What message is your personal brand currently conveying?
Are you conveying expertise, trust, and credibility? Or are you non-existent in the minds of your potential customers?
Taking the time to develop a robust, accurate and trustworthy personal brand helps you to become known for what you are good at, differentiates you from your peers, positioning you as an expert.
When others in your industry and your following see you as a convincing and reliable expert in your field, they begin to realize why you’re the best choice from all the other businesses out there.
While you can build credibility over time, you only get one opportunity to make a great first impression online.
To help you develop a strategic plan around boosting your online credibility, follow our 7 tips that you must focus on implementing now.
Let’s dive in…
1. Practice What You Preach
It should go without saying that to build credibility in your personal brand, you must be honest across the board. You aren’t able to establish yourself as a credible leader if you’re not willing to walk it like you talk it.
Instead of just saying words that you think will make you sound trustworthy, make it a common practice actually to run your personal life and business that way.
Keeping all of your communication with your followers and clients genuine and honest will help you to establish trustworthiness through your personal brand.
2. Leverage Social Media
The use of social media by marketers and personal brand experts has become a focal point in creating brand credibility and awareness online.
That’s because social media allows us to reach a massive audience and make impactful decisions as leaders in our industries!
However, being present on social media alone is not enough to build credibility. Here are some things to keep in mind when looking to develop trustworthiness with your followers:
- Post consistently across all channels to stay at the top of mind with your followers
- Create a blog and fill it will well researched, in-depth and informative posts. Make sure to repurpose this content and share with your followers on social media
- Consider guest blogging to increase your content output and establish credibility via collaborations
- Prioritize consistent visual branding across all channels to encourage cohesiveness throughout your brand.
- Engage with your followers, answering specific questions and listening to their needs, always quick to provide answers and show that you know your stuff
- Own your mistakes and delight your customers
3. Give Speeches + Presentations
No matter what industry you are in, there will come a time when you need to speak in front of people.
Personal brand experts have mastered the art of public speaking, teaching and sharing their expert knowledge with the world.
Whether you are an avid speaker or have yet to book your first speaking gig, getting used to speaking in front of your audience must become a regular habit if you are going to build trustworthiness.
To get good at giving public speeches or presentations, you must first realize that you need to practice, practice, practice. Don’t be afraid to start small. Take up local speaking gigs in your community, start somewhere.
Join a Toastmasters group, join a meetup, or join an improv club. These will give you low-risk opportunities to improve your speaking skills.
If you’re not quite ready to make the leap into the stage world, consider either starting a podcast or being a guest speaker in one. This will also introduce you to other people in your industry and allow listeners to get to know you!
4. Boost Your Content Marketing Strategy
The best method for building credibility over time is to provide top-tier products, information, and outstanding customer service.
Some examples of effective content marketing include:
- Informative how-to videos
- Themed blog posts
- Infographics
- News articles
- In-depth Ebooks
Sharing your well-composed, well-researched thoughts and insights on matters that are relevant to your target audience allows you to build up your brand credibility and show your followers why they should trust you.
Consistently and strategically sharing quality content will draw in more people than if you were to adopt an obvious, outright selling strategy for your brand.
It is your job to come up with creative and original ideas that speak to your audience.
Make it your mission to solve micro problems for them. Whenever you get asked questions by leads, prospects, and clients, turn the answers to each of those questions into a piece of content.
Chances are if one of your customers are struggling with a particular problem, others are as well.
Using customer and client testimonials in your content marketing strategy is another surefire way to influence your credibility and trustworthiness with your audience.
Consider asking previous clients if they would be willing to write or record a short video testimonial for you. Highlight their experience with you on your socials, website and sales videos.
This will help potential customers eliminate their fear of purchasing your product because they see the successful results of others using your programs.
There are many factors to consider in creating a strategic content marketing plan, but the most important thing to remember is to create content that you are proud of, passionate about and truly solves a bigger problem.
5. Gain Authority Through Partnerships
The saying is true, “If you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Developing strategic partnerships with influencers, affiliates, and joint ventures are crucial to scaling your credibility efforts.
Potential clients and the general public are more likely to listen to other industry leaders, and brand advocates promote your products and services than to listen to you self-promote.
Creating partnerships also gives you an opportunity to add value to their audiences and allows for the opportunity for you to gain exposure to their following as well.
Reach out to influencers and potential partners and add value or do something for their audience before you make a request.
You’ll be surprised by the snowball effect that happens when you build up partner relationships!
6. Teach What You Know
We genuinely believe that the best leaders are also teachers.
There is no better way to introduce your expertise to the world than by teaching something useful while creating intimate environments for your followers to get to know you.
Teaching a class or workshop can sound scary, but truthfully many places in your local community would love to hear what you have to teach.
To serve the world at a higher level, you must first be open to starting small.
The good news is that by teaching live, it forces you to prepare and create content ahead of time (that you can re-purpose onto your social channels later), raises your necessity to bring your best content forward, and stimulates intimate relationships that can turn into brand advocates down the road.
If teaching in front of people is daunting, or you want to scale your message beyond a small group or meetup, try creating an online course!
This is a great way to foster your own community that follows your curriculum and methodologies, subsequently building expert credibility.
7. Publish a Book
Everyone has a story within them, especially you. One of the reasons that publishing a book is so powerful is because credibility is instantly built the moment that you can call yourself an author.
There is a certain level of risk associated with writing a book, and the public knows that only serious people are up for the challenge. Packaging your knowledge into a book gives you a stage to demonstrate your expertise and prove to the world that you know what you are talking about.
Publishing a book opens up the door to mass media exposure, as news outlets, blogs, and other channels are more likely to cover you when you have the “author” title attached to your name.
I want to call attention to the fact that we are specifically saying “publish” a book, not “write” a book. The biggest reason why people never get a book published is because they have the misconception that they must write every word of the book. Using an experienced ghostwriter to help extract your content, organize it, and write the book is often times the best way to get a quality book to market – and you aren’t any less of an “author”. At the end of the day, it’s still your content and expertise – no matter who puts the thoughts to paper.
Check out this incredible article by Entrepreneur to see just why publishing a book is so vital to your long-term branding strategy success.
Final Thoughts
We know that building credibility takes time, effort and the implementation of strategic marketing objectives. However, with the right mindset, a well-planned approach, and some hard work you can turn your online presence into a client and media attraction magnet.
Follow our tips, and you’re sure to witness a boost in your credibility in no time.
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