How Trust Made my Blog Triumph: 1000 Subscribers
Dear reader, if you’d ask me what the single most important factor in the success of my blog is I would reply: trust!
Trust is a tool that enables you to communicate and work together with people.
In blogging like in business trust is the single most important factor of success.
SEO 2.0 is about both or both of them combined in “business blogging”. This blog succeeded in reaching the 1000 subscribers mark even during my absence while I was off line for 10 days.
Building your reputation
In SEO 2.0 we often talk about reputation management or building. Reputation is the aura of being trustworthy, the message purported by others who already trust you.
Those others trust you so much that they will recommend you to their peers or readers.
On the web, where most people never see the actual person behind a blog or business, trust and it’s extension reputation are even more important than in print publishing or off line business.
Before you think about personal branding and the likes you need the most crucial prerequisite: It’s trust.
Nothing is more useful to gain trust on the web than a blog.
Trust is a two way street. You trust others and other trust you or they don’t. In SEO trust is even more of higher worth than gold as this market is seriously hampered by it’s bad reputation.
How to build trust with a business blog venture you can only do part time? As a part time blogger I have always envied professional bloggers a little. You know, these girls and guys who spent all day and night in their basements blogging and who have thousands of subscribers and followers.
There is no need to do that though: You can succeed as a part time semi-professional blogger like myself too. Focus on the trust, there are some very simple measures to gain some of it, skip
- The Google ads
- The undisclosed affiliate links
- The overselling – “we offer the world’s best x”
- The attacks on others to elevate yourself, you might become famous but also the least trusted person in your industry, even a persona non grata in the community due to hate marketing
- The pyramid schemes where you make people join services you get commission from
On the other hand it’s not as easy as following solely this simple advice. You have to know what you are talking about, convince your peers and your niche leaders that you do.
You can’t by only flattering them, you have to play in the same league based on merit, so you have to share what you know to enable others to asses your merit.
Write, write and write well
Last but not least you have to write a lot and well. I want to thank James of Online Marketing Banter who I entrusted this blog twice for guest posts.
He assisted me in getting where I am with SEO 2.0. Weren’t I a prolific writer myself (and arrogant) I’d need someone like him to blog.
He’s of course only one of the many who trusted me: My
- readers
- subscribers
- peers
and the industry as well as blogging and social media mavens who link and refer to me. Your trust has made this blog this big. It’s your triumph too.
On the day the last post by James was published SEO 2.0 reached 1000 subscribers!
The number fell below 1000 on the weekend but this always happened on weekends due to people not logging in and Feedburner not counting them.
Last updated: June 26th, 2017.
Congratulations, Tad!
Grats Tad!
Tad, while trust is certainly a key element of your success I tend to think it is your talent, enthusiasm, energy and most of all your sense of humor that has enabled you to deserve that trust. I would have kept reading even if you had Herbal Viagra affiliate links all over the blog.
Oh yeah and I guess you had some smart things to say too.
Great post, and congrats on reaching 1000!
I agree completely about the undisclosed affiliate ads in particular. So many blogs claim they don’t do sponsored posts (Especially not undisclosed ones!), but then you see posts reviewing Blog Mastermind, Brian Gardner’s latest theme etc. stuffed with affiliate links, and you just have to wonder how many other times they’ve hidden their monetary incentives from you. :(
Thanks guys! I told you, flattering is not enough ;-) Andrew, I’ll consider adding some Herbal Viagra affiliate links, hehe.
It is of course my pleasure to assist Tad. And I have to agree with Andrew’s comments above. Trust is certainly an essential part of the equation, particularly when it comes to industry knowledge. But personality is also a huge factor in attracting repeat readers, and I think your online persona is another key to success.
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Trust is a fleeting these days, just like common sense and loyalty. Congrats bro!
I believe you will be celebrating 2000 and 3000 soon too :)
Trust is certainly one path to take, but it isn’t a requirement. A lot of the make money on the internet blogs have huge followings and I’d guess that most of the subscribers don’t really trust the authors. These blog owners break most of the rules you listed and still succeed.
I think trust plays a bigger role when there’s a cost associated with a user’s action. Subscribing to an RSS feed has no cost to me, so I don’t have to trust you to do it. But if you try to sell me a book, that’s when the benefit of trust will kick in.
Congrats on hitting 1000!
BTW, I did log in quite a lot to help clean-up the comments, I didn’t even have time to blog on my own site.
Check the stats if you don’t believe me ;)
Awesome post, Tad and congrats on reaching this important milestone! If you were next to me, I’d give you a big, juicy hug! :D
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Ofc trust is vital in all platforms; more so online because unlike in the offline world we can’t get ‘tells’ and such from the person.
Oh and congratz on hitting 1000 i hope to hit 10 soon :p
I agree trust works for certain things. Some sites are well respected so thier views or recomendations carry alot of weight. Not all sites make money this way some get go for large amount of traffic and still make money. People use social sites to get alot of traffic or even ads and make money but they have a lower conversion rate so trust is a great to get people interested in what you offer and organic search engine traffic is another one.
Thanks for the review. Lot’s of good advice – almost mind boggling.