Flexing your expertise muscles

How do your clients know that you know your stuff?  How do they know you're not just using big fancy words and actually have no clue what you are talking about?

It's time to flex your muscles.

There are an abundance of question and answer sites out on the web these days, including popular resources like Yahoo! Answers, Answerbag, and Askeet.  Find the sections of these sites that contain topics relative to your expertise and start answering questions.  (NOTE: Make sure you know the correct answers to these questions before answering)  If you have your own website, place a link to your answers page on the site. Or put the URL on your business card.

I've mentioned before what a big fan I am of LinkedIn.  It's a great way to keep in touch with past business contacts.  The site also includes a really nice Q&A section, and lately I've been spending a little bit of time each day answering questions relative to the web and marketing fields.  I've gained a few new contacts from this, but more importantly the questions I've answered become part of my LinkedIn profile.  Prospective clients can view my profile, groups, recommedations, and my answers to past questions. 



By "flexing" your expertise muscles you'll add yet another tool to your belt as you work to gain the trust of potential clients and business partners.  This may even be a valuable advantage if you are looking for a career change since your future boss may be the one who visits your answers page.  You might actually be answering interview questions before the interview itself.

Building your professional network with LinkedIn

In my industry, referrals and customer references are important. In fact, at this point I haven't had to advertise my services yet and most of my work has come through referrals. One of the great tools for this has been LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is basically the MySpace or Facebook of professional networking. It allows you to list your education credentials, job history, and areas of expertise. It also allows you to "connect" to past colleagues, clients, friends, etc. By connecting to these people, their connections become extended connections of your own and you can find people offering services you might need, or vice versa.

One of the great things about the site is that people can write up recommendations for you, thus giving your work ethic some credibility. I know that on liftdevelopment.com I list some quotes by past clients, but how do you know I didn't just make those up? (I didn't by the way) With LinkedIn, each person that writes up a recommendation about me has their own profile, their own history, and their own connections. Therefore I cannot write up some bogus recommendations, and potential clients are assured that real people have recommended my work.

I encourage you to set up a profile on LinkedIn if you haven't already done so. One of the fun things is finding people you may have lost contact with. It's a great way to keep in touch and be assured you've always got their most up-to-date contact information.

My profile on LinkedIn is availabe here. Feel free to add me as a connection if we've interacted in the past.

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