A survey of 1,000 consumers indicated that more than 80% consider trust a deciding factor in their buying decisions, despite the fact that only 34% of brands build trust with their target customers.
Trust is an essential trait brands must possess to achieve long-term success, especially in today’s business environment.
Great products and services alone don’t guarantee customer patronage. When you frequently create content that is beneficial to your audience, over time your brand becomes easily identifiable and relatable, and a level of trust is achieved.
Here are some pointers on building trust for your brand through blogging.
Be an authority
People read blogs for different reasons, one of which is to learn something new. Your blog should be positioned as a crucial resource for knowledge.
To remain relevant and trustworthy, your blog posts must constantly address customer needs, provide solutions and create fresh industry information.
Your brand’s blog is an instrumental tool through which to gain your customers’ trust and a rule of thumb is to keep it as informative as possible.
Deliver on promises
Deliver whatever you promise your audience. If you promise to publish a blog every week, or a sequel to a previously published post, ensure you stick to that.
While it’s okay to create some excitement about an upcoming post or a new product launch, do not raise your reader’s expectations without living up to them. This can make them lose any form of trust they have in you.
As the saying goes, “Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair”. If you say you’re going to do something, be sure to do it.
Be consistent
When it comes to business, consistency is key. Every new blog post is an opportunity to earn a reader’s trust. You have to put effort into understanding your audience as this will help in creating content that satisfies them.
A content calendar can be quite helpful in setting the frequency of your blog posts. A blog with inconsistent posts would leave a bad impression on your audience.
If you can give your audience a consistent experience, it can significantly improve the trust and loyalty they have for your brand.
Create top-notch content and a beautiful blog outlook
Blog content is an essential tool for creating trust and your posts have to be appealing, useful, and credible.
Your blog should be structured in sequential order for easy readability and flow. Scannable paragraphs keep readers engaged. Heavy paragraphs bore people out.
Whatever type of content you create should be relevant to your audience and credible. Use data and statistics to back up your claims and also ensure to cite relevant sources. Don’t just take data off a site without linking back to the original source. More than you know, people want to verify facts.
Engage with your readers
Engaging with your audience is important in building a relationship with them. Your audience would easily recommend your blog if they feel connected to it.
Take the time to respond to readers in your comment section. When readers know that you consistently respond to comments and engage in a dialogue with them, they are more likely to comment and continue to engage with your content.
Readers can also provide valuable feedback through the comments. Acknowledging them builds a two-way relationship.
Conclusion
A critical process of building a successful blog is building an audience, attracting loyal readers, and growing a community.
This cannot be achieved if your readers don’t trust you and your blog. Just like human relationships, building trust takes time and consistency but is definitely worth every effort in the long run.
An audience that trusts you would amplify your marketing efforts. So don’t try to build trust fast on your blog. Quick trust is hard to sustain. Instead, build a solid foundation first and the rest will follow.