Five Tips for Using Articles to Gain Credibility and Trust from Prospects and Clients

It seems like every day the news is telling us about how some big business is dooping their customers. People have grown very weary of businesses and more guarded with the globalization of business. Many professional services no longer meet clients in person. This takes away the opportunity to judge a person by how they react to you, body language, tone and intuition. Prospects are taking longer to sign on with vendors in fear of being swindled. How can you trust a person who lives in Florida and you live in Oregon?

In the online world, the word is “Content is King.” While anyone can write articles and blog posts, there are keys to using articles to gain credibility and trust with readers. Building credibility, which eventually leads to trust among readers and then into clients. Articles allow the writer to gain exposure among their ideal clients. This is great in our global economy because many times our ideal clients are located in places where it is not feasible to do a lunch date or set up an appointment for an interview. Articles allow readers to get to know you and evaluate your expertise on the subjects are you writing about.

Writing articles is not a new subject. I will not regurgitate why you should write articles or where to distribute articles. I am offering five key principles to gaining credibility that will in time lead to gaining trust with readers.

Five key principles to gaining credibility:

1. Knowledge

Articles allow the writer to demonstrate their knowledge and experience concerning the subject they are writing. If you run a professional service business, a great way to demonstrate your skills and knowledge is buy writing articles that inform readers about your services. Articles are written to help readers solve problems, educate, persuade, entertain and demonstrate past successes.

2. Consistency

Articles allow you to consistency of same message to readers about your expertise and abilities. Each article allows you to focus the information that you are presenting to the reader. Every time you want to inform, educate or persuade, you can write a new article focusing on a single subject. Articles written briefly to help readers digest the information you are presenting and not feel overwhelmed. If the writer needs to present readers with a considerable amount of information, the writer can break the information down into a series of small articles.

3. Enthusiasm

Writers can use articles to show the passion that they have for the subject that they are writing. Readers are more inclined to feel a writer is credible when they are enthusiastic about the subject they are writing. Showing enthusiasm in an article can be very difficult because you also want the reader to believe in your enthusiasm. You want the reader to believe that you will truly be happy to do business with them and they will be happy in turn.

4. Understanding

Understanding your reader’s problems and concerns is the most important aspect that you can show your readers when writing articles. Readers want to know that you understand their pains and can help solve their problems. They want to know how you understand their pain, have you been in the same situation? Do you know someone who has been in a similar situation? Do you really care is what they want to know and writing articles can help show readers that you really care about them and their business.

5. Personality

Articles allow the writer to show some of their personality. When you show your personality to readers, it allows them to get a feel for the type of person that you are, especially since there is a chance they will never meet you in person. You in interject experiences, tidbits about your life, family and problems that you face to help readers get to know you better. If you have a blog or website, adding a picture will allow the reader to picture you when reading about your personal experience, increase the feeling of knowing you, and in turn increase your likeability factor.

The combination of these five keys principles when writing articles will lead to the credibility that is needed to gain trust among prospects and to keep current clients believing in you and your business.

I will end this article with a little bit of information about myself. I want you to get to know me and I would love the opportunity to get to know you. Please don’t hesitate to email me and tell me about yourself and your marketing communications concerns. I would love to be of help.

Some of you may know that I am a single parent of two boys soon to be 13 and 14. My 13 year old is developmentally delayed so his behavior is more of that of an eight year old, sometimes five, but that is because he is spoiled and bad. What you may not know is that I personally do not have any children. These two children are my brother’s kids and he was a single parent when he lay down and had a heart attack in his sleep. Sad to say their mother is on drugs, which is why he was raising his children. My boys and I have been together almost seven years and they were both born on drugs. The beginning was a true struggle for all. They came to me with a host of issues that come from being born on drugs, put into foster care, not seeing their other seven siblings, being in the house when their father died and the house was on fire at the time. Some neighbors notices smoke coming out the window, knew they were in the house and gain entry into the house and found him dead. He had cooked the kids lunch, forgot to turn the stove off, told the kids he was going to rest, put on a movie, laid down and died. These kids were a mess and it was very hard. I not only did not have experience raising kids, but these were kids that required years of therapy and medication. I chose to take my kids off medication due to adverse affects. The negative outweighed the positive and I figured it couldn’t do them any worse and I could always go back to the medicine if needed. We have been through it all, they were fire starters, very violent, stole, and the youngest barely talked and when he started talking he talked to himself constantly. The constant talking unfortunately has not changed. His brother and I have been reading the television for years, (closed caption); otherwise, we would have never known what was going on. The oldest boy was violent, had no friends, people were afraid of him. I am proud to say that my boys and I are doing great. My oldest is on the basketball team, getting good grades, has many friends and a pure joy. My youngest is in band, gets good grades and is so very loveable, funny and smart, just talks too much. Keeping a job was very difficult, in fact impossible. The school called about one or the other every day. I began volunteering at their schools, because it made no sense to go home. I used contacts to do freelance writing to supplement our income and allow me to be their when needed. Once they were old enough, I realized that corporate America was not the place for me. I enjoy working from home and being available to my boys. I chose of offer low cost marketing services because my goal is to make a living, not get rich. I want to help people market their businesses because I enjoy marketing and enjoy helping people succeed. There is nothing like feeling good about yourself. I know after many years of depression, that I feel great again about being me. I would not change a thing; well I can’t change the past so it makes it easy to say I would not change a thing. If changing something means I would receive the results I have with my boys, then no I would not change a thing. I am a very proud parent. I am proud to be able to work for myself. I write a lot about trust because I try to teach my boys that one of the worse things you can do is cause people to lose trust in you, it is so very hard to regain. My favorite saying is “If you have the balls to do something, than have the balls to stand up and say you did it. If you do not have the balls to admit to, then don’t do it.” On a personal note I believe that if I cannot tell my mother about something, then I should not do it, she is my best friend and I tell her everything, more than she probably wants to know. I am thankful for the friendship I have with her, I know many people have very rocky relationships with their parents. I hope to have the same kind of relationship with my boys.

How do you go about gaining credibility and trust with prospects and clients?

Drop me a note and tell me a little about yourself. I would love to get to know you.

Do you have any marketing questions that you would like for me to try to answer? I do not know everything, but I will do my best, it’s really all I can offer.

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Tags: Articles, Consistency, Credibility, Enthusiasm, Ideal Clients, knowledge, Marketing, Personality, Trust, Understanding, Writing