Writing for Expert Status; And an opportunity to be published

In a past "Profit Tip", I wrote about the importance of writing to build your credibility, authority and expert status. This can include writing a column for your community newspaper, contributing to a newsletter or writing an occasional article for a glossy lifestyle magazine.

This writing gives you great exposure to prospects and I encourage you to do as much of it as possible. You may also want to write for your local, regional or national trade associations as well. Also, don't ignore some of the many industry trade magazines that are available. The associations and magazines are always looking for professionals to write for them.

I realize your prospects are not reading APLD's "The Designer" newsletter or "Lawn & Landscape" magazine, so you may be thinking "why should I write for these publications when my prospects won't even see it"?

Does it really matter that your prospects don't read these? Not really. All that matters is that your prospects know that you wrote for these. So you need to let them know! Put a "Press Page" on your website and list, with a thumbnail image, the various industry magazines and newsletters you've contributed to. This gives you instant authority in the eyes of the prospect.

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On a related note, I'm very excited to be announcing that I'm going to be writing and publishing a book for landscape professionals like yourselves. I'm doing this all in 90 days actually (beginning yesterday).

Here's the cool part--I'm not writing the book totally on my own. I'm looking for contributors. Why? Because if the book is a total failure I can't take all the blame, right? Just kidding...

The real reason is because I want to include real-world experiences from other folks like you, not just regurgitate a bunch of stuff I've learned from you and others.

I'm specifically looking for marketing tactics that have worked well for you in your business, big or small, that you think others could replicate.

I just wrote a blog post explaining everything--the strategy, the challenges I've set, etc...

If you want to be considered as a contributor, or just follow my 90 day experiment, read the blog post for more details.

Here's the post:

http://bitly.com/KSUtm