Often times as a creative, entrepreneur or small business owner we struggle with gaining trust from our prospective clients. The world, and more specifically, the internet, is full of ‘experts’ and our audience knows that. People are becoming more and more skeptical on who are really the experts out there and who is worth their time and money.
This can be intimidating for those of us trying to make a name for ourselves. Especially if we don’t already have huge followings under us to prove that we know what we are talking about. However, the ability to easily share our knowledge through online marketing makes building a trustworthy brand simple!
Taylor from Taylor Manning Creative has three easy things to keep in mind in order to build trust around your brand.
And, no, this has nothing to do with doing free work.
Using your blog to share your knowledge
Blogging is the number one tool for gaining trust from your audience. A blog allows you to share your knowledge with you followers for absolutely free. When you post high quality, full of knowledge content on your blog you will blow your audience away and leave them wanting even more from you.
You don’t have to post on your blog daily or even weekly to put out trust building content. In fact, just posting one amazing post per month can be enough to gain trust and grow a following around your blog content.
Social media is your outlet to the world
So, you’re writing blog posts but nobodies seeing them? Start sharing on social media! I always refer to social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ & Instagram) as my outlet to the whole world. Using social media to share my story and my content opens the door to so many eyes I would never be able to attract to my blog with any other tactics (for FREE!).
Having trouble growing your following on social media? Make sure you aren’t spending all of your time self promoting and start sharing your knowledge, reaching out to people and posting content with a purpose. Joining private groups and communities is a great way to gain instant access to your target audience and start networking. Make and build relationships by asking questions, sharing inspiration and reaching out! It’s not only super simple, but it’s fun too!
Create your own community
Any social media platform could go down at any time. Without your social media followers there to share your content to, how do you let anyone know you posted something? This is why it is so important to start building a community of your own right away.
The easiest way to do this is to start a mailing list. You can use AWeber, MailChimp or any email program along with an OptIn plugin like OptIn Cat, Ninja Forms or Lead Pages to start collecting emails and sending out updates and content via email.
With these three simple steps, you can build trust around your brand in no time. The more fun you are having when you are creating content and networking on social media, the more luck you will have with growing a following.
