Denver DataMan: Defining Yourself as an Expert Online Part 6 of 6

For those who have read all my blog posts for the last 5 weeks about using the Internet to define yourself as an expert I appreciate it. For those of you who have not you might want to look at one or all of these articles to help you get more from this wrap up.

Each of these articles provides one aspect of the parts of a plan. Your Internet marketing plan cannot work effectively if it is an island and not part of an overall plan to increase brand awareness and differentiate yourself from the others you compete with.

The reason for a plan is to see the big picture of what you are doing and evaluate what success means. It is very easy to invest all your time in answering questions on LinkedIn Answers or sending out the best eNewsletter the world has ever seen but if these things are not part of a greater plan how will they help you?

I love the book Good to Great by Jim Collinsand in the book the idea of a Hedgehog Concept is revealed. The Hedgehog concept asks three questions of a company that relate to a business plan but are the most overarching questions a business can ask should relate to marketing as well.

1. What you can be the best in the world at (and, equally important, what you cannot be the best in the world at)?

2. What drives your economic engine?

3. What you are deeply passionate about?

You can read more about this on the Good to Great Website but the crux of the story is that where these circles intersect that is your business. Once you know this about your business you can apply it to your marketing.

What marketing tools show that you are the best in the world as something that matches your economic engine and you are deeply passionate about. If you don’t like the idea of email and in fact you hate getting email you will not do a good job with it and it is not the right tool for you.

If answering questions online takes all your time than it does not match your economic engine. It is nice and important to share the knowledge we have but we must do it in a way that helps makes sure we have food on our plate.

It is important not spread yourself to thin. Is it better to be in more places with junk or fewer places with high quality content? I would hope you would say that quality is more important than quantity. Consistency is also a critical factor. Can you keep up the quality writing 4 blog posts a week or is it better to write 2 and sometimes three to keep up the quality?

Remember, email marketing is part ‘how we are doing this’ as well. Try to collect where you connect, meaning that if you are connecting with people ask for their email address for your email newsletter. You should have a form on your website, links on your blog and your social networking presence. Research suggests that email is the preferred media for reaching people over 30 and that it will be for a long time.

One of the tricks to all this is give people the information they want when they want it. You should provide links between your presences just like we talked about above with sign-up opportunities. The Denver DataMan contact page lists many ways and places to Contact Denver DataMan giving everyone the tools they want.

I hope you feel that you have better tools to define yourself as an expert. It is a lot of work and you will find there are things about it that are very hard but using it can also be a lot of fun. Share, grow and discover how these new technologies can help you.