Isn't the web exciting these days? It wasn't long ago that you needed a web designer to make changes to your site. As a web designer I always hated that idea. Web companies used to charge to 'maintain' the content on websites - yuk!

Thankfully over the last few years the landscape has radically changed. These days it's totally feasible for the average person or business owner to set themselves up as a trusted authority by producing remarkable content on their own website by themselves - and it rocks!

Over four articles I'm going to give you some tips on building trust and authority via the web. In this first article I will cover the basics of what platform you need to make it happen.

WordPress

WordPress started out as a blogging (or content publishing) platform and thankfully it's made its way across to being a hugely popular website management system. More websites run WordPress than any other system for a few reasons:

1. It's free
2. It's really easy to use
3. It's the ultimate tool for blogging or creating awesome content

I'm not saying you need WordPress to be an online expert but it's the platform I recommend in most cases.

To use the web to become a trusted authority in your field you need your own website, it needs to be set up to enable you to really easily add articles, images, videos etc and to encourage engagement and sharing. This is what WordPress does really well.

So step one is get WordPress or get a site that enables you to freely and easily create great content.

Site Features

Other than the ability to easily add your own content (a Content Management System - CMS) there are a number of other things you will need from your site. Here is a quick list of what features you will need on your site to be able to achieve trusted expert status:

1. A blog - there is no better way to easily produce articles than a blog.
2. A simple, clean and professional design (poor design can be a big turn off). This is easily achieved by finding a good web designer or using a theme from a reputable company.
3. A clear goal (e.g. do you want people to sign up, or download a PDF, or join your mailing list)
4. Great content and lots of it (articles, ebooks, videos, white papers, cheat sheets whatever your audience will find interesting). Make it personal and authentic, funny, even controversial wouldn't hurt. Remarkable content is just that - something that people will remark about - boring won't work.
5. Ideally some sort of point of difference that makes your site stand out - an angle - a uniqueness. Whether it's the design, or your particular approach, the way you write, your background etc.
6. Features that make it easy for people to consume your content, such as white space, decent size and well contrasted font, RSS subscription for us geeks, newsletter subscription for everyone else, use of multiple media types e.g. text and images and video, short punchy paragraphs and lists.
7. Ways that make it easy for people to engage with and share your content including Facebook and Twitter integration on your main pages and like and re-tweet buttons on your articles, a commenting facility, polls etc.

If you have ticked off every item in this list, then you are well on the way to having the platform to set you up as the trusted authority.

In the remaining posts I'll go through some tips on how to do it.