If you are starting content marketing from scratch, it can be tough to build a reputation. But doing so is essential to succeed in the content marketing game.

Today, I regularly contribute to around a dozen blogs, journals, and websites. I have to turn down a lot of requests to write content. But it wasn’t always this way.

Early on, I was doing all I could just to get a handful of people to read my posts. It was really hard. It took me ten years to get where I am today with my high output of content.

In other articles, I’ve explained how to do content marketing, guest posting, and how it all fits in with digital marketing.

The purpose of this brief article is to show you how building a content marketing reputation works.

Choose your focus.

In order to build a reputation, you have to decide on the one thing that will define you. Notable people — people with reputations — are known for something specific.

• Michael Jordan, star basketball player
• Adele, great artist
• Mark Zuckerberg, social media
• Elon Musk, outstanding entrepreneur

Here, I need to offer a quick disclaimer: It’s very difficult to build a reputation unless you actually do or have done something.

As Henry Ford said, “You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.” You need to possess a skill, a talent, experience, a success, an interest, or passion in one area.

It’s impossible to forge a content marketing reputation if you write about pet goldfish one day and bond investing the next. You need focus!

If you focus on goldfish only, you can become the worldwide Internet go-to resource for all things goldfish. If someone searches for any topic related to his or her pet goldfish, your name and your content will come up.

Decide what you want to write about, and focus.

Establish a method.

Next, you need to settle on a place for producing content.

Most people choose a blog.

That’s fine, but don’t bind yourself to that. The way to build a reputation is to stand out from the crowd in some way.

You may discover that your thing isn’t writing, but speaking.

John Lee Dumas found his content niche in podcasts. His website, EOFire, provides nonstop inspiration to entrepreneurs and a steady output of top-notch podcasts.

Maybe you prefer webinars. Webinars are a great way to attract ears and eyes. Although I still maintain blogging, my efforts in creating webinars have paid huge dividends.

Email content is another great option. Ramit Sethi has some of the best email updates that I’ve read in the personal finance and online business space.

With content marketing, you have options. Build your reputation on the platform that makes the most sense for you.

Deliver content of the highest quality.

This is the toughest part about content marketing: Quality.

I’m talking about untouchable, 100% pure, unalloyed, grade A, high rate, sterling quality. There is no substitute.

There is another way to gain a reputation, and that’s with high output. In other words, you sacrifice your quality and push out more content than anyone else.

The problem is, that’s really difficult to do. As a solo writer, it’s nearly impossible to compete with, say, a Hubspot, which uses the services of dozens of writers and publishes multiple blogs daily.

Besides, you lose quality. Today, enough people are producing enough content. In fact, some are complaining that we’re collectively producing too much content for content marketing to even be effective.

I would argue that we’re not producing too much. Instead, we’re producing content that lacks quality.

The term “quality” can be a bit vague, so let me provide some quick tips on producing high-quality content:

• Your content should solve a real problem.
• Your content should be free of grammatical or typographical errors.
• Your content should be written with authority and mastery of the subject.
• Your content should advance something new, or at least in a new way.

Find the absolute best content in your industry, and do even better.

Focus on promotion as much as on creation.

One of the most damaging myths about content marketing is that if you create it, they will come.

I’m a huge believer in the power of SEO, and it’s true that you’ll gain organic search traffic simply by producing content. However, you can’t rely on organic search alone. Instead, it’s up to you to promote your content as much as possible.

Here are some ways to do this:

• Create an email list and send out an email update every time you post new content.
• Tweet about it several times.
• Post it on Google+.
• Link to it in a Facebook status update.
• Mention it on Instagram.
• Ask influencers to share it on social media.
• Ask influential bloggers to link to it.
• Ask for social shares.

I encourage you to build your social media in conjunction with your content marketing. The two work together.

Guest blog.

Guest posting is one of the most powerful ways to launch your reputation into a totally new orbit.

The people who build content reputations do so through guest posting.

Look at Danny Inny, who built the 7-figure income blog Firepole Marketing. He guest posted on Copyblogger and saw enormous growth.

Will Blunt founded Blogger Sidekick. When he started guest posting on Hubspot, his email list grew like crazy.

Alex Turnbull at GrooveHQ tells about how they reached an audience of 1 million people through guest blogging. They posted content on AngelHack, Buffer, KISSmetrics, OnStartups, and Shopify.

Boom. The traffic poured in.

That’s the sheer power of guest blogging.

That, my friend, is a reputation.

Conclusion

Victor Hugo wrote this:

Whether true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence on their lives, and particularly on their destinies, as what they do.

You first build your reputation by what you do. Then, you build your content marketing reputation by what you say or write.

Others will recognize this, respect it, and discuss it. Your reputation is born, and you establish your niche in the content marketing universe.

In order to maintain this reputation, you’ll need to keep working at it consistently, sometimes shifting strategies, but always remaining focused on high-quality output.

Are you building a content marketing reputation? How are you going about it?