Let's assume that you have a bachelor or master's degree and at least 15 years of work experience. Next to that you might have followed several courses and programmes during your career to learn more specific skills. If this indeed applies to you, I can conclude that you must have a lot of knowledge in your field of business.
Most of the times you will take your knowledge for granted. There might even be moments that you doubt whether you really know enough. And may be even worse, you might overlook what you can use your knowledge for in your day-to-day business life.
Let me list three important things that your knowledge can do for you and for the people around you:
1. Your knowledge can help to increase your visibility.
Your knowledge can help you to become more visible amongst customers, colleagues and business partners. Once you are more visible, it will be easier to reach your personal and business goals.
Visibility is a word often used in relation to marketing and communication. What does it actually mean? With visibility I mean that more people in your network will see what you do. Let's say that you start to share your knowledge on LinkedIn via a blog and updates, then all your 300, 500 or 700+ connections on LinkedIn will see what you are working on. Your blogs and updates will remind them of your existence. Isn't that great! And if you share your knowledge on a consistent basis, you will be top-of-mind once they need someone like you.
Once you start to use Twitter to share your knowledge via tweets and links to your blog posts, people from outside your network will come across your content too. And if these people like what they read, they will share it with their network.
This is how you expand your visibility and reach by simply sharing what you know.
2. Your knowledge can inspire others.
Your knowledge can inspire the people around you: your customers, business partners, friends and colleagues. Let's say that you decide to share your knowledge via presentations which you post on slideshare and which you share with your network via LinkedIn and Twitter. Your content can be the piece of advice that others need to solve an issue they encountered, or it might provide answers to questions they have. This is how your knowledge will become a source of inspiration for people around you.
3. You knowledge can help you to increase your expert status.
With your knowledge you can position yourself as an expert in your field. You can do this as an individual, but also as a department or organization as a whole. What would you like to be known for amongst potential clients, your managers or colleagues? Do you realize that you can manage the perceptions of people around you? It all depends on what you say, do and share. And the more you share, the more people will see you as an expert in your field. Then people will not only come to you to listen to what you have to say, they will also share their stories and experiences with you, which again will provide you with new knowledge and ideas.
So by now I think you know what point I would like to make.
Start sharing what you know today!
Don't let your knowledge be a hidden gem that only reveals itself in personal conversations or during presentations. Use online channels to share your knowledge and to spread your word.
A question I often get is 'What are the things I can talk about online; what can I share?'
Let me give you a few examples.
I am currently preparing a Blogging Workshop in which I will train people on how to write inspiring blog post. This one day workshop already provides content for at least 4 to 5 blog posts on blogging (this might sound confusing), and each blog post can be translated to at least 4 to 5 different tweets and updates for LinkedIn.
Compare this to something bigger. Let's say you run a consultancy programme with a client which consists of several sessions over a period of four months. How many different topics do you discuss with your client during these sessions? How many pieces of advice do you give? How many blogs, updates or tweets could you write and create on these topics?
Now we can even take bigger projects as an example, like a white paper or research report. Do you see how many blog posts, updates and tweets you could derive from these?
Once you start to share your knowledge in different forms (blogs, updates, presentations) using social media and your website, your (potential) customers, business partners and colleagues don't have to wait for a personal conversation or presentation. They can grow and learn through your blog posts, updates and online presentations every day. This is good for them, and for you, as it will grow your visibility and expert status.
So what are you waiting for?