How To Build Your Credibility As An Expert While Blogging

I don’t run ads on my blog; I don’t do a lot of affiliate marketing. The primary way of monetizing my blog is selling my own products and coaching services in the area of communication skills.
I’ve learned that when your strategy for making money with your blog is to sell something you have created or something you do, then your credibility as an expert is crucial.
People have to trust that you are a professional and that you can provide them something of real value before they decide to buy from you. The amount of traffic you get is not highly relevant if your readers don’t believe you are an expert in your field.
The good news is that there are specific ways of using your blog which reinforce your credibility as an expert. Being passionate about communication, I was eager to explore this topic and test various methods of building credibility as an expert through blogging.
Here are the methods that have worked best for me and I believe will visibly benefit any blogger:

1. Develop Your Expertise, Not Only Your Blog

I think many bloggers skip a step in their search for a source of income. They start blogging and growing their blogs, but they do little to actually be experts in the area they blog about. They revamp ideas they read in books or on other blogs, and then they wonder why readers won’t buy their products.
Up to a certain point, blogging in itself is a way to develop expertise, but I find it to be insufficient. If you want to become an expert, you need to also address this subject separately and use other ways to train yourself.
I worked with my first coaching clients for free and I also had another coach supervising me, before I started calling myself a coach and asking money for my services. Also, I only started blogging and promoting my services on my blog after I’ve already had significant experience as a coach. Putting expertise first did wonders for me and the quality of my blogging.

2. Go Against the Mainstream

In any area, there are ideas that are very popular yet any real expert knows to be wrong. This is why instead of reinforcing the same old ideas, many experts will oppose popular ideas in their blog posts and they’ll debunk them.
Do the same and you’ll develop credibility as an expert. Of course, in order for this strategy to be successful, you need to know what you’re talking about, to pick the right ideas to oppose and to back your claims with hard and smart evidence. Otherwise, you position yourself as a rebellious novice rather than a connoisseur.

3. Write with Depth

Almost anybody can write a blog and offer some general advice, much of which may be impractical or mundane. A real expert stands out because they can talk or write about a certain subject with a lot more depth and go into the fine details that make a piece of advice exceptionally valuable.
In my field, many bloggers write advice such as: “Just be confident”. This kind of advice is too superficial to actually help anyone. I write posts in which I decode the psychological process of acquiring confidence and describe it much more precisely. This is what makes me more believable.

4. Quote Scientific Research

Anybody can make claims on their blog. What separates experts from the rest is the fact they crave solid evidence and they put in the effort to keep in touch with the current scientific research in their area of expertise.
As a result, they often quote research to support their ideas or simply to discuss it, and they do so in a skillful way. One of the most important recommendations I can make is to practice reading and quoting scientific research, at least in some of your blog posts. The more you practice, the more apt you’ll become at using research.

5. Associate with Other Experts

Professionals in a certain field often tend to know each other and collaborate. Prove to your readers that you interact positively with recognized experts in your filed, that they appreciate you, and some of their authority will transmit to you.
There are many ways to do this: you can interact with experts using social media, you can guest post on their blogs, you can interview them for your own blog etc. While doing any of these, keep in mind that the main focus is on truly building trust-based relationships with experts, not on simulating them.
At the end of the day, the most important thing I’ve learning about building credibility as an expert is that it only works if it’s authentic. Expertise cannot be communicated with high impact by faking it. You can only do so if it is something you really have and you know how to tastefully reflect through your blogging.

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