🚩 Create Experts' Guides - TRUST-able #35 - Aug/Sep 2024

Key elements to build trust. What is an Experts’ Guide. Key benefits. How to create one in ten simple steps. How to find the experts.

Welcome back to a new edition of TRUST-able.

This newsletter focuses on one specific problem: how to convert more readers and potential customers into real ones through trust-building actions and strategies.

This specific issue focuses on credibility and how to rapidly grow it by creating Experts’ Guides.

If you want to know more about me, what I am doing and feeling, see the last section of this issue.

from Koh Samui island (TH)
Robin Good

In this issue:

1. Key Elements To Build Trust (Poll / Results)

2. What Is an Experts’ Guide

3. Key Benefits of Publishing an Experts’ Guide

4. How To Create an Experts’ Guide (10 Steps)

5. How To Find the Experts
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6. Experts’ Guides: 10 Real-World Examples (Premium Edition)

7. Doubts & Questions (Premium Edition)

8. Experts Recommendations on Creating Experts’ Guides (Premium Edition)

I hope you will find the contents of this issue, stimulating and useful.

If so, please do let me know by placing a *like*, by replying or by directly supporting this newsletter with a Premium subscription.

1) Key Elements To Build Trust (Poll Results)

Here the results of one of the two polls I shared with you in he last issue.

It clearly shows that - according to you, the readers of this publication - credibility is, by far, the key factor that contributes the most in building trust.

New Question / Poll

If credibility then, is the element that contributes most to build trust, which one of the following attributes, do you think is most important to gain such credibility?

a) Consistency
Quality production / communication over an extended period of time (years)

b) Public Recognition
Awards, highly reviewed books, speaking at events, mentions, citations, followers, fans, views, visitors

c) Communication Style
Type of content, editorial style, communication approach, listening abilities

d) Credentials / Experience
Academic certifications & degrees, years of work, professional titles, etc.

e) Building in Public (Transparency)
Consistent and systematic public sharing of strategies used and results obtained

I look forward to see your opinions on this, and to share the results with you in the next issue.

Thanks for participating.

2) What Is an Experts’ Guide

If you were to ask me, which is (one of) the best and fastest way to gain credibility and visibility with one content tactic, I would certainly suggest creating an “Experts’ Guide”.

This is a strategy that leverages the credibility of other experts to boost your own.

An Experts’ Guide, also often referred to as an Experts Roundup, is a document that curates answers and insights from a group of selected experts on a specific topic.

Its key value is that it offers multiple, diverse, qualified and credible viewpoints and suggestions on a well-defined issue.

To create one you need a set of well thought-out questions that you send to a group of publicly recognized experts in your market niche, asking for their personal advice, and which you then curate and publish into a public guide.

3) Key Benefits of an Experts’ Guide (4)

1. Value

Creating an Experts’ guide allows you to pack a lot of extra value into one content resource. 

2. Authority

By interviewing a group of experts, you align with individuals who have already established credibility in the field, transferring some of that credibility to you.

You also indirectly communicate that:

• You know the field and who are the key thought leaders in it

• You are a reliable source of high-quality information, as you are able to distinguish between credible experts and less reliable sources.

• The experts in the field know you or respect you enough to allow you to interview them.

In addition, the positive attributes of the experts (credibility, knowledge, reliability) extend to you, enhancing your trustworthiness.

Interviewing the top experts in your niche demonstrates professionalism and a dedication to quality, reinforcing the audience’s perception of you as a trustworthy and reliable professional.

3. Visibility

In times where it is getting more and more difficult to be found through Google, what I see as a winning tactic is one in which you build curated resources that become in turn valuable source references for both Google and the new AI search engines.

As you can verify yourself, the new AI search engines like Perplexity or Bing Co-Pilot, provide by default next to their answers, the sources they have tapped into to “build” their replies. 

The interesting thing is that the preferred sources for these AI engines are the ones that bring together, organize and list multiple resources, viewpoints and ideas. 

And that’s what an experts’ guide essentially is.

4. Partnerships

Experts often have their own following.

Cultivating personal relationships with those who become part of your expert list can lead to valuable reciprocal learning and to many potential opportunities including cross-promotion, business partnerships, and project collaborations.

4) How To Create an Experts’ Guide in 10 Simple Steps

Here’s my own a simplified and easy-to-understand task-list for creating an Experts’ Guide.

1. Identify the hottest topics (the biggest problems, frustrations and needs) your specific audience has. From this list extract a set of 5 to 10 key questions.

2. Find a group of top experts in your niche and their contacts.

3. Contact and invite your selected experts to participate / contribute to your experts’ guide.

4. Send the set of questions you have prepared to the experts who have accepted to participate

5. Give them a deadline and send a reminder one week before the deadline is over.

6. Collect all of the answers received and create a curated experts’ guide for each one of the questions. You don’t need to do them all at once, but you must be aware that each question, associated with the experts’ answers already makes up one experts’ guide. Thus, if you have sent out 5 questions, you can curate 5 expert’s’ guides. Each one containing one question and all of the experts opinions.

