Business Blogging Strategy: Build Trust and Rapport

By Greg Balanko-Dickson, Professional Business Coach

Own a business? Have a blog? As a business owner, you are writing and blogging as part of your marketing and online promotion. There was a time when a blogging purest might have said that business and blogging should never mix.

Today, blogging and business go hand in hand.

People Don’t Care How Much You Know

Your customer, prospect, or blog reader does not care about you, they care about themselves and their needs. As the adage says:

People Don’t Care How Much You Know, Until They Know How Much You Care – anonymous

Leave the bravado, self promotion, and broad sweeping generalizations for the competition. Write with purpose, write with the consumer in mind.

Forget Me Not: The Cautious Consumer

The constant barrage of marketing and advertising has trained our culture well, too well, the audience reading your blog have well developed crap detectors – they are looking for the genuine article, the real deal, and business people who care.

First Build Trust

We must give people a reason to trust our writing. The easiest way to accomplish that is to provide value. Help them by providing information that they can put to use and use immediately.

Rapport Develops Over Time

When every post you write provides your readers with value the trust grows into rapport. A harmonious relationship where you show you understand the reader and they know you understand and care about them. I call it the currency of every business relationship – trust and rapport.

Writing Is Work

Writing original content for your blog is hard work. It takes time, thoughtful consideration, and energy. As William Zinsser says, “Writing is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.”

If you are going to take the time, effort, and energy to write, why not make sure it builds your reputation at the same time? Create trust and rapport by providing useful, practical, and meaningful information.

---

Authored by Greg Balanko-Dickson, a Professional Business Coach, author, and entrepreneur.

© 2007 All rights reserved.