Timothy A. Koonce: Once you’re “KNOWN,” here’s how to stay that way

known

By Ian Cleary, {grow} Community Member

In Mark’s book called “KNOWN,” he walks his readers through an excellent process for becoming known for something as a way to build your personal brand.

But everyone who is ‘known’ for something shares one common concern – losing that recognition.

And that concern is valid.

Just because you are currently known as one of the top experts in your niche, there’s no guarantee that things are going to stay that way.

If you want to stay known in your niche, then you need to work on it!

Here are five ways to make sure you don’t lose the status that took you a lot of hard work to achieve:

1. Build relationships

When you become known, you’ll naturally start building relationships with other influential people in your niche and their recognition of your expertise will help solidify your ‘known’ status.

Don’t let those relationships slide. Continue to support and promote their work. Meet them at events and continue the conversation. In short – put in the effort to sustain and strengthen those relationships.

But keep in mind that it’s not just about the existing relationships, because the important people in any industry change.

Are there new kids on the block you need to start reaching out to?

2. Never stop learning

Change and innovation are inevitable in almost every industry. You will see changes happening in your niche and staying on top of what’s happening will help keep you ahead of the curve.

You need to constantly be on the lookout for opportunities to further educate yourself to stay inspired and relevant, and generate new ideas.

In order to stay in a constant learning mode, practice the following:

Regularly attend industry conferences and learn from your peers
Buy relevant training courses online to advance your skills
Attend free webinars that focus on different topics relevant to your niche or industry
Read influential blogs in your niche.

I recently attended a free webinar by Andrew Davis about building a speaking career and I realized that I have to change my content if I want to become known as a keynote speaker in my industry. One hour of my time will result in a lot of extra revenue!

There are some pretty great people in my niche and I allocate time to stalk them. Mark Schaefer is one of those people.

3. Create valuable content

Often I see people become known in their field, and then completely forget about how big of a role content plays in keeping that authority.

Most of them will typically have the same excuse – they’ve become too busy doing “actual work” to create content on a regular basis.

However, keeping yourself known in the industry requires that you consistently share expertise and provide value to your audiences and your peers. And content is your best chance to achieve that!

Plus, strategic content helps you:

Build community
Formulate your ideas
Generate more awareness about your personal brand
Become a thought leader

Mark’s book emphasized the importance of consistency. Keep at it!

4. Evolve Incrementally

As our industry evolves what we became known for may need to evolve, too.

But you don’t want to take a big leap in a new direction because that will confuse your audience.

Analyze where your industry is going so you understand how you need to evolve and make changes incrementally over time.

5. Listen to your audience

How are the needs of your audience changing and how does this effect what you do?

You need to keep your finger on the pulse of your audience and there are several ways to do that.

The most obvious one is getting the answers you need via surveys. Even though surveys can be a useful tool for gathering feedback, you can’t rely on them to provide 100% straight answers.

The best way to truly understand your audience is to track their behavior online. This will give you a much better idea of what their needs and interests are. What links are they clicking on in your emails? what emails are they opening? what web pages are they visiting? and how long do they spend there?

Summary

Mark has made it a lot easier for people to become ‘Known’ through his awesome book.

But unless you keep working on your “known status,” you can easily lose it. Just follow the five tips above and you won’t have to fear losing your authority.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Ian Cleary is a content marketer, marketing tech expert, keynote speaker, and the founder of RazorSocial. RazorSocial provides consultancy services around the areas of content marketing and influencer marketing to some of the leading brands across the world. Ian is a contributor to Entrepreneur and Forbes.