How Do I Show My Expertise Through the Content I Publish?

You show your expertise when your content explains the decisions you make during real client work. Readers can see how you think when you share four things:

• What you noticed about the client’s situation
• Which questions shaped your thinking
• What you recommended and why
• What would have changed your advice

Those details give prospective clients a preview of what it might be like to work with you.

A useful path from client work to content looks like this:

Client decision → your reasoning → a buyer question it answers → published content → a related next step

I’ve worked as a marketer since 1996. In my Clarity & Action sessions, I help experienced solo business owners sort through their ideas and decide what deserves attention first. The example below comes from that work.

Start With One Client Decision

One small question can shape an entire plan. That’s what happened in my session with Elizabeth H. Cottrell, creator of The Heartspoken Note.

Elizabeth came with plenty of ideas. She was considering:

• LinkedIn and Substack
• Podcasting
• AI visibility
• Lead magnets and new products
• Ways to reach a nonprofit audience

She wanted help deciding what deserved attention and in what order.

During our conversation, she said she wanted to work only a few hours a week. I asked her to put a number on that. She settled on 10 to 12 hours, roughly three hours on four days.

I asked because a marketing plan has to fit the client’s priorities and the time they’re willing to give it. Now we could look at every idea through one practical question: What would make the greatest difference in the time she had?

That number shaped the plan. When she thought about creating a new checklist as a lead magnet, I suggested adapting her existing 12 Letters Worth Writing resource. She had good material ready. We could use it without adding another project to her week.

Other ideas could wait. Her four-week plan gave her actions she could complete at her own pace.

Afterward, Elizabeth said the session and action plan helped her LinkedIn, Substack, and blog work together, with a clearer path to her paid membership. She said it sped up her progress “probably by a year.”

When I reviewed the session later, the decisions that helped her most were the ones that felt ordinary to me in the moment. That’s the part of my expertise I hadn’t been explaining.

How to Find a Decision Worth Sharing

Look for a moment in a recent client conversation where you used your judgment. It could be a time when:

• You noticed something the client hadn’t considered
• You suggested holding off on an idea they were excited about
• You saw that the order of their planned actions needed to change

When I gave ChatGPT the materials from Elizabeth’s session, it found four strengths that showed up again and again:

• Recognizing patterns
• Asking strategic questions
• Filtering competing priorities
• Putting actions in a useful order

I recognized them right away. I use them in almost every client conversation, and I had never written about them as separate skills.

You probably have strengths like these too. After years of client work, you know which questions to ask. You can tell when someone is getting ahead of themselves.

To find the decision worth sharing, ask yourself five questions:

1. What did I notice? Was there something in the client’s situation that affected how you assessed the problem?
2. What did I ask or investigate? Which information helped you decide what to recommend?
3. What mattered to this client? How did their circumstances, priorities, or personal goals influence your advice?
4. What did I recommend, and why? What made that action right for this situation?
5. What would have changed my recommendation? Which circumstances might have led you somewhere else?

The third question carries the most weight in my work. Elizabeth’s 10 to 12 hours decided which activities made the plan. A client with different goals and more time would have received different recommendations.

One decision is enough. If you can’t choose, start with a question potential clients often ask before hiring someone. I’ve written more about that in Which Buyer Questions Should You Answer First?

Turn the Decision Into Content

Once you’ve chosen a decision, think about the question it could answer for someone considering your services.

Take my suggestion that Elizabeth reuse her existing resource instead of creating a new checklist. That decision could become an article on when to create a new lead magnet and when to improve the one you have.

In that article, I’d explain:

• What I look for in existing resources
• Which questions I ask before recommending new content
• When I’d suggest creating something from scratch

A reader would learn something useful. They’d also get a clear sense of how I’d approach decisions about their marketing.

The same pattern works in other businesses. A business coach might explain why she recommended improving an existing offer before creating another. A website consultant might describe why he suggested fixing a site’s message before paying for more traffic.

