Becoming an influencer, or even just gaining respect, within your industry takes time. Content marketing is a good approach, but you'll have to go into it knowing that it's a long-term strategy. Keep publishing content - start a blog so you can aggregate everything in one place. Do some research on what your audience and prospective customers need help with. What challenges do they face on a daily basis? What topics do they need to learn more about? What can you write that will be relevant and helpful to them?

As you continue to publish, keep promoting your pieces on social media. It may take a while to build up a bigger following there, but having great content will help you attract these folks.

You can also browse sites like Quora, Reddit, etc. and answer relevant questions - this is another great way to start establishing some credibility, and you might even be able to share a link to one of your blog posts if you do it in a helpful and non-spammy way.