How to Become a Credible Authority
Seth Godin is unquestionably a credible authority.
He’s written over 20 best-selling books about marketing and business, has been blogging since 2002, has a podcast with over 450 episodes, and has created and taught multiple courses and workshops.
He’s also founded and sold several companies, one of which was acquired by Yahoo!, resulting in him becoming their Vice President of Direct Marketing.
Individually, any of these achievements is massive - and he’s accomplished them all.
While an extreme example, his career path demonstrates the three tenets of being a credible authority.
The first tenet is having a unique (though not necessarily contrarian or combative) opinion. Godin’s first marketing book, Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends, and Friends into Customers, popularized the titular concept - instead of interrupting your audience to steal their attention, communicate to them in a way that is anticipated, personal, and relevant.
This may not seem particularly radical now, but at the time, to quote Godin, “the Direct Marketing Association viewed the concept as a threat to their future.”
If Permission Marketing was the only work he produced, he might still be thought of as a credible authority - especially considering how progressive it was. However, he continued to consistently produce a large body of work, across multiple mediums, where he explored and refined his ideas and approach.
The second tenet is having the data to back up that opinion. In Godin’s case, selling Yoyodyne, which utilized permission marketing, to Yahoo! for $29.6 million is validation enough from a historical perspective.
Additionally, in an article from the time in Chief Marketer, Godin shares an anecdote about signing up 12,000 shoppers for a promotion in a single day day, and 75% of those shoppers opting into receiving a certificate for additional savings.
The third tenet is having the audience for that opinion to effectively proliferate. Godin had a lot of freedom when creating Permission Marketing, such as being allowed to art direct the cover, and getting approval from the publisher to send the first four chapters to anyone who signed up to receive them.
Both of these got attention, which created interest, generated sales, and built his audience. Inevitably, between his subsequent books and posts to his blog, that audience hit a critical mass of people - and when it did is when he unquestionably became a credible authority.
Because he had consistently demonstrated, over a lengthy period of time, that he was trustworthy.