Where do babies and credibility come from?

Um, let's focus on the credibility part for now.

Remember the time when nobody knew of you or your business? Well, that is where I am right now.

So any tips, techniques and guidelines on getting credibility are appeciated.

I like Usman's answer (+1!), but here's how I did it:

I wrote a book. 40,000+ copies in the field, and it's very technical.

People still react to the power of a physical book. Not an eBook, not a whitepaper, but a real, physical book. Books are sacred. Books aren't thrown away. Even though self-publishing is easy nowadays, people react as though it were published by McGraw-Hill.

It's possible for you to do it to because:

1. I wrote it in Word. No special tools required.
2. It's 164 pages, but really small ones (outside dimensions 5x7, but then there's gutter for binding, margins, header/footer, etc.). So it just took two months to write all the text.
3. Self-publishing is easy. I used http://48hrbook.com because I needed to be able to distribute the book myself (you get a free copy shipped to you if you fill out a form on our website -- amazing lead-gen by the way!), but if you wanted to charge money I recommend http://lulu.com because they do all the fulfillment for you and you can offer both a physical and PDF version at two different price points.

Probably the best way to start is to write whitepapers (for formal documents) and a blog (for everything else) and later cull it into a book. That way you get all the usual benefits of those documents and of working on the project incrementally.

Credibility must be earned.

Some steps that you could starting taking today would be:

1. Results. Credibility is all about proving yourself and your capabilities.
2. Referrals and recommendations are strong validation of your skill sets and do wonders to boost your credibility. These can be earned by executing well, delivering on time and being a source of support and assistance for those around you.
3. Start a blog and start imparting knowledge in the domain you have your strengths and experience. This could even document your progress as you grow.

Credibility takes time to be earned. The better the results and the level of transparency in your conduct the faster it will build up.