7. Add an introduction, a chapter with your suggestions and advice, and if possible a section with useful resources relevant to the topic of the guide. 

8. Add a one-paragraph-long bio for each expert who has participated with links to his/her website / work.

9. Publish the guide, notify the experts and promote it across your communication channels.

10. After some time, take the second question you have sent out and all the relative experts’ answers and repeat steps 7 through 10 to create a new experts’ guide.

As you can see, an Experts’ Guide author work consists of many tasks:

• finding and vetting the experts,

• identifying the right questions,

• editing the answers received

• curating and organizing the different viewpoints

• adding introduction, context

• writing a synthesis of what emerges

• complementing the guide with useful info / resources / tools.

Don’t forget to cite and link all the experts that have contributed to the guide and to notify them once the Experts’ Guide is online, so that they can share it with their own readers. 

5) Where To Find the Experts?

Now that you have a good idea of what an Experts’ Guide is, you are probably wondering how will you be able to find a good number of experts to make this all possible.

Besides the ones you already know and follow, how do you go about finding other experts in your niche that could be included in your first Experts’ Guide?

In the Premium section of TRUST-able #33, there is a section titled Finding Experts that showcases 25+ ways and 50+ sources to find experts in just about any sector.

Here is a short excerpt from it:

1. Search on LinkedIN
   Although not exclusively for experts, LinkedIn is a powerful tool for finding professionals in various industries.

2. Search on Amazon for books on the specific topic you’re interested in

3. Check the bibliographies of those books via Google Scholar or Library Genesis

4. Search on Brave, Mojeek and Kaggle

5. Search on EXA.ai

6. Search on YouTube

7. Search on Academia.edu / Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Consensus for papers on that topic

8. Search inside newsletter directories (Lettergrowth, InboxReads, etc.)

9. Ask your friends and connections in that sector

10. Once you find one, ask the expert himself

11. Check the lineup of conferences and events on that topic

12.  Search inside libraries of academic papers like the ones listed here.

13. Search podcasts via ListenNotes and Matchmaker.fm

14. Check academic and professional course offerings online and who teaches them on: Coursera, EdX, Udacity and similar ones.

15. Check non-academic course offerings on Udemy, Skillshare, etc.

16. Search on public forums by using the Discussions button for Google Search or one of these dedicated forum search tools: 

    1. Find a Forum

    2. Crowdview

    3. BoardReader

    4. Forum Search

    5. Hive Index

    6. Brave Search - Discussions

    7. GummySearch

17. Check inside expert hubs and directories like:

• ExpertFile
  worlds largest open-access, curated search engine for experts.

• Expertise Finder
  lists over 30,000 experts (mainly professors) in the U.S. and Canada

• Intellex
  Verified experts in consulting and research

In the Premium Edition:

1) 10 Best Real-World Examples of Experts’ Guides

Get inspired by ten examples of quality, published experts guides available online.

2) Doubts & Questions - Advanced FAQ

1. How do I contact the experts? Where do I find their contacts?

2. How can I convince an expert to participate since I am a nobody?

3. How many questions should I ask?

4. Do I have to ask them to write, record or video their answers?

5. How much time do I give them?

6. Do I need to use all the answers I receive? 

7. In which order do I put their answers?

8. Should I edit what they say?

9. Do I also participate as an expert in providing the answers?

10. What else should I add or write?

11. How do I give them credit?

3) Experts Recommendations on Creating Experts’ Guides

See what three communication and marketing experts say about creating and using Experts’ Guides.

Personal Journal

I am a bit scared, but very excited and curious to see what’s going to happen.

I have just relocated myself 12 time zones ahead of where I was.

From sunny Mexico to south-east Asia.

Once again on a beautiful island.

After 5 years in Terceira (Azores, PT) and 4 in Holbox (MX), I felt it was time for a new adventure in a completely different place.

I have visited Thailand and its beautiful three sister islands (Samui, Phangan & Tao) many times since 1998, but I have never come here to live as a resident for an extended period of time.

In 2020, after visiting again I felt that the time had come to make the move, but COVID exploded and the restrictions imposed made everything impossible.

It was then a friend, met in Thailand a few months earlier, who alerted me that Mexico was open and worthwhile considering.

And so, thanks to Google Maps, I discovered the Mexican island of Holbox, which has been a wonderful and unforgettable home for these last four years.

Holbox it’s a magical place, with truly beautiful calm waters and a very friendly social vibe.

I actually never thought of leaving, but then, signals started to pop-up here and there, that made me realize that maybe the universe was suggesting me to move to the next episode of my own adventure.

Two, the main reasons:

• To get out of what had become a wonderful comfort zone, beautiful and fun to live, but without enough challenges and depth for my character

• To try a new experience, in a place where I could do some of the things that in Mexico I had not been able to realize

Now that I am here in Koh Samui, I have no idea of how long I will remain.

Everything is new and different, it will take a little time to adjust.

Time will tell.

In the end, I am here to learn, all that I can.

Wish me good luck.

Follow a path with a heart.

The time is NOW.

From sunny Holbox island (MX)
Robin Good

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