In this 2 part series I am going to get into the detail of how you can build trust and authority online.
Why build trust and authority
Many marketing experts have pointed out that ‘interruption’ style marketing no longer works as well as it used to. Have a look at people the next time you are at the train station. Are people looking around marvelling at the wonderful signs posted on the tunnel wall? Or are they staring at Facebook or Twitter on their phones and consuming information that is relevant to them?
Thought leaders like David Meerman Scott (man he needs a new theme on his blog!) and Seth Goddin have long advocated a new style of marketing. A style that doesn’t interrupt, it adds value. The idea of providing exceptional value to people to the point where it becomes ‘Remarkable’.
These days it’s entirely possible to run a business without advertising or marketing if you embrace the idea of becoming an authority in your industry. I can say this because that’s exactly what I do in my business.
The technique is simple. Create as much useful information for people as you can, gradually build yourself up as a leader in your industry and as a result of this, people will begin to learn about you and your business. Not only that, Google will begin to see you as an authority as well and will send more leads your way.
But while the technique is simple the concept is nearly impossible for the average small business owner to grasp. After running a successful business for years based on paying someone else to print advertisements to bring them customers immediately, the idea of using their own time to become an expert for no immediate reward seems crazy.
And therein lies the opportunity. Most small businesses are not doing this and won’t do it for a long time if ever. At least not online (it’s worth pointing out that there are a lot of ways of becoming an authority and some of the best ones happen offline, networking, presenting etc, but here we are talking about online methods).
Start with your website
There are a lot of ways to make a start if you are interesting in building your authority online. Despite social media and other publishing tools taking off, I would still suggest that the best place to start is with your own website. This is part of the web that you own, it’s going to be first when people search for you and it’s not relying on another platform (which could change without notice).
Your website needs to become more than a 5 page brochure. It needs to become something that you update yourself with useful content that solves problems for the people around your product or industry. For that reason and many more I recommend using WordPress which is not only the most popular platform for building websites in the world it is also the world’s best blogging platform.
If you are interested in building your own site in WordPress I have written an ebook called How to build yourself a free world class website which answers a lot of the WordPress related website questions, so I won’t go into more detail here.
Site features
In my ebook 8 features of great small business websites I detailed 8 key features for the typical small business website that would make it into a ‘great’ site. When it comes to building trust and authority some of these are more important than others.
Here is a list of features that will maximise your chance of successfully building trust and authority.
- A blog – Having a blog is the easiest way to create great content and encourage discussion around your content. You don’t have to call it a blog, you can call it an online magazine if you want or not call it anything, it doesn’t matter as long as you have somewhere where you can publish great content around your topic of choice. You can produce content in any form (text articles, podcasts, video, ebooks etc) whatever works for you but generally a blog is the best place to produce it.
- A simple, clean and professional design (poor design can be a big turn off). This is easily achieved by finding a good web designer or using a theme from a reputable company. People will lose trust in a site that looks poorly designed and looks unprofessional so this is an important consideration.
- It’s ideal to have some sort of differentiator that make you or your site / business stand out – an angle – a uniqueness. Whether it’s the design, or your particular approach, the way you write, your background etc if there is something interesting people will be more likely to remember you and more likely to share your content (content needs to be shared to build authority both among your potential customers and in the robotic eyes of Google).
- Continuing on from the point above, your site should include features that make it easy for people to consume your content (white space, decent size and well contrasted font, RSS subscription for us geeks, newsletter subscription for everyone else, use of multiple media types i.e. text and images and video, short punchy paragraphs and lists).
This is a great start and if you can do these things you will be well on the way to building the platform for trust and authority.
In part 2 of this article I’ll go through some specific tasks on how to do it.
Have you had success building your own authority?
If you have achieved success by building your authority online please make a comment below and let us know. Your success may inspire others to do the same.
Great tips Dan! I agree that older techniques are now no longer effective. It drives me mad when reading a news item of a devastation and the SMH throws up a video advertisement before the article is available! The user experience is a powerful agent in the overall decision making processes. Now following you on facebook!
[Reply]
Ha, cool thanks Matt. I guess I’d say no long ‘as’ effective as I’m yet to be convinced that they are completely useless. I read Seth Goden’s book Purple Cow saying that you had to be remarkable to be successful and the TV advertising revolution is over but then I put it down and see a Harvey Norman ad on TV. They are still doing ok. Once Harvey Norman go out of business I’ll believe it!!
[Reply]
These tips are excellent reminders of how to be professional, create a following and be considered an expert. I’m still shocked at the number of serious business owners who have horrible sites. They forget that a website is the first thing a prospect sees and needs to be a reflection of the business. I agree with your point about having a differentiator. My site name, Working Naked, has worked well for me.
[Reply]
Dan Reply:
December 8th, 2011 at 10:04 am
Thanks Lisa, yes good point, your name is great, as is your site, for others reading check out http://workingnaked.com/
Thanks for the comment.
Dan
[Reply]
I did the same way as described above. At first started it with a blog, after it to design a static site, and all the SEO techniques (link building, bookmarking, guest-posting etc) It is a hard work but it works!
Cindy recently posted..Most common dental problems
[Reply]
Dan Reply:
December 9th, 2011 at 9:13 am
Good to hear Cindy! Thanks for the comment.
I think perhaps I was making it sound a bit too easy. I probably didn’t explain enough about how long this takes and how much work it is. I’ve been blogging actively and focusing on it properly for close to 18 months and it’s really only starting to get interesting now – I’ve got a long way to go so it’s certainly not a quick process.
[Reply]
I know how good blogs are, both for search engines and readers. I’ve been considering integrating one on my art website, but to be honest I don’t really know what I’d write! Still, it’s food for thought… Looking forward to part 2 of this article!
[Reply]
Dan Reply:
December 16th, 2011 at 11:54 am
Hi Karin, thanks for the comment.
You would have plenty to write about I’m sure. But a blog doesn’t have to be just text. Every time you make a new painting, write a blog post with a picture of it, talk about what inspired it, how long it took etc.
One thing a lot of people do is release some secrets about how you go about your work. That’s kind of what I do on my blog. The blog itself probably appeals to people who aren’t really legitimate customers, they are more DIY people possibly even competitors. But with the extra traffic from Google and the extra authority comes attention from prospective customers.
Good luck!
[Reply]
Hi Dan, nice post. It is amazing how quickly the shift has focused in the last year or so to on-site strategys, such as blogging and other content creation. I used to write articles for E-zines but these are a complete waste of time nowadays and prefer to focus our efforts on creating good content for our own site, then using social media platforms to engage discussion. Looking forward to part 2.
[Reply]
Dan Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 11:11 am
Hi, thanks for the comment. Yeah I think both can still be useful. Offsite articles with backlinks might be all you need to get from page 2 to page 1 for a keyword it all depends on the competition.
But certainly keep all of the really good stuff for your own blog.
I’ve really started to notice my traffic exploding after a year and a half of dedicated blogging. I would love to know how much traffic people get who have been committing to it for 5-10 years!
Thanks for the comment.
[Reply]