Blogging is 100% About Building Trust - 8 Ways to Get Me to Trust You

I think the age of the blog is vital. Who is going to trust someone who has been blogging for a week. You want someone who has been bloggin for a few months and who has done it becaue he or she loves it.

Great tips..

Personalization is a great way to be known, people always love to ask questions but most of the bloggers dont to the mails, which decreases the trust from the sender’s side.

Can you give some more tips on how to Get exposure around the web?

I agree that reader’s loyality can be built by personal contact. I found some blog owner have time to reply most comments and even some of them send the reader a private mail to show that their appreciation to the reader. And what I see is they have many visitor and commentator.

A good “About” page is always high on my list, which folds in to the “Display pictures and videos” point. The about page is your chance to sell yourself and your blog (not over the top sell, just enough to make people trust you and want to read more).

Trust is also keeping in consideration what others think of you. For example I give you more trust because of your review on John Chow. In a way John said trust this guy by doing a review and providing a link to your contest.

Michael

You have some very good points in this post. One thing, personalization is important that is true but it is something that some people just can’t do. I was having a discussion with my wife the other day about it that there are some blogs that people try to personalize but it just doesn’t work for them.

Once again…great advice and trust me, every little bit helps. I’ve been implementing the tactics recommented by bloggers like you, J. Chow, Zac Johnson and others and seen both my daily visitor count grow along with the number of impressions and time that people are spending on Jcyreus dot Com.

Keep the good stuff coming!

I think you hit some good points home as far as quality, age, and expertise are concerned. As far as the last few points go 7. Personal contact and 8. Display pictures and videos. I haven’t seen all that many bloggers doing that. Sending an email is a nice gesture and displaying pictures and video is usually what keeps me coming back to certain blogs.

I think awards are a little overrated now-a-days. But being personal and showing character is the most important thing in my opinion to gain trust.

A combination of all the above works well. I like those who reveal who they are. Age is something that can be overcome with a lot of work. But age is beneficial for sure. No one wants to just come and go.

I love all of these tips, especially #8, I don’t know how often I personally go to a site and just want to know who is “speaking.” In a virtual world it’s nice to relate a name to a face.

Good reminder for me to go and do some video blogging on my blog.

I want to add to your quality of posts point: use correct grammar, correct spelling, correct punctuation, and just don’t make obvious mistakes. If you don’t proof your posts, you could end up making an ass of yourself and losing yourself credibility and expertise. Nobody wants to read a poorly written post.

On a separate note…love this post. keep up the great content!

Good points, especially “3. Be genuine”. I think another one you could add is “Embrace Humility”.

I know that rather strange, but a lot of newer bloggers I’ve seen seem to only want to label themselves as experts or guru’s. What’s wrong with showing some of your failures?

A lot of my readers have expressed to me that one of the reasons they like my blog is because I blog about not only when I succeed, but when I fail to. As long as you study and evaluate why you failed, it can only help you and your readers.

Remember, you learn more from your failures than you do your successes.

this is true its all about loyalty and trust among your readers so that they keep coming for more.

My husband I are developing an authority site on retirement issues for babyboomers and early retirees and this issue of trust is vital to our development process. I really liked the “8 components that determine your blogger trust level” but the tips that were offered in the comments of people after were also greatly appreciated. We have been using our Blogger blog as a preface to the introduction of the authority site and are always looking for people to comment. Thanks for the creative ideas posted here.

My about page gives people hope.

Being an expert is not even hard, just make sure that you do your research correctly and never say thing unless you know for a fact they are true! This post was good.

-Me!

I’d add this point to the list: Avoid obvious contradictions.

If you want visitors to trust you, don’t write that your blog is the “fastest growing” one of its kind and then contradict that statement by having short posts and publishing them infrequently.

By extension, the same holds for business websites. For example, don’t write “we’re [city name]’s fastest growing widget company” and then have an amateur-looking site, a broken check-out process, little product or service info, and no way to contact you.