Create Authority Content for Your Business

Creating authority content raises your “expertise profile” and helps grow your business. Authority content shows rather than tells. It demonstrates expertise through valuable content without your having to shout: “We’re Number One!”

Demonstrate world-class expertise with authority content

The essentials of creating authority content for your business are to:

1. Pick a topic that’s at the core of your business — one that you can legitimately claim expertise in. This should be an area you feel comfortable expounding on, and one your customers would benefit from knowing more about. A real estate firm might have an angle on rental investing. A law firm might know a legal strategy that gives clients an edge.
2. Break the topic out into five preliminary subtopics — begin addressing each topic in substantial, in-depth articles of perhaps 750-1,000 words — each one a mini-chapter of a future e-book. Incorporate attractive elements in your content, such as surveys, statistics, lists, and maybe a few “downloadable assets” — case studies, white papers, etc. Nail the SEO.
3. Post articles at your blog on a regular schedule — maybe one or two per week, mirror posting to your social media platforms — LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ — getting notifications out to the others. Trigger tweets to your business account, and to all the individual ones you can legitimately co-opt for this purpose. 

Now you're ready to gather what you've done into an authority asset.

Create a PDF file of your first five article/chapters

With the first five articles create a PDF file including all the content you’ve generated on the topic to this point. Offer this out as a way of increasing traffic to your site, gaining subscribers, or simply gathering email addresses.

Create your next five article/chapters

Move through in like manner with the remaining five mini-chapters of your book. Create the individual blog articles, post them to your blog, and promote them everywhere.

Create a cornerstone content page

Once you’ve got your ten-part series completed, published, and promoted, use your articles to create what’s known as a cornerstone content page. This is a dedicated page that:

Lists links to the article/chapters of the book you’ve generated — like a linkable table of contents.
Add introductory material (“intro”) at the beginning, and summary material (“outro”) at the end.
Include your “call to action”.
You want them to call you for more information? That’s you call to action. Want them to join your mailing list? There you go.

Packaging your content in this authoritative way will motivate people to find it, share it, and link back to it.

Generate another PDF plus e-book

Gather up your next five articles into a second PDF and use it the way you did the first: to generate interest, traffic, and subscribers. Now take all ten of your chapter-articles and create an e-book to add to your authority — and reach broader markets.

Blast off with authority content

Authority content attracts high-quality links to your site — links from “authoritative sites” that draw major traffic. Your company website starts appearing higher in search engine results increasing traffic to your site. Authority plus attraction adds heavy-duty value, attracting further links and increasing shares of your content with others.

Watch your business blast off with authority content.

Ask Michael J. Farrand about creating authority content for your business.

SOURCE: "Authority Content: Build an Audience that Builds Your Business", copyblogger.