They have a way of speaking that draws people to them. Some of them are those notorious “Pick up Artists” while others can be so persuasive that they can sell ice to an eskimo.
Don’t you hate those people that can effortlessly win people over while you’re struggling just to be acknowledged?
When it comes to blogging, building trust and a loyal following can be a great challenge for the majority of us.
Some of us don’t have the confidence around people online or offline while other of us tend to inadvertently say the “wrong things” a lot.
While we’re trying to put out an artificial image while fumbling our words we’re repelling a lot of people who could potentially be our loyal following.
Yes, you may get a handful of people, but in reality, a handful is not enough to really push your blog and home business to its full potential.
But one thing that’s true is that its starts off with a handful of people, but a lot of you may have trouble going beyond this.
How can you do this?
It all starts off with building trust among your visitors!
In this post I’m going to go more in depth of how you can start building trust with your visitors so you can start building a loyal following and eventually sales!
Yes, you get that feeling that nobody likes you!
When you’re not getting any traffic to your blog it really hurts you in the chest.
What’s worse is that you may be getting some traffic but yet you feel that nobody likes you enough to buy from you!
When this happens, you feel like you’re being taken advantage of because of all the free information you’re giving away and you just want to take revenge by not sharing any more information without a price.
But then I have to ask you who are you targeting?
It’s similar to this quote:
“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.” ~ Sigmund Freud
This may sound very uncouth and blunt, but you have to keep in mind that you might be targeting the wrong people.
You want to connect with people where you can develop a mutual respect and will take you more serious.
As a result your targeted visitors will appreciate it, take action, and eventually buy from you.
But how do you accomplish this feat?
With trust!
You need to build trust with your audience.
You want to develop the mindset that the only way you can produce great results with your blog is by branding yourself well enough for your visitors to do business with you. People will only do business with people that they trust and you want to stay consistent with this.
Now you’re probably asking how do you go about building trust with your audience?
The first thing you want to have in mind is to start building a community. I have done this with my blog and on my Facebook Page.
When you can have a community that take you serious by liking and reading your posts, then this is a great indicatory that trust is being built with them.
The following Trust Pyramid illustrates this and shows the steps on how you can get trust.
Build Trust with First Time Blog Visitors
Your new visitors are not only looking for answers to their problems, but they’re also looking for someone they can trust.
When each of us visit a blog for the first time, we judge it from the start.
This is why it’s important to make a great first impression for your first time blog visitors.
According to Amitava 70% Of Brand Perception is determined by experiences with people.(Source: Amitava)
This would mean the way that you present yourself and your blog will determine whether your visitors will trust you and your site to keep coming back.
This will include:
Your Blog Layout
Your About Me Page
How detailed are your topics
Any quick answers they can instantaneously use
Your first time visitors will quickly make up their minds on whether they’ll keep coming to your blog or not if you consistently follow just these 4 tips.
For example, my target market alone are looking for quick answers to their problems.
Because they’re the ones that work 40+ hours a week and a great majority of them have families to take care of. So with that said, their time is limited to maintaining and growing their blog versus their peers.
At the start you want to make sure that the message that you put out on your blog, both in your About Me Page and your blog posts resonate in the minds of the specific audience that you’re trying to attract.
Make it Easy for People to Reach You
If you’re trying to hide, then you’re hindering your target audience’s trust in you.
You have to ask yourself, why would they keep coming back to your blog if there’s no way for them to contact you in some way, form or fashion?
Being available and open to your audience has many benefits to it such as:
Finding out what topics your audience is interested in
Finding out how to give your audience a better user experience
Engaging your audience beyond what they want and find out what they need
Being aware of beneficial opportunities from your peers (guest posts, roundup posts, etc.)
Branding yourself as a professional to connect with other professionals
Your goal is to be looked upon as an authority when it comes to your niche.
When your target audience wants to know about a certain topic, you want to be the first one that they think of.
For example, if you’re blog is about martial arts, specifically Wing Chun and JKD martial arts, you want to be the one that they come to if they have specific questions when it comes to punches and kicks.
Not only do you want them to contact you via your blog, but also on other platforms like email or social media sites.
