10 ways to build stature in social networks

Some people in your online professional network stand above the rest. These experts are respected; they lead industry discussions and shape professional opinion.

Building your reputation amongst such people will also build your business. You’ll be seen as an industry leader, which is attractive to prospects. You’ll also be connecting your brand to established influencers—exposing it to a larger audience and potentially new clients. And you’ll grow personally. There’s much to learn from peers, including how they manage the challenges you face at work every day. Don’t underrate the knowledge you can gain.

Read: How 4 advisors achieved social media success

Reputation-building strategies haven’t changed much over the decades, even though the tools and tactics have changed dramatically. Here are some tips on navigating the new technology.

Read: 10 ways you’re repelling prospects

10 Stature-Building Strategies

• Identify influential people in your industry and follow them on Twitter.
• Make a Twitter list of your influencers. Well-curated lists of influencers are doubly valuable: they help others find their way to influencers and they promote the influencers themselves – both of which increase your stature.
• Connect with influencers on other social platforms like Google+ and LinkedIn. Be careful with LinkedIn because people often expect to have met you in real life before accepting your connection request.
• Follow influencers’ blog posts, and comment on or share their posts regularly. People notice when you consistently pay attention and engage.
• Use your administrative support resources to track influencers’ posts in a feed reader such as Feedly and brief you on relevant topics.
• Write your own blog post on a topic that an influencer has started a discussion about, then reference your post and mention the influencer in a tweet. This brings you into the discussion.
• Publish a post that ties together a number of influencers’ blog posts. It’s a service to your audience, and if you send an email to the referenced influencers with a link to the post they may share it with their audiences—thereby expanding your reach.
• Find and share relevant content that would be interesting to your influencer community. The key to relevance is listening and paying attention to what is being discussed and looking for opportunities to fill gaps or add to the conversation.
• Seek out opportunities to engage your influencers off-line and one-on-one. After a series of online exchanges over a period of time, you could simply suggest a phone call. Or if you’re travelling on business and will be in the same city as an influencer, suggest meeting over a coffee while you’re in town.
• Offer to write guest-posts on the most popular blogs and websites. This is good for building your audience as well as your stature as an influencer.

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