Here’s how the pieces fit together:

You may already have content that explains what someone should do. Adding an example of a related decision you made can make that content more useful and more personal.

I explored this connection in Create Content That Moves People Toward Hiring You.

Why Does Professional Judgment Help My Online Visibility?

It gives readers and search systems firsthand evidence of how you work.

When someone is considering hiring a coach or consultant, they want to know if that person can help with their particular situation. Seeing how you assess a problem like theirs gives them more information to decide if you’re a good fit.

There’s a search connection too. Google’s guidance on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content asks creators to consider whether their content:

• Provides original information or analysis
• Goes beyond obvious advice
• Shows evidence of the author’s expertise

I asked Elizabeth about her time because that kind of detail matters. A general article about creating a marketing plan would leave it out.

Links help readers explore more of your approach. When you connect related articles, FAQ pages, and service descriptions, people can follow your thinking from one piece to the next. Google’s link guidance explains how links help its systems discover pages and understand their relevance.

None of this guarantees an AI tool will cite your content or that someone will hire you. The goal is to make the thinking behind your recommendations easier to find.

I’ve written more about this in How AI Recognizes Expertise in Your Content.

Can AI Help Me See the Expertise I’ve Overlooked?

Yes. AI can spot patterns across your notes, transcripts, and testimonials. You still supply the reasoning behind each decision.

For Elizabeth’s session, I gave ChatGPT four things:

• The transcript of our 90-minute session
• Elizabeth’s preparation notes
• The 30-day action plan I created
• Her testimonial

I asked it to find where my expertise showed up and how it related to her results.

It flagged my question about her available time as a useful planning decision. It took my own reflection to explain why I asked it and how her priorities shaped my thinking.

You can try this without recorded sessions. Start with notes from a recent project, a client testimonial, or your memory of an important conversation.

Remove private information first. Follow your client agreements before sharing any material with an AI tool.

Act as an experienced interviewer helping me identify the professional judgment I demonstrated during a recent client engagement.

I'll describe the engagement or share notes with private details removed.

Ask me one question at a time to explore:

What the client wanted to accomplish.

What I noticed about their situation.

Which questions I asked and why.

What I knew about their circumstances, priorities, or personal goals that influenced my recommendations.

Which options I considered and why I chose a particular approach.

What I decided could wait.

What might have changed my recommendation.

Pay attention to decisions that may feel routine to me but could help prospective clients see how I work.

Don't invent details, motivations, decisions, or results. Ask me to clarify anything that's missing.

After the interview, identify up to three decisions that could become useful content.

For each decision, explain what it reveals about my experience and identify a question a prospective client might ask that my experience can help answer.

Recommend the strongest content idea and explain why it would help a reader evaluate my professional approach.

Review the responses with care. AI may find patterns, and you’re the one who knows if its reading matches how you approached the work.

How Do I Write About Client Work Without Sharing Private Details?

Share one decision and the reasoning behind it. Leave out private details, and follow your client agreements.

Readers learn from how you think. They don’t need the full story of the engagement to see your approach.

When I write about a session, I focus on three things:

• One decision
• The question that led to it
• What would have changed it

I named Elizabeth in this article with her permission. [Denise: add one or two sentences on how you decide what to share and when you ask a client first.]

Before you give notes or transcripts to an AI tool, remove private information and check what your client agreements allow.

What Should I Do First?

Look back at one recent client engagement and find a decision that made a difference.

Then write a short answer that includes:

• The question a prospective client might ask
• The situation you faced
• What you noticed and asked
• What you recommended and why
• What would have changed your advice

Your next useful article may already exist in the work you’ve done.

If your marketing feels scattered and you want help deciding what to focus on, Clarity & Action: Your 30-Day Marketing Plan gives you a focused plan and support for carrying it out.

Related Reading – Find the Expertise Hidden in Your Client Work: 3 AI Prompts

Adapted from this article on Your Visibility Edge.