Making yourself easy to contact will definitely help you build strong trust will help you grow your blog as well as get more of the results that you want.
Be Transparent About Your Experiences
As counterintuitive as it may seems, your target audience in general don’t like perfect people!
They see perfect people as being “fake” and can become jealous.
Why?
Because you’re “perfect” success and results aren’t happening to them and no one they know. As self-absorb as they may seem, they won’t be able to relate to you and won’t see how they could obtain the level of success that they want.
But what if you were more open to share your mistakes and failures?
You can get across to them that you failed your way up to the level of success that you’re currently at.
This will attract the right audience to you. These are the people, despite that there will be pitfalls, will at least be confident that there are solutions that they haven’t come across yet.
In this video, it demonstrates the difference between a Growth Mindset versus a Fixed Mindset.
Get across to your visitors that you don’t have all the answers yet but make sure that they get the vibe that you’re more than willing to share what you do know. This is the Growth Mindset which makes it an “open-minded/learning” environment on your blog.
It not only will build your reputation and authority, but more importantly it will make you more human among them. It’s a great way to kill 3 birds with one stone!
Show Social Proof
Have you ever heard of having third-party validation?
This is where other people who have some clout can vouch for you and whatever you promote which goes a long way when it comes to building trust.
Here’s are two statistics that was researched by Nielsen
92% of people will trust a recommendation from a peer, and 70% of people will trust a recommendation from someone they don’t even know. (do a canva image)
This may seem counterintuitive that 70% percentage of people will even trust people that they don’t even know, but I have found that this has been true in my own experience.
So how do you get Social Proof?
There are quite a few ways you can do this. Here are 5:
Comments – If you’re getting a lot of positive comments on your blog, then this will help you build social proof. I use Commentluv Premium as an incentive for my visitors to leave comments.
Testimonials – Having your peers leave a positive message about you on your blog will give your visitors and target audience a positive outlook on you
Mentions – When your visitors share your content and mentions you on social media can draw more visitors to your blog as a result.
Social Shares Count – Showing the number of times your content has been shared on social media can help you build clout
Case Studies – Showing how you improved your results or how the products you promote has helped others can improve your conversions.
Limit the number of choices on your blog posts
Paralysis by analysis is what hinders a lot of us to make quick decisions.
Why?
We have too many choices!
Adults makes 35,000 remotely choices a day in contrast to a child who makes about 3,000 (Source: Roberts Wesleyan College)
Check out this short video by Dr. Walter Jacobs on Paralysis by Analysis and how to overcome it.
This tip by the doctor would be great for all of us!
But how can you help your audience to make sound decisions that will lead you to building a loyal audience?
Here are some quick actions you can start taking once you finish reading this post.
Limit the number of social share buttons – I have 5 social share buttons and one button for bufferapp. Although this would be consider a lot, I’m still getting social traffic from each.
My recommendation is to only concentrate on the social sites where you get the most results as far as targeted traffic.
Limit the number of fields in your opt in form – I hate those opt in forms where they ask for your entire personal history in order for you to subscribe or register.
What’s worse is when you have to come up with a password and you end up writing a long password filled with characters and symbols!
So I’ve made it a point to just ask for the email address, or just the first name and email address. Its makes the process go faster and I’ve gotten more opt ins by doing this.
Make your blog easy to navigate and ease up on the side bar – I want to give all my visitors a great user experience. This would also mean that my blog needs to be cleaner cut.
Having a bunch of ads and link on the side bar can definitely cause paralysis by analytics as well as making it hard for your visitors to look for posts you published in the past.
So to make it easier, I cut out the clutter from the side bar and put a search field on the top of the right side bar for my audience to easily type in the keywords for older posts they want to look up.
You can find the search field in the Widgets Section under Appearance in your WordPress Dashboard.
Create Content Your Visitors Want To Read
I have to admit something that’s a major problem!
I’m horrible at remembering names. When I first meet people, they’ll tell me their name and 2 seconds later I’ll forget. Shame on me!!!
But one positive thing about me is that I’ll remember just about everything they rant about themselves from their family to their hobbies.
Why is this?
I have no clue, but when the opportunity comes, it gives me a chance to make some recommendations based on what they told me. This builds great rapport, and above all trust!
