What is Authority? — Chris Garrett

Authority Bloggers seek out ways to increase their authority in their niche and in the eyes of Google, but what is authority anyway?

You might have seen already that I encourage people to be Authority Bloggers. To demonstrate your expertise and knowledge, build profile, credibility, and trust.

A question that comes up a lot is how do you know when you get there. What tells you that you have achieved Authority status?

What is Authority?

How Authority is Acquired

As I infer in my definition of authority above, in our context it is not power that is taken but an influence that is earned through being valuable, trustworthy, and being part of a community.

I see authority as a journey, a continuous process. There is no endpoint. In fact, if you stop working towards it, or feel like you have “done enough”, that is when you are most likely to lose it.

Authority for me is a combination of the following three factors. Please do supply your own definition, I am interested in hearing your point of view.

1. Personality – This is probably the most controversial factor so I put it first. I believe personality is an important component because to gain authority you need to be able to communicate, network, and encourage a loyal audience. Yes, if you can prove a massive amount of expertise despite a lousy personality you might still succeed, but I think people with open and friendly personalities have an easier time.
2. Expertise – With the other two traits you will have the capacity to succeed, you only have to look at television personalities and the celebrities that are hounded by paparazzi. With expertise, experience, knowledge, or talent, however, you have the capability to go beyond “famous for being famous“. Expertise is a draw, it pulls people in. Expertise serves a need. Combined with personality so you can explain things in an entertaining, beneficial way, you are golden.
3. Visibility – With the other two factors in your favor you should be well placed to develop visibility. By visibility, I mean getting noticed by the right people and building an audience. Probably the main difference between success and failure is the amount of attention you get in the community that you can best help. Of course, attention without substance is no use, so you must have the other two factors to back it up.

All three factors must be there in combination to get real progress, but the most critical are Expertise and Visibility if you had to choose two.

How Authority Works

Here is an example of how topical authority works in the face-to-face world, and business networking to be precise.

For you to succeed in business networking you need to have a friendly, approachable personality, and preferably be interesting to talk to. It is best if you can be the go-to person for a particular, valuable thing (experience? expertise?). Ideally, you will get referrals, it always helps if people have heard of you from someone else, but at the very least you need to be invited to the right events.

Personality ?

Visibility ?

Expertise (or Value) ?

Grow Your Authority Now

There is no end point to your authority journey but also you don’t have to have started a decade, a year or even a week ago. Start today.

Especially when starting out you have to build each element continuously and incrementally:

• Work on developing your “voice”, your writing, and your communication style.
• Blog, comment, link, guest post, contribute to forums and social media, network, DM, and any other way you can think of to get known with the people you are trying to reach.
• Of course, always make sure you offering unique value, and you are up to date on the news and techniques of your niche.