The Savvy Entrepreneur

How can reading improve your status as an expert (listening fits under this category as well)? In 2 ways, reading helps you to be:

1. Reactive: Keeping up-to-the minute with what’s been and is being said in your field keeps you fresh. Then you can readily prepare, participate and communicate (react) to what’s happening as it’s developing.
2. Proactive: Reading will help you identify what has NOT yet been said on a subject. If you find a subject, issue, challenge, comment or anything else that has yet to be broached (maybe because it’s controversial or sensitive, or maybe no one’s thought of it yet), set yourself apart by being the first to start the discussion, using the methods I suggest in the Achieving Expert Status series.

To be an expert, you must read to remain up-to-date on everything concerning your field, target market, clients and competition. You need to know (and use) names, events, tools and terms (including the lingo) circulating in your field of expertise.

Imagine how quickly your reputation as an expert would increase by consistently being the first to inform your audience of recent and upcoming developments in your field. Simply put, you need to know what’s being discussed in your field, and you need to find ways of either (a) being one of the first to know, or (b) being the first to come up with an answer, solution, tool, method, event, etc.

Reading is a natural component of continuing your education and keeps you ‘in the know’. You must stay current and competitive; as such, you must read, learn, study, examine and research regularly.

The internet is a great tool to help you get started. Check up on your competition, visit the blogs and message boards your target market visits, subscribe to newsletters that relate to you service. Don’t limit yourself to just the internet. Buy magazines and books that pertain to your field.

Read what the experts in your field are writing. Get your hands — er, eyes — on whatever your target market’s reading. I’m not saying you must agree or subscribe to everything you read, but you do need to know the different schools of thoughts that are out there in order to distinguish yourself from the pack.

Reading serves another very important purpose — it provides you with inspiration, discussion topics and ammunition for writing your articles, newsletters, blog entries, and anything else. Don’t keep the information to yourself. Agree, disagree, review, comment on, submit a case study… use what you read as substance for your communication strategies.

Be reasonable; don’t be an information junkie. There’s only so much you can read, so much you can take in and so much you can do with the information.

Reading alone won’t automatically give you expert status. Seek unique and practical marketing strategies, connecting what you read with the services you offer.

Basically you want to read as much as you need, in order to stay current, to know what you’re talking about (and what’s being talked about) and to generate new ideas.

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