The Key Is To Create Interesting, Unique, and Relevant CONTENT.

Then Find Bigger And Bigger Audiences.

“You should turn your business into a TV show.”

When I heard this advice from my friend Troy Dunn in about 2005, I thought he was crazy. Turn my business into a TV show? What does that even mean? Who would even want to watch such a thing?

Before I could voice my objections, he clarified: “You should think first and foremost about your expertise in your field. Anyone who is in business SHOULD consider themselves to be an expert. If so, the best way to solidify yourself as an expert is to create a TV show about your business. It makes you the unquestioned leader in the field… not just locally, but everywhere.”

And he knew what he was talking about. His company was a special-flavor private investigation firm that specialized in tracking down and reuniting long-lost family members. His clients were typically adopted kids who were trying to find either their birth parents and/or birth siblings.

He got in early on the “reality TV” thing by volunteering to have his services documented on daytime TV talk shows like Sally Jesse Raphael, Montel Williams, Oprah, and so forth. His claim to fame back then was that he held the world record for having appeared on more TV shows as a guest than anyone else. Think about that for a minute.

A few years later, as reality TV morphed from competition shows like Survivor and American Idol into shows about literally ANYTHING (think: Treehouse Masters, Pawn Stars, Storage Wars), Troy took his expertise and passion for TV to a new level by creating a show called “The Locator” on WE TV. After 5 seasons, he moved over to TNT with a show called “APB with Troy Dunn.” I’ll be darned if Troy didn’t do exactly what he had told me to do: He made his business into a TV show.

Meanwhile, back on earth…. the point of this article is NOT to tell you to turn your business into a TV show—although you shouldn’t necessarily discount that either (more later). The point is to find ways to showcase your expertise so that you can position yourself as an authority and enjoy the credibility that comes with it.

Below are several ideas to get you started, each one potentially building on the others. The foundational idea is to think of yourself as a CONTENT PROVIDER; your job is to generate interesting, topic-relevant information that’s packaged in a way that makes it easy to consume and instantly appealing.

Here we go:

Blogging: When starting a blog, most people focus on the mechanics of getting it up and running (getting a site, how to post, what to call it, etc.). That stuff is stupid-easy: just Google “how to start a blog” and you’ll find infinite resources. We won’t waste time on that here.

The harder part is creating killer content that people will actually want to read. To crack the code, use this rough formula:

• First, define what kinds of things you want to write about. I recommend that you expand your expertise beyond the relatively narrow services that you offer (windows, roofing, bathrooms, etc.) and focus on all things home related. This could include lawn & garden, energy efficiency, interior and exterior repairs/maintenance/remodeling, and so forth.
• Next, sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil and come up with 100 ideas for blog posts. Yes, 100. Getting recognized as an expert requires actual, you know, expertise… and if you can’t come up with 100 blog ideas, you’re probably not an expert. It might take you several days or even a couple of weeks, but just carry a notebook around or something and look for ideas. Look at other blogs. Go to Barnes & Noble and browse books and magazines. Read the news online. You will find ideas. Make a list.
• Sketch the outline for the first five articles. You’re not writing novels or masterpieces here, but you do need to have a cohesive thought process that explains things in an interesting, relevant way. Create an outline for the posts so you know where you’re going to start and end.
• Now it’s time to actually write. The good news is you can farm the writing out to somebody else if you stink at writing. It’s important to already have created the outlines I just mentioned so the person isn’t starting from scratch, and it’s important to be available to them during the writing process so they can ask questions. But you absolutely DO NOT have to write this yourself. To find a writer, log on to Elance.com and post a job. Make sure you specify NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS, no exceptions!
• Once the piece is written, go back and create a great headline for each article. Sometimes your article writer can do this; you may want to consider having a second writer for the headlines. If you want to know what great headlines look like, just scroll through the news items at Yahoo.com.
• Boom, you have great blog content! Now do it again for five more articles, and keep going.

Local Newspapers: Once you have a bunch of articles written, it’s time to find a bigger audience for the things that you’ve written. How about the local newspaper? I’m talking about the hyper-local one that lists stuff like high school sports results and what happened at the last city council meeting. These papers are starving for great content—and they have almost no budget by which to procure it! Hammer, meet nail!

It’s critical that you have actual articles ALREADY written…. And not just “ideas” for some articles. Approach the editor via phone or email and see if they are interested. If they are not, just continue to email them 3x per week until they give in. Have them post your articles on their website if possible; this will create links to your website that will juice contractor SEO results.

Local Radio Shows: The next rung up the ladder is the local radio show. There are usually a couple of talk radio stations in the market that will sell space on Saturday and/or Sunday mornings. Sure, you’ll have to buy the airtime, but it’s relatively cheap considering you’re about to become the local expert. If you purchase a thirty-minute segment, you can actually sell advertising to ancillary companies (landscape, plumbers, etc.) to defray your costs.

Naturally, you’ll want to promote your radio show on your home improvement website… and you’ll want to record every episode and stream them on your website. Trust me, nobody will know that you paid for the airtime; they’ll just think you’re awesome.

Local Television Stations: Once you’ve built your credibility as a local radio personality, approach the local network affiliates about becoming a subject matter expert that they can turn to when they have stories about home improvement related subjects. Nothing is as powerful as TV for establishing credibility—NOTHING. It will take some patience to make this happen—and it has to be approached in the methodical way that I’ve described here… but it absolutely CAN be done.

Once you’ve established yourself as a subject matter expert, you can then start to suggest feature stories that they can produce to run on slow news days. The topics for these pieces are already found in your blogs—now you can turn your blogs into news segments.

Homemade TV Shows: If you’re really feeling ambitious, you can create your own feature news stories that you publish on your own contractor website. Essentially, you just take blog postings and make video versions, but instead of the news station doing it with all their fancy equipment, you hire a local video production company to do it for you. The good news is it’s not as expensive as you think. The bad news is, it’s still pretty expensive. A cheaper way to go is create a “Google Hangout” live stream…. I won’t detail this here, but Google it if you’re interested.

Real TV Shows: The pinnacle of expert-dom, of course, is the actual full-fledged TV show. Suffice it to say, this is not a level that many of you will make it to—or want to make it to. To pull off the TV show, you have to have something either crazy interesting, or you have to be crazy full of personality.

The good news is that you can firmly establish your credibility with the methods listed below… so what are you waiting for? Get started!

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© 2015 – 2016, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.