Richard

Many years ago I read - someplace - the idea that in business, you are always working with people in one of these four boxes:

1. People who know you and who know your product
2. People who know you but don’t know your product
3. People who know your product but don’t know you
4. People who don’t know you or your product.

The more time you spend in Box 4, the more you can be certain your business will die - probably soon.

The more time you spend in Box 1, the greater chance you have of creating a wildly profitable business.

These boxes are just another way of assessing trust in your business relationships. Obviously, the more time you spend in high-trust relationships, the better your results. And the more time you spend in zero-trust relationships, the worse your results.

So a big key is to move people out of Box 4 as quickly as you can. How? Give them something valuable. Give them information or training that they can turn into a profit, that makes them much more effective. Reveal techniques that work. The right people will be hyper-sensitive to the right offer from you.

It’s easy to do this from a blog, where most of your visitors will come from Box 4 - the box of death. If you immediately start helping them - with every post you write - you have a chance to move them up a box or two in a hurry.

And also, make sure they can’t misplace you. When they come, make them an offer they cannot refuse … offer them a hot, hot report with follow-up training, which allows you to stay in contact with them at least once a week. That way you can track them as you increase your trust level with them.

Be ready to answer their questions. And be quick to answer their questions and respond to their comments. Never slam a big red “BUY” button in front of their face, but on occasion, weave product references into your communication.

As they return to your community and become more involved, communicate with them more closely in a totally natural way. Email them. Get their phone number and call to talk with them about what they really want to see from your blog. What do they most want from their relationship with you? Ask them.

Go for deeper, deeper, deeper trust.

Never push them in any product direction. They know you are in business, but they feel 100% in control of that buying process with you. You and your customers & prospects will be operating in a high-trust environment, and nothing could serve you better long-term.

Richard Dennis

Richard

Many high-power advertisers have concluded over the years that blogs are worthless in terms of income. They’re probably right about the direct correlation. But what does that mean?

It means you can’t sell a product from a blog. That seems pretty obvious, given that blogging is one facet of social networking. People do not expect to be sold when they come to a blog, and the vast majority won’t stand for it.

However …

• If you use your blog to effectively build trust with potential customers, then it will definitely increase your bottom line. Consumers are a pretty darned skeptical group these days. If they’ve just found you by a web search, their confidence in you is probably non-existent.
• But if they start on your blog and find you to be open and informative, someone dedicated to educating their market, who won’t keep secrets from their prospects, then the game changes.
• If your blog gives them value and they begin to see you as an expert in the niche, someone who gives away valuable tips & information, then their thinking changes. They start to trust you, because we all dream of doing business with the expert in our niche.
• If you (or your blogger) is really good at relating to people and drawing them into discussion, then a community of people who like & trust you begins to build … and that is very attractive to newcomers.
• If you take the reader into your confidence and reveal your ideas & plans for the future … and ask for their suggestions & feedback … then they see that you are extending trust to them. That brings them to feeling increased trust for you.
• If you really cultivate your blog and share great tips & ideas and give good value and interact with your visitors and value their input and create a growing community, your blog will gain more favor with the search engines. And as your blog moves up the search engine listings in your niche, searchers start coming to your page with greater trust already built-in.

And as your community grows, many of your fans will link to you in their blogs or websites dedicated to your niche. That recommendation again increases the trust felt by new visitors … and certainly increases the speed of a new visitor converting to a new customer.

Do blogs correlate to income? Absolutely.

Take care,

Richard Dennis