How a blog can help the know, like and trust factor
You have heard it a million times. People buy from people they know like and trust.
Being known, liked and trusted is the aim of every business. But it not always easy to do. When you are networking and meeting people face to face it is more straightforward, but online? That seems much more difficult.
The way to achieving this important goal is through a blog. It is the easy and authentic way to help you achieve this important goal.
However, if you have a perfectly good website which brings enquiries and describes your business you might assume you have done all you can. You might wonder why you would want all the extra work of having a blog.
A blog helps your potential customers to get to know you
We are all cynical…. Especially online. We don’t trust anyone immediately. So we need to get to know a person, a brand, a business. Your customers feel the same. They want to know you are real and that you are here for the long-term. They need to see you “showing up” in different places so that they can start to notice you above all the noise and distractions.
In the old days the wisdom declared that customers needed to hear from a business three times before they would buy. Nowadays they need to see or hear that business as much as 12 times. Because a blog can feature many different angles and types of post it is an authentic way for your customers to begin to know you.
Search engines know you
Your business needs new potential customers who don’t know you yet. So you can let your blog do the hard work for you! Obviously you need real live people to get to know you and your business. But you want the search engines to get to know you, too.
Search engines love new original content, and each blog post you write effectively becomes a new web page. Your blog can include hundreds of posts giving the search engines hundreds of pages of great stuff from you to store. It makes you become more important, and more visible. You may still have the 5 page website which you don’t update but the search engines will prefer your blog and keep coming back for more.
A blog helps potential customers and joint venture partners to like you
We hate being sold to. We may see something interesting on social media but if we follow the link and find a sales page we often click away.
We go into defensive mode and our barriers go up.
A blog can be much more friendly and engaging than a straightforward website. When somebody follows your link from social media and finds an interesting blog post with views and recommendations they are far more likely to warm to you.
We all remember people we like and prefer to do business with them and may tell others about them. Your blog is the perfect way to start to create a relationship online. . You can reveal interests and quirks about you as an entrepreneur and your readers can take a look behind the scenes which helps them to like you more.
A blog helps customers, suppliers and partners to trust you
So you show that you understand what your customers are going through. You can share aspects of your solution to their problems and genuinely help them. If you give away tips or approaches which really speak to them they will trust you. In fact they may come to view you as their go-to person of choice.
Being the blog owner puts you in the leadership role. You make the first move. Although being trusted is essential for business success, (not to mention your sense of purpose) it does have to be earned. Your reputation as a trusted advisor is enhanced through your blog, but it is not something you can achieve immediately.
How you become known liked and trusted through your blog
Although the phrase is “know like and trust” you as the blog owner turn this on its head.
- You start by putting up posts with valuable information that show your audience they can trust you.
- You include aspects of your personality so that they can like you and find you memorable.
- You do this consistently and link your posts to relevant social media so that you become easier to get to know.
As you do this, the circle of people who already know like and trust you increases. Then you experience a quantum leap. If you are highly recommended to others, they arrive at your blog already prepared to trust you and like you: they just need a short experience to get to know you.
So the work involved in creating your blog is simply an investment towards being known, liked, trusted and the foundation for success.
