Just a short post to wish all my readers a happy and prosperous new year.

Less than 5 hours left here in the UK before 2009 ends.  I have seen video of the Sydney bridge fireworks display to welcome in the New Year in Australia, and I know the east coast of the USA has nearly 10 hours to wait whilst the Pacific coast has even longer to wait.

I wish you all success in 2010 with whatever you are planning to do.

If you have been following my posts about David Walker’s webinars another one will appear tomorrow 1stJanuary 2010 followed by more posts over the next few weeks.

This is the third part of the information I have gained from David Walker’s third webinar in a series of 6 training webinars. It was called Respect My Authoritah and covered the following:

1. Branding yourself as an expert
2. Entering your community as an expert
3. Focusing on becoming the best in your niche
4. Proof and credentials
5. Story telling to cement your authority
6. Staying ahead of the game
7. Swipe file for success as an authority

Focusing On Becoming The Best In Your Niche

Narrow Your Focus

Carve out a place in your niche

• People assume a ‘Specialist’ knows someone who has a broad knowledge of a general topic
• People don’t want information, they want specific advice from someone they trust
• Your sub Niche needs to be large enough to make money, but focused enough so you can become the best
• If you can create your own category you will have ZERO competition

Become The Best

Take A Stand

• Have a clear point of view identified in your introductory blog post.
• A controversial position is not a bad thing.
• Be in the best interests of your marketplace.
• You MUST be able to do something better than your competitors, but remember competition is healthy.  If you have no competition you may have too small a niche to may it viable.  You can check out your competitors by doing a Google search for your niche and looking for advertisers or blogs in your niche.
• What area of expertise do you bring to the marketplace?
• What do you want to be known for?
• What do you want your customers to say about you?

Your Competitive Advantage Will Answer Potential Customers Questions

• Why should I do business with you?
• Why are you the best choice, why not so and so?
• What can you give that is not available elsewhere?
• And so on. There are probably dozens more questions that you can think of that customers may want answered in their minds before selecting you to do business with.  If you can think of the question and answer it your competitive advantage will stand out from the crowd.
• Turn your advantage into a unique promise
• Who and what you are promising. When and how you will deliver on your promise
• Success does not just happen, it is engineered.

Listen Before You Speak

People make the mistake of using different marketing tactics without trying to understand the needs of their customers and then wonder why they are failing to make any forward progress.

Four Reasons Why You Must Listen

1. It will help develop insider knowledge of your marketplace
2. You can identify problems and sell a solution rather than trying to sell a benefit
3. You will differentiate yourself from your competitors
4. You should view marketing as a long term commitment with the best interests of your customers at heart not as a get rich quick process.

Places Where You Must Listen

1. Other experts blogs

• You will get points of view and topics of interest to their readers and this will help you when writing your own posts.
• Sign up for feeds and alerts from Technorati and Google Blog Search.

2.  By reverse engineering product sales letters you can uncover the emotional messages contained in them.

3.  Forums in your niche

4.  Social bookmarking websites eg Facebook, Twitter, You Tube etc.

Joining The Community

1.  Community vs Marketplace

• Some people enter the marketplace and have absolutely no interest in the community
• Some people are passionate about the community but never buy any products – all they want is freebees
• Products are what make you an expert in the community – especially your own products

2.  The community has a major influence on how you perform in the marketplace

3.  ideally you need to be an expert in both

Butting Into The Conversation

• Write about other experts on your blog — When an expert mentions you Milk It to the fullest extent
• Leave quality comments on other blogs — This is what Alex Jeffreys calls Oil Rig Hopping
• Stimulate conversation on your own blog
• Be confident in your own ability — Do not ask for specific answers to questions
• Intelligent conversations spread across blogs, you should contribute your opinion and link out as this may stimulate links back to your blog.

Value! Value! Value!

1. You must provide expertise, value and quality
2. You must provide content from the heart – PASSION
3. Don’t try to hide valuable information – but don’t reveal everything as you will have nothing left to sell.
4. If you don’t share high quality information, someone else will beat you to it.
5. Always remember to thank people for their time and respond quickly to blog posts.
6. Be yourself, treat people well and you will be rewarded.

This concludes my third post on module 3 of David Walker’s webinars. I will continue in part 4 to be published shortly.  Any comments will be welcome. If you wish to receive notification when a new post appears sign up to receive these notifications.