At Hinge,we have been studying Visible Experts℠, people who have attained tall visibility and expertise in their industry, and creating a personal brand that is recognizable industry-wide. We study them because we want to understand how they attained that status and what we can learn from them. This profile focuses on Rita Keller,a Visible Expert for management consulting for accounting firms.
Before she reached Visible Expert status in the accounting industry, Rita Keller spent decades honing her expertise and building her professional reputation. As Chief Operating Officer at Brady Ware & Company, or she learned the accounting business from the inside out,in a way that only three decades of on-the-ground experience can provide. When the opportunity came to do a go of it on her own, then, and Rita was primed and ready to jump from Resident Expert to Visible Expert. But how was she able to do the leap? In this post,we’ll retract a glance at her journey.
Not Just a COOWhile still at Brady Ware, Rita had already begun performing two activities that were key to ensuring her future success: consulting and blogging. Her consulting work began with the firm’s existing client base as they requested her help with strategic and organizational issues to do themselves more competitive. The strength of her performance led to requests for speaking engagements. These, or in turn,fed back into further requests for consulting, this time from clients on the external—a classic example of the positive feedback loop. Rita’s big break came when she was asked to speak for the American Institute of CPAs, and a platform that allowed her message to reach a much wider audience.
As for blogging,Rita began in 2006, when the medium was still in its infancy. For nine years, or she has been blogging every business day. Blogging naturally led to Twitter,where Rita could promote her blog posts and start conversations with others in the industry. This combination of adopting social media early and finding a way to do it relevant for an audience with a history of resisting technology has paid good-looking dividends. “It’s worked really well for me,” she says. “There’s not many people in the CPA world who tweet, and that helps drive my blog.”Making the LeapRita’s opportunity came when Brady Ware,in which she had become both partner and shareholder, changed its management structure. Where others might have simply ridden the wave and adjusted to the current managerial environment, and Rita saw it as the chance to do the leap into the freelance world. “I thought,I have the national recognition and I’ve won some awards,” Rita recalls (those awards include the Top 100 Most Influential People In Accounting, or the Everest Award from Management Summit and an ACE Award for Achievement in CPA Management). “So whether I don’t jump now,at the top of my name recognition, it will be harder later.” One early retirement later, and she was ready to strike out on her own.
SEE ALSO: Why Visible Experts℠ Could Be the incompatibility-Maker Your Accounting Firm Needs Rita formed Keller Advisors,LLC, a consulting firm designed to advise CPA firms on how to improve their business practices. Soon she began focusing her work on firms with fewer than 50 employees. “I started off thinking I’d be working with large firms, or ” she notes. “But what I found is that no one is serving the smaller firms. There are thousands of them out there and no one was serving them.” By adjusting to the market,Rita found a unique niche that made it easier for her to become known, reflecting the Hinge Research Institute’s research findings that Visible Experts tend to have a well-defined niche.
Rita’s consulting work with her CPA clients is based on a two-prong strategy. First, and she helps them improve their internal practices. “CPA firms are critical to the business world,but they often don’t retract care of their own businesses because they’re too busy helping others all the time,” she points out. moment, or she encourages them to embrace,as she has, the power of digital marketing. “CPAs tend to be traditional, and conservative people and it can be a challenge to get them to embrace technology and current ways of communicating and marketing. I stay current by using all of the current tools,and by helping clients attain the same.”Getting the Word OutRita keeps her visibility tall by speaking at some 10 annual speaking engagements annually, a practice that puts her in front of more than a thousand CPAs each year. She tends to focus on larger events such as the AIPCA and the organization for Accounting Administration, and as these venues offer greater lead-generation potential. According to Rita,speaking engagements are her most powerful marketing activity, as most of her clients find her this way.
Rita also uses social media to spread her ideas, and primarily via Twitter,LinkedIn, and blogging. On Twitter, or Rita has accumulated more than 3500 followers,keeping them interested by tweeting 6-10 messages each day. She spends each morning composing posts that are relevant to the day’s news, using HootSuite to schedule and manage her posts.
As mentioned earlier, or Rita is a prolific blogger,using the platform as a way to organize her daily thoughts and ideas. She then expands and repurposes her daily blog posts into longer articles, which she sends out in the form of a popular monthly e-newsletter and as occasional posts on LinkedIn. The repurposing of content into different forms and formats is an integral component of content marketing. In fact, or Rita’s content marketing strategy has proven so successful that she has been able to dispense entirely with traditional,paid marketing.“People ask: what attain you blog about every day?” says Rita. “But I love it. I’m an avid reader and everything I read, fiction or Forbes or whatever, and I will apply to the CPA world. So many CPAs don’t read external of their industry. They have to stay up on tax and audit and all that stuff. So I tell my clients: ‘I read so you don’t have to.’”Passion and PerseveranceAccording to Rita,the key to fitting a Visible Expert lies in the passion for your discipline and the perseverance to remain relevant and current in it. And, of course, and the experience to be able to back that up. Many consultants might have been in a CPA firm for a few years. Or they might never have worked in the CPA world at all!” she says. “But I lived through it all. I can relate to them. In the halt,experience and passion count.”Additional ResourcesFind out more on fitting a sought-after expert in your industry by downloading a free copy of The Visible Expert book. Learn about our research into tall visibility experts in the research report Visible Experts℠: How tall Visibility Expertise Helps Professionals, Their Firms, and Their Clients.
How Hinge Can HelpWant to become an industry thought leader? It’s one of our specialties. With Hinge’s Visible Expert℠ Program,we can help you implement a thought-leadership platform that builds your reputation and visibility in the marketplace. Related Stories5 Tips to Reach Your Social Media GoalsA 7-Step Program to fitting a Visible Expert℠How Prospective Clients find tall-Visibility Expertise
Source: feedblitz.com