Now according to CustomerThink 62% of survey respondents cited listening to customers as a very or extremely important factor in building trust – (Source: CustomerThink)
Knowing what the interests of your target audience can bring you massive results. This is why checking the Bounce Rate is an important metric in Google Analytics to go by.
When you can improve the bounce rate, this is a great indicator that your blog’s credibility is getting better as well.
Check out these 3 graphs From a 2013 post I found on Jeff Bullas’ blog which is a survey he did involving business owners, marketers and bloggers.
What category of blog content is most credible?
The Case Study was the most popular category as far as credibility. When you can share your experience and the process you took to improve, it helps to win over your audience who are trying to reach those same results.
Which factors add credibility to a blog?
As you can see, quality content was the most popular answer. This is something I myself started doing more of this year since I too love reading blogs that are more detailed which has been very helpful in overcoming some of my obstacles.
What types of blog content add most credibility?
With all the talk about video, this was a surprise for me even though Jeff Bullas’ wrote the blog post back in 2013. But there are those like myself who prefer written content since I read a lot of blogs at work on my computer and on my smartphone.
I highly recommend that you check out Jeff Bullas’ blog post on how you can build a credible blog post that people can trust. There were other questions he asked that may give you a clue on what you can focus on so you can improve the results of your blog.
Conclusion
Building rapport and trust is a great skill set to hone, but it doesn’t have to be difficult and convoluted.
When it comes down to it, you want to fulfill the law of reciprocity. You want to maintain the energy of giving and receiving so that it’s always a win/win for you and your target audience.
I’ve always said that blogging is a great way to brand yourself as a solopreneur and one to leverage to build any type of home business.
Using these different strategies will do the trick to help you build trust.
These aren’t the only avenues you can take to build a trustworthy loyal audience, but it’s a great way to kickstart and maintain the process.
Now It’s Your Turn!
How are you building trust on your blog?
Are you having a hard time building a loyal trustworthy audience?
If so, what’s holding your back?
Have you used any of the strategies in the past?
Please share your comments below and share this post with your peers. I look forward to reading them!
Hi Ovais,
You are right about all that you mentioned
It’s only with time that we can build trust, for which we need to take various steps, as you wrote. But such isn’t the case when we are newbies, isn’t it? Reminds me of the time when my blog was a ghost town, when I started off, which made me insecure and wonder whether this was the right decision I took!
However, things changed rather fast once I realized how to go about it all, and there was no looking back.
True about the blog layout and easy to reach you, and also once your readers know you are providing worth on a consistent basis, they know what you offer them would be so worth the while.
They begin trusting you, and we on our part, have to keep their faith, trust, and belief.
Thanks for sharing. Have a nice, rest of the week
Hey Sachin,
It does take a lot of time to build trust among your peers. We all were insecure as a newbie. No one was coming to our blogs, and those that did didn’t leave any comments. You do question yourself whether you made the right decision or not, but once things get to kickin’ we’re glad that we made that choice.
The blog layout, being able to be easily contacted, and writing helpful quality posts are definitely factors that’ll boost your reputation and earn the trust of your visitors. We all just have to be consistent with it.
thanks for stopping by Sachin! Have a great upcoming weekend!
Hi Ovais
Very thoughtful post indeed. I would say it’s a complete tutorial on how to build trust and loyal following.
Limiting the options is a winning strategy to make readers stay focused else they remain confused on what to avail and what to skip.
One of the main reasons of blogging failure is also offering more and more without giving the readers a final solution once for all.
Thanks for sharing such a comprehensive post on an important topic.
Hey Musa,
I’m glad that you consider this a tutorial for building trust.
We as adults have so many choices that it can be a bit mind boggling to make decisions. Limiting the options for our target audience is one way to help them out.
You definitely want to keep giving solutions instead of just providing information if you know what I mean. It’s not enough to give your audience a bunch of data without something that they can instantly implement after reading your blog.
Thanks for stopping by Mi Muba! Have a great week ahead!
Wow Ovais, this is a great post.
Building trust with our readers is a slow process. We can’t cram anything down their throats – like continuous pop-ups promoting our products.
I’m using some of the strategies you mentioned above like sharing my personal experience as a blogger – the good and the bad.
