Just yesterday Google opened up a new services called Knol. The premise is quite simple, each knol on the site is a single, authoritative article on a specific topic. For Google, the idea is to build an information resource of a similar scale to that of Wikipedia. Whether or not Knol will be successful is yet to be seen, but if it is you can’t afford to miss out.

The beauty of Knol is that anyone can write their own knol on the subject of their choice and publish it. All you need is a Google account and enough time to slap together a half-decent few paragraphs on whatever you’re an expert on and go from there. In fact I just whipped together a quick Knol discussing how small businesses can use social media. I know, i know…not the prettiest thing ever, but projects that Google puts their weight behind tend to at least be moderately successful.

Basically, Knol is an easy way to show off your knowledge and getting in early definitely can’t hurt. I’m sure at some point they’re not going to want multiple articles on the same topics, so I suggest you knol (if that’s even a verb) now on a few broad topic in your industry, then toss in a little About the Author at the bottom and see what happens.