leader within your industry. Your articles will offer value to your current audience, help you gain new followers, and build your overall influence.

Tanya Gagnon, Miss Details

Support Others To Supercharge Your Online Influence

Every person and every business has a basic fundamental need - to be acknowledged and appreciated. With the online noise being so loud today, just sharing/commenting/liking/tagging people's content and referring other people in our own network to other people's online presence is a huge need. When we support others, we expand our audience and find the people who connect with and appreciate our POV. We will attract people with the attitude that we put out - so it's important to be mindful of the kinds of engagement we want to see in our own network. Being supportive attracts supportive people! This can be a very powerful community building tool.

Melissa Del Toro Schaffner, Melissa Del Toro International

Strategic LinkedIn Campaigns

LinkedIn is the professional, online space where you can literally target your exact audience. Curate a strategic outreach campaign and get connected with those key business partners. Set a goal for how many people within your target audience you want to connect with on LinkedIn. Join the right groups to find them. Complement your outreach by sharing valuable content that establishes you as a thought leader and an expert in your industry. Soon enough, people will begin to recognize you for consistently showing up on their feed and will begin to trust you and the value you have to offer.

Megan Coghlan, Backcourt Marketing

Engage Your Audience Beyond The Explicit Interactions

It’s clear to most that you should engage your audience in a number of ways. Namely, you’re expected to produce and post content regularly, respond to comments, respond to DMs, etc. However, these explicit ways to engage your audience are frequently done and taken for granted. Now, in order to expand your influence more and stand out from others, you have to find new ways to interact with and engage your audience. The big suggestion here is to go beyond those explicit, typical interactions and begin connecting with people on a personal level. Comment on posts with something substantial to say, respond to someone privately just to start a conversation or compliment them, and overall, just treat people like individuals rather than numbers.

Curran Walia, Conscio Marketing

Start a Youtube Channel

One way to expand and build your influence online is to start a Youtube channel. Viewers prefer to consume content via video and this is a great way to share your ideas, thought leadership, and content to your viewers. You can share your Youtube channel on your social media channels to generate more views and optimize your content to fit specific niches you are trying to target. This is a great way to expand and build your influence online and grow your personal brand.

John Wu, Gryphon Connect

Engage Where Your Ideal Clients Are Involved.

Just like in real life, you want to be clear about your ideal client, find out where they are and engage there in a way that's helpful and brings value. One way that I'm doing this is getting involved with geographically-focused Facebook Groups that are in the area where my ideal clients live. When you get involved, you can post your own posts, engage with others'  posts, and where appropriate, can offer to help administrate the group. 
When posting in these groups, alternate 'selling' posts with other helpful posts on a 1 to 7 ratio. For example, share helpful information from your industry or events of interest. Share posts into the group from your clients or other partners, both supporting your current connections and providing helpful information for them.
When engaging with others’ posts (if possible, make it the majority of your time spent in the group), ask questions, cheer people on, and when possible, provide referrals for resources they are asking for. Make it about them.

Karin Crawford, God's Garden Treasures

Focus On Inspirational, Educative, and Informative Content

The best way to expand and build your online influence is to provide extremely valuable, industry expert insights on a consistent basis, on Linkedin, Youtube, and Twitter. You can gain trust, influence, and a solid audience and a fan base if you just leave out any salesy posts, and publish inspirational, educative, and informative content every day. Go for pure value, and think of making the people who read your content feel guilty for reading your content and industry tips and insights for free. Once you execute on the above for 1-2 years every day, or at least 3 times a week, on all platforms, you will never ever have to sell your services again, as people will come to you out of nowhere to help them. Building that audience will also remove any friction when it comes to pricing, as people will want to work with you even if you are not the cheapest provider in your industry, price will never be an objection.

Fery Kaszoni, Search Intelligence Ltd

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