If you’re already in business for yourself, or you’ve ever thought about starting your own business, you probably already know how important it is to get people to listen to you and traffic to your website. Most small business owners put up a website, get no visitors and then wonder why the only people visiting their site is their mom and themselves.

Here are 3 ways to become a recognized expert in your field.

An inch wide and a mile deep

Pick something that your ideal prospects and clients need from you. Don’t think you have to write everything you know about that particular subject. Just drill deeply into one part of it. Don’t become just some “armchair expert.” Drill deep with your expertise.

And here’s the really cool part. You want to become a known expert in your particular niche – on the internet or anywhere else. So while you drill deep, not only do you discover other ways you can explain and use that information, you also create other ways you can disseminate it. Via articles, videos, blog posts, guest blog posts, ebooks, virtual events, etc.

The deeper you go into a niche the more applications and vehicles you will discover. One discovery leads to, and builds upon, another.

This is how you become know as not just an expert in your niche, but as the expert in your niche.

Begin where you are

It might feel like an uphill battle right now, but it’s not as difficult to create original content and get it out there online. Wherever you are in your niche, you may not be able to see you as the expert from where you are right now. That’s fine. No one ever began feeling like the expert in their niche.

It’s like the story about driving in your car on a dark country road, and you can only see as far as your headlights take you. Now one thing you can do is stop, because you can’t see any further, and you won’t get anywhere. But that would be silly. What you do instead is just drive the length of your headlights. As you do that, it takes you a little further and little further and a little further and who knows where you can end up.

So begin where you are, go deeper into your topic and niche, and you’ll discover other super specific applications of your expertise and also create some new ones of your own.

Become a Star in Your Own Backyard

How about taking your content to your local area? I know we’re mostly talking about being seen as an expert online, but one of the fastest and best ways to build your tribe is by doing IRL, or in real life.

Meetup.com is a great way to begin a tribe locally. Start a group around your area of expertise and schedule your first event.

Then, find a place to hold your first meeting. There are tons of places in your local area that would love to attract people. Find a nice grocery store and see if they have a nice community room. Restaurants are a great place to bring your tribe. We found a local art gallery with a ton of room we used for free in exchange for our members eating and ordering from their café.

Test your content on your tribe. Offer them your products and services that can help them further. When you build your tribe, you build your platform and you build your business.