Once you’ve created a brand for yourself, the next job is to start making that brand worth something by creating a reputation around it that will encourage people to seek you out and to order more of your products and services.
The idea here is to build your brand to the point where people consider your logo and/or your name to be a “stamp of quality” so that they know they can trust you. People will then seek you out to get your opinion and at that point, selling will become considerably easier.
This is essentially how you become an authority and a thought leader for your chosen subject matter.
One of the best ways to reach this point is through content marketing. This means publishing content on your site and on other channels that will demonstrate your knowledge and gradually help you to build a name for yourself.
The mistake that a lot of bloggers and business owners make here is in thinking that they can build that name for them with just one or two posts. Actually though, the ‘process’ of content marketing and of building trust is lengthy by its very nature.
This is the essential process that any blog must go through to become an authority in the eyes of any one customer…
1. A visitor finds a blog post by accident and reads it, finds it valuable and entertaining. They then leave your site and give you no further thought.
2. They then find another of your posts and find it entertaining again. They then make a note of your website name/brand.
3. They then find your blog a couple more times and eventually come to think of you as someone they can trust on a particular subject. They may actively look around the rest of your site at this point and possibly subscribe to your mailing list.
4. In future, when trying to find out about a given topic, they will specifically search for your website or business name along with their question because they know they can trust your answer.
5. They now are at a point where they consider you an industry leader and if you suggest something for them to buy they will be more likely to make a purchase.
As you can see then this is a long process and is predicated on you delivering consistently high quality content for a long time!
