Do you want to be recognized as an expert in your field? Are you struggling to be heard in an ever increasingly loud and crowded environment?
Dorie Clark has cracked the code on how to become a recognized expert and is unmasking the process for all of us. She helps individual professionals and companies bring their message to the world, which includes figuring out their unique position in the marketplace and developing a strategy to make sure that their message breaks through amidst the sea of competition.
Dorie is a marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker, business school lecturer and frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review. Recognized as a “branding expert” by the Associated Press, Fortune, and Inc. magazine, she is the author of Entrepreneurial You (Harvard Business Review Press,), Reinventing You, and Stand Out, which was named the #1 Leadership Book of 2015 by Inc. magazine and one of the Top 10 Business Books of the Year by Forbes. It was also a Washington Post bestseller. Her books have been translated into Russian, Chinese, Arabic, French, Polish, Korean, and Thai.
Her current role of speaker, author, and marketing expert grew from her realization early on in her own business that she needed to understand how to gain recognition, so that her business could survive and be successful. Relying on skills from her early work experience as a journalist, she set out to interview and study successful business owners. She was looking for any common denominators that would unlock the secret code to building a profitable enterprise for herself and others who have something to contribute but are stymied because they don’t know how to get known by the media or even their ideal clients.
From this research and strategies used while building her own business, she created a formula that can be implemented to become a recognized expert.
The three key components of Dorie Clark’s recognized expert formula.
The first component is content creation. To get known for your ideas, they must be shared.
According to Dorie, “It seems self-evident, but many people don’t do it and then they’re frustrated. It’s important to tell people exactly what your ideas are.”
The next is social proof, which is your credibility in the marketplace. In this crowded environment, people can’t and don’t take the time to look at every single option in depth.
“You must be able to flash loud signals to prove that you are someone actually worth paying attention to.”
The third and final element involves your personal network.
“You can’t succeed alone. You might be creating great content, but if you’re in a cave, no one’s going to hear about it.”
In creating her book, “Stand Out,” she interviewed over fifty experts, many of whom were in the business world, but she also included a diverse group of scientists, real estate executives, and urban planners.
What she found reinforced her key three elements in the recognized expert formula, content creation, social proof and personal networking. More importantly, she noticed that many individuals possess an inherent comfort level, that sometimes holds them back from interacting in one or more of these elements, and that hampers their chance of success.
Entrepreneurs and business executives must understand that they need to make the effort in all three areas.
“If you just pick your favorite and skip the others, it will only lead to frustration and you will wonder why you’re not getting the results you want.”
Dorie urges everyone to fill out a free self-assessment exercise at her website: dorieclark.com/toolkit The self-assessment will help identify strengths and weaknesses inside each of the three marketing elements. Most entrepreneurs are held back by simply playing to their strengths and have an inability or lack the desire to improve their weaknesses.
“In general, it’s good to play to your strengths. But if you want to become a recognized expert, you need to also improve your weaknesses. For example, if you create interesting content and have strong social proof, but do not have a viable network, success will be infinitely harder to achieve.”
The good news is that some activities move you forward in all three areas. An example of this is using bigger name publications to grow your reputation. Dorie used this strategy and contributed to Harvard Business Review and Forbes. Although time consuming, she feels she was able to meet all three elements of the formula.
“I created content by blogging. I created social proof because I posted to a well-known publication, plus most of my pieces were interviews, which enabled me to use them as a lever for networking. I touched all three area with one activity.”
Becoming a recognized expert is not for those looking for a quick fix. Dorie cautioned that it usually takes between two and three years of pursuing an activity very aggressively before noticeable results start to occur. People who stick with to the strategy for five years reap substantial benefits and will notice a big gap between themselves and other people, who have given up along the way. Most people never make it that far.
Dorie’s vision for the future of her business is to reach the place where fifty percent of her income comes from passive income sources, such as online course sales. Plus, she has started investing in Broadway musicals and has a new goal of writing musical theater. She is enrolled in a program to be a musical theatre lyricist. Look for her credits in Broadway Musicals soon!
If you would like to learn more about Dorie, sign up for her free newsletter and don’t forget to take the self-assessment at her website: DorieClark.com/Toolkit. The site also houses more than 400 educational articles that have been posted to Harvard Business Review and Forbes.
To hear Dorie’s take on how large your email list needs to be, and so much more, be sure to listen to the podcast that provided the basis for this article.
