Authenticity can be HARD to project sometimes in our blog/business. You’re a real genuine person, you know what you stand for. But does your audience? Are you connecting with them online fully? Do they know your values? Do they know your story?
Developing the “know, like, and trust” factor
Let’s get real here, people connect with and buy services/products from other people because they like them. Authenticity is so important in your business. In fact, it can sometimes be the most important aspect.
Here are my top three tips to help you develop the KLT factor with your audience;
1. Be the authentic you.
Embrace your quirks and don’t apologise for it. Use the words that you say often in your blog posts. Show your readers real life. Don’t worry about turning someone off, if they don’t like you then they’re not your perfect audience anyway. You owe it to yourself and your true fans to be the real you. Authenticity is key.
2. Give to your community
It’s so important within the blogging community to give more than you receive. It’s a wonderful community and it deserves to be looked after, as do the people in it. If you don’t make money from your blog, you could give back by offering your advice, supporting people or helping their causes with your voice. If you do monetise, perhaps you can offer free content/products alongside your paid for goods/services.
3. Be encouraging and relatable.
Sharing your journey can be inspiring to your audience. You might encourage people to take a similar path to you and be able to help them along the way. However, you need to ensure that you share the difficulties too. To show them the ‘less-than-perfect’ real parts as well. Otherwise you may come across as unattainable and the chances of developing the KLT factor will diminish.
Let’s go one step further
Ways to develop the ‘know’
- Show you’re an expert in your niche: Write great quality posts which position you as an expert and confirm your authority in the subject.
- Get clarity on who your ideal reader is: Knowing who your idea reader is, is vital to being able to develop the relationship with them.
- Create the right content: When you know who you are speaking to you can research what your audience needs and so create content which helps them and alleviates their particular pain points.
- Offer a FREE valuable product: When you write a post could you add in a free digital download of some sort which ties into the post and would be useful to your audience. If so, you can offer it as an opt-in freebie. This helps your audience AND helps you to build your email list, which will further develop this ‘know’ factor.
- Build relationships with key influencers: A relationship with a key influencer can really help you develop your perceived authority. So you can use social networking and blog post commenting to start a relationship with key influencers in your niche.
- Make sharing easy & encourage it: Create great and useful content so people feel compelled to share it, which means you will reach a whole new audience. Also ask people to share it! Often people will share if you simply ask them to.
- Create a popular blog post: Focus on producing a post which is filled with fab content and which shows your personality. Try something new and see what happens.
- Guest blog: Guest posting on another site is a great way to build connections with other people’s audience.
Ways to develop the ‘like’
If you were interested in purchasing a product, maybe an hours coaching. Would you buy it from someone you liked or someone you feel ambivalent about? Yes, from the one you like.
- Show your face: People connect with people and showing your face gives your audience chance to ‘like’ you and connect with you.
- Be a nice person: This shouldn’t really have to be said but be a nice person in all of your online interactions.
- Show your real self: Show your vulnerability and show that you are a human and this will help people connect with you and like you.
- Be as visible as you can: Using video and platforms such a Facebook Lives can really help people see what you’re really like and develop the connection with you.
- Help solves readers issues: Make sure you know what your audience struggles with and create the content which will help them solve their issues. They will then love you for it!
- Talk to them!: Use any opportunity you have to start a conversation with your audience. Ask them for feedback and respond to them.
- Over deliver: Always go above and beyond with the free content you deliver.
- Show social proof: People like to do what other people do and it gives them confidence to see others have done the same thing they are being asked to do. So for example, if you are considering buying a book, you may read the reviews and if a book has 100 5 star reviews you are probably more likely to purchase it with confidence than if it has a few 3-4 star ones.
Ways to develop the ‘trust’
Trust is a really important factor when you begin selling online.
- Never disappoint buyers: Always deliver, over deliver and try to amaze people with the content/product you have sold to them.
- Give away awesome content: Make people think ‘wow if she/he has given this for free, just imagine what the paid products are like’
- Deliver consistently: Your audience needs to know that if they buy a product from you the level of quality to expect. They will lose confidence if the quality of your work varies.
- Incorporate testimonials: This goes back to the point above about social proof. People gain confidence in the positive experience of others.
- Guarantee your products: Offering a money back guarantee will give people more confidence to buy.
That should keep you busy! Do you have any great tips you have used to develop the K,L and T factor?