I’ve redesigned my blog a couple months ago and updated my categories and I’m hoping it’s been a better user experience for my visitors.
Thanks for sharing your suggestions for getting social proof. Of all the methods you shared, I haven’t asked for testimonials for my blog. You give me something to think about there.
Thanks for putting such an informative post together Ovais!
Have a great day!
Cori
Hey Cori,
Cramming anything down our readers throat will definitely irritate them enough to where they won’t come back at all.
Building trust is all about mutual exchange, like for instance sharing our experiences, both the good and the bad. That’s great that you’re constantly doing this and I’m quite sure that you don’t have a problem winning their trust.
I’ve noticed that you’ve redesigned your blog and I like it for the fact that it seems more welcoming, not the fact that it wasn’t before. You’ll definitely win many visitors over just from the design itself.
Social proof is another factor. I haven’t asked for testimonials myself. I’ve just been leverage other methods. I may practice what I preach and go ahead get a couple of testimonials.
I’m glad that you like the post Cori! I hope you have a great weekend ahead!
Yea, we don’t want to appear to be so “nosy” when it comes to our opt-in forms. It’s just enough to ask for your name and email. Thanks for stopping by!
Hey Ovais,
Building trust and a loyal following require so many efforts. You should always focus on the content which can stand.
The website layout, about us page, and many other things play an important role.
Blog commenting is the best way to interact with your readers. Share their content.
Thanks for sharing with us.
Hey Ravi,
Focusing on comprehensive content that your audience can instantly put to use is one of those foundational efforts. If they can benefit from the content you promote, then you’re at a head start.
Everything else does play an important role which will add on to the trust your building.
And finally blog commenting and replying is the icing on the cake when it comes to engaging your readers. Constantly doing this will give them a nudge to purchase what you promote.
Thanks for stopping by Ravi! Have a great upcoming weekend!
Hey Ovais,
Glad to read your interesting post and I totally agree with your points. You should aways need to thrive healthy relationship with mass so that it can grow day by day, And its the main key to get success in blogging.
Trust and honesty is basic key to develop healthy relationship with your readers. User experience is also prominent key when it comes to push blog towards google ranking.
Eventually, thanks for revealing a light on this topic.
With best wishes,
Amar kumar
Hey Amar,
Building rapport is vital when it comes to your target audience. Doing this in a daily basis can amount to great opportunities and results. By producing quality content and giving your audience the best user experience shows that you’re going in the right direction.
Thanks for stopping by Amar! Have a good one!
Hi Ovais,
I just redid my blog and added more to my about me page. I wanted to show who I really was for that trust factor.
Then recently I was chosen as a top 10 Twitter influencer I was sure to include in several places on my blog.
With my new design my share buttons do not have share count. I may be switching back to my old plugin that included those. I use to have people comment on how many shares I had.
Thanks for the reminder on social proof and the trust factor those buttons can provide to people. Appreciate the tips!
Have a great rest of the weekend Ovais.
Hey Lisa,
That’s great that you added more to your about me page, It’s going to matter a lot by attracting a more targeted audience.
Congratulations on becoming one of the 10 Twitter influencers.
This will definitely pique some interests within your target audience and give them a reason to keep coming back.
The share count is one factor that will give your readers to keeping coming to your blog and above all build trust among them.
Thanks for stopping by Lisa! I’m glad that you like the content here!
Hi Ovais,
I can definitely relate to the fact that it takes a lot of time to build a presence and loyal following online. I’ve just started my new blog about 5 months ago and it is starting to finally see some traction.
It’s definitely been a lot of work. We just have to be patient and give it time to work. I read somewhere not sure, but it can take up to 1-2 years to build a loyal tribe.
Hopefully, it won’t take that long. But I’m going to keep working on it, even if it it does.
Love the infographics on the case studies about which type of content is most credible. Definitely something to consider.
I see that content is huge.
So I need to keep focused on providing the right type of content that my readers want.
Thanks for sharing these tips with us Ovais. It’s definitely made me realize that I’m not doing anything wrong. It’s just going to take time to grow my blog and loyal readers.
