A Review of – Build Your Authority Platform: Leveraging Digital Marketing Strategies to Build Your Tribe Of Followers by Marc Guberti
The book is a quick read at only 64 pages and is the sixth in the Grow Your Influence series written by Mr. Guberti.
This book is focused on using digital strategies to grow your audience and your influence. Most content creation tutorials will tell you to put a call to action at the end of each piece of content. If you’re writing a blog post, you’ll figure out a topic and after the piece is written, decide what you want the offer to be.
Guberti recommends starting with an offer as opposed to starting with a content idea. The revenue you get from selling the offer will defray the costs you incur in creating and maintaining the platform. Eventually, you will be able to attract more people through advertising and partnerships.
In Part 2 of the book, Guberti discusses ways to expand your tribe using social media. You may think the goal of social media postings is to gain more followers, but he explains that getting followers should not be an end in itself, but a means to the ultimate goal which is to grow your revenue.
The question you should be asking yourself is what you plan to do with the people who follow you? You want to have a positive return on investment based on the time you spend creating content and in the money you spend on advertising. If you get a lot of “Likes” or comments on your posts, but you have no way to convert them into subscribers or buyers, you are wasting valuable resources.
He also mentions something that is a hot button of mine which is the fact that you don’t own the audience on the social media platforms. The social networks whether that is Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram give you access to that audience. If they change the rules or go out of business, your access to followers could be revoked. All of the work you did to build a following could be for nothing.
For that reason, it is important to build a subscriber list you own by creating a process to capture your followers information and build a database you control.
As far as building your follower list, Guberti has lots of suggestions. I like:
- Get to know more people by networking. Join interest groups in your chosen topic. Interact and be helpful in those groups. After you’ve established a presence, invite individuals to connect with you one on one.
- Collaborate with other people in your industry, especially with people who have the same audience size. When you’re first starting out, it may be difficult to attract the attention of the people at the top of your industry, but someone who is at the same level as you will be more approachable and a joint venture can be a win-win for both of you.
- Guberti has been very successful using his podcast to meet other people and get to know them on a personal level. An interview can often lead to a collaboration down the road.
The only thing I disagree with in the section about social media strategies is his advice to be on all of the platforms. I believe you should find out where the majority of your target audience hangs out and focus your energy on that platform. After you have mastered it, you can always add more.
Part 3 of the book gives advice on content creation strategies and ways to increase productivity. My favorite tips from this section are:
- Repurpose all of your content. If the original piece is a blog post, turn it into an audio post for your podcast and a presentation you can post on Slide Share. Not only will this strategy get your content seen in more places, but it will also reduce the amount of original content you have to create.
- Don’t create content if you can’t market and promote it properly. I am definitely guilty of this. I get excited about finishing a blog post and don’t always follow through with posting a link to it on my social media pages.
- Mention other people where appropriate in your content. Link to one of their articles or to their website. Reach out to them and send them a link to the article. They just might share it with their readers giving you more exposure.
- Use a form of the Socratic Method when planning your posts. For each topic in your outline, ask yourself what questions your reader might have about that topic and answer those questions.
You may be wondering if you should bother creating new content such as blog posts or podcasts. After all, as a nonfiction author, you’ve captured what your audience needs to know in your book.
Think about how you make purchases. When you first hear about a new product or service, you probably search the web to get information on that product.
Looking at reviews by other people are always a good source of information, but in the case of an authority or expert, you also want to see what their web presence looks like.
You want to know whether they’ve written any articles or been interviewed on podcasts. That’s where your free content comes in. Your home base or author website is the place where you can display that free content in one place. Of course, you will have a link to your book’s sale pages and links to other products or services you offer.
The book has some good ideas and strategies and it is worth taking the time to read it and develop an action plan to implement the ideas that resonate with you. The book is available on Amazon and you can purchase it through my affiliate link below.