Have a great day
Susan
Hey Susan,
It does take some time to build trust among your visitors. One vital goal is to grow return visitors which in a lot of cases is your target audience.
You have to be aware of how your audience respond to your posts. Some posts will give you a more positive results while other’s not so much. A great tool that I constantly use is Google Analytics. This will help you track your audience.
The infographic is definitely helpful on which content is most credible. Despite the fact that it was written in 2021 it’s still applicable today.
I’m glad that you like the post Susan! Be patient and stay cognizant of your posts and how your audience respond to them. Make those necessary changes when needed. Have a great week!
Another outstanding post Ovais!
And I love all of the rock solid social proof examples and references you freely provided.
Sadly, not much good is going to happen in a major way, until we start applying some of your proven trust building strategies.
Even though we may invest a bunch time, money and effort, in other aspects of our business, as you pointed out, until or unless, we move the trust factor forward, not much positive is going to happen, anytime soon!LOL!
Thanks for sharing another excellent post Ovais. School is always in session for me, whenever I study at your blog!LOL!
Hey Mark,
I’m glad you found value in the post.
You definitely won’t get too far if you’re not building and maintaining trust among your blog visitors. This is the key element to progress in your blog and your business.
Thanks for stopping by Mark! Have a great weekend!
Hi Ovais!
I’m finally getting here! Well, you know my full-time story and such. Anyway, I really enjoyed this post. Building trust with other bloggers and potential clients in essential in building a Community.
I like networking with others outside of my blog and on other social media platforms.
Twitter and Facebook are my two favourites, with my blog as a third. Showing how passionate we are about our niche and whatever our mission is will also entice readers and potential clients to keep coming back, as you already know.
Trust is essential in order to grow. Without we may as well just go back to comic book reading.
Hey Bren,
Glad to see you!
Building trust with others is essential to building a blog and business within our niche. This is why I love blogging and you can see why it’s a great hub for other tools that we use.
Passion and empathy is the key to building trust. When your visitors can see and feel this, then you’ll have an easier chance to building trust among them.
I’m glad that you liked the post and that you stopped by! Have a great weekend and be safe!
Hi Ovais,
This is so much wonderful information.
I really will share this with my students, and not just the newbies.
Lots of advanced tips, too.
Actually more than advanced, they are things we need to remind ourselves of, like how important the About Me page is to building trust, and yes, get testimonials!
Testimonials are so important and I just never found a good way to ask for them.
You remind me, though, it’s really important to do for building trust with your readers.
Hey Donna,
I’m glad that you like this post.
I have to admit that I haven’t asked for any testimonials. I’ve just been going by the comments I get. But testimonials will add more social proof to you and your blog.
Might as well shoot for the moon for this one!
Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week ahead!
Hey Ovais,
Indeed an Informative Post.
For me it has always been difficult to build trust Or I should say fan following, as most of my readers are new, although I know in affiliate it is difficult to make readers return or make them followers, but still I am trying out different things to make them subscribers.
And thanks again for the amazing tips Ovais.
Hey Jelina,
It can be a challenge to build a fan base.
I had to change my strategy a few times to build some type of following. The best thing I did was to join blogging communities and to go to blogs of other bloggers who comment frequently on their favorite blogs.
Thanks for stopping by Jelina! Have a great rest of the week!
Hi, Ovais, this is one powerhouse of a post.
I love that quote about diagnosing yourself with depression first make sure… It made me chuckle.
The part that stood out for me was what you said about transparency. I love being transparent in my business. Yes, sometimes this can bite you in the rear end, as there are a lot of people who might get jealous or envy you in a certain way.
When I used to publish income reports on my blog many moons ago, I used to have people emailing me calling me a liar, fake, loser, and all the rest of it. It was disheartening to read. You show that hard work can pay off with blogging and then people resent you for it.
But at the same time, you’re very right in saying that as much as the tales of our success we share through blogging, we should also share the mistakes and the struggles we had to endeavor to get where we are.
Really enjoyed this post mate, have an awesome rest of the week.
Transparency have it’s good and bad side, but when you’re open with your audience, it can give them a general idea of what it takes to be successful and at the same time show that you’re not perfect.
I’m sorry to hear that people were so negative towards your success. Most people are engulfed in their struggles and bitterness which can put a toll on their confidence. When they see someone like you succeeding, they compare you to themselves and create this disbelief that hinders their own success.
But sharing our struggles and mistakes can alleviate this to some degree.
Thanks for stopping by Fabrizio! Have a great rest of the week!
I don’t no but so far I thing I have been build trust since blogging 2 years ago. All my visitor mostly my friend, In Indonesia blogger comment on other blog to build relationship.
If some one comment to your blog, you should comment to commenter blog. I did that for long time.
At the first, I think that was unnecessary. But all of them are amateur blogger who blogging for fun. They are my target audience because my blog is about blogging tutorial.
And commenting on other blog regularly (Amateur Tradition) is the best way to gain trust when my target is newbie blogger.
All strategies can works great if we understood our target audience.
Hi Shakir,
Understanding and being empathetic towards your audience is key to blogging success.
That’s great that you have a community of bloggers that have trust in you. Commenting and sharing other blogs within your niche and your peers is a great way to build trust. Especially with social proof.
Once people see that you have all of those people commenting on your blog and sharing on social sites, then building trust from others will be less of a challenge.
Thanks for stopping by Shakir! Have a good one!
Hey Ovais,
Good job…and I appreciate you for sharing this article.
A meaningful and thoughtful post for everyone. Building trust and loyal following can be more easy reading a wonderful article written on it. Yes, here it is. I’m so happy to find this post useful to me.
It is very easy to connect with different people comes from the different region and places but building trust with them always matters. It shows your activeness why and for which purpose you want to connect and build trust with people?
When it comes building trust online, become very difficult because everyone doubts on your thoughts.
But as you have discussed here about the blog commenting and social shares, it’s two of the best techniques, I have discovered from this article.
I agree with this and it works too.
Your video on growth mindset and fixed mindset, looks amazing, may I know which software you have used to design and create it? Also, your social share for this post is amazing.
Thanks for posting it.
– Ravi.
Hey Ravi,
Building trust matters with people no matter what country or region they are in. You definitely show how much you value your audience and what you will do to make sure they receive the value to keep them progressing in their efforts.
Yes, building trust online can be a challenge, but it’s very possible. You can start off by blog commenting and share other’s post. It’s how I started off and not only have I connected with some great people but also it has helped me build a following.
I didn’t create the growth/fixed mindset. I got it off of youtube which you can look up yourself. There are a bunch of videos on this subject, and I resonated with the ones I picked for my audience.
Thanks for stopping by Ravi! Have a good one!
Great post Ovais,
Earning the trust of your readers is what every blogger should always strive for. If they don’t trust you, there is no way you will succeed at anything you’re doing on your blog.
But the moment they’ve liked and trusted you, it will be easy to induce them to take any of your desired actions at any moment in time, they will even take action when you didn’t ask them to.
This is indeed a very wonderful post mate, I love the way you covered this topic, it’s so epic.
Do keep it up.
Thanks for sharing.
Hey Anil,
Trust should be focus on by every one of us bloggers. Trust is the bridge that will lead us to a successful blog and the monetization of it. As you said, the moment they like and trust you, the easier it will be to induce them to take any of your desired actions.
I’m glad that you like the post Anil!
Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week ahead!
Hi Ovais,
Most of us didn’t think how challenging blogging would be when we first started. I know I didn’t.
There was a lot of confusion and uncertainty.
In the beginning I had to first learn how to trust myself.
The video Growth Mindset vs Fixed Mindset was very helpful.
It made me think maybe that’s a shortcoming I have when it comes to blogging. I may have to develop a growth mindset.
Although I don’t have many followers I still love blogging and helping others.
Great post!
Hey Vernon,
If you don’t have any followers, then blogging can be a big challenge. When it comes to this, you definitely don’t want to have a fixed mindset. We only want to be open to what strategies and tools will help you grow.
Having said that, you also don’t want to chase every “shiny object” either. Usually those that do this usually have a “get rich quick” mentality without doing too much of the work that goes into growing a blog.
But it’s definitely possible to be successful, we just have to be patient and aware of what will help catapult our blogs.
Thanks for stopping by Vernon! Have a great rest of the week!