14 Ways To Gain Trust and Turn Your Readers Into Customers

Posted by John Paul in Blogging, Entrepreneurs

How To Turn Readers Into Customers

If you want a successful blog, then you have to learn how to motivate your readers to become your customers!

Ok JP that sounds great but…. How do I actually do that?

I never really thought about this until a couple weeks ago when I had a conversation with my friend Sheila @KorteTravel.

In that conversation she said something that hit me…

“John I’m happy and excited to help since everything you touch turns to gold”

Now, Sheila was very sweet to say that, even though it’s not true, but I wish it was

But her comment did get me thinking.

First, it doesn’t matter if I agree with her or not…what
DOES matter is SHE believes it.

Second,  I started to think about what I did to get her to trust and believe in me and my abilities.

So I sat down and did a little thinking about what I have done from day one of my blogging journey that helped Sheila trust in me and what I do.

After a few hours and a cramped hand  (yes I use a pen and paper sometimes haha) I came up with 14 ways you can you follow to help you gain your readers trust and get them to buy from you.

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Gain Your Readers Trust In 14 Steps

Show You

Introducing yourself with a picture and small bio at the very beginning of your blog is the best thing you can do to build trust. Also make sure to have that bio box push people to read more on your About Me page.

Readers build trust and relationships with people not websites.

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Share You

To build off of what I mentioned above and expand on your About Me page.

Blogging about yourself makes your readers connect with you faster since they will start to get to know you beyond your blog.

Sharing your life outside of your blog makes people relate to you faster and on a more personal level.

Now don’t go over-board with this.

Remember to keep your blog posts targeted to what your blog is about. But throwing in a post here and there about personal plans or vacations plans or whatever is perfectly fine.

People buy on emotions, so getting your readers to relate to you on a more personal level is a smart thing to do if you want to develop that reader into a customer.

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Be You

The best way to get your readers to connect with you is to BE YOU.

That means to share your personality thru your writing.

I like to say that if I meet one of my readers in a bar and have a conversation for 5 min they will know who I am without me telling them.

Because I write like I talk, I’m a smart ass in my writing because I’m a smart ass in person. I don’t play games, sugar coat or hide anything in my writing because I don’t do any of that in “real life”!

You can’t share you and your personality if you’re trying to write like a superman version of yourself.

You need to know your personality lane and Stay In It!

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Be Up-Front and Transparent

Don’t half-ass your blog posts or anything you share.

Writing from real personal experience is a powerful way to get your readers trust.

It doesn’t matter if your personal experience is good or bad, they will appreciate your honesty. It also let’s your readers see that you’re not perfect, and that you’re a real person that is still learning too.

If you tried a product or tactic that worked, great share the FULL details of how you made it work.

If you tried a product or tactic that didn’t work, great share why you think it didn’t work for you and how it may work better next time.

If your upfront and honest in your writing, your readers will respect that and remember that when it comes time to share a product or service sales page with them

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Share Helpful Content

To build off the above tip, your content needs to be helpful.

No matter how great your writing is, if it is not helping your readers they will stop reading at some point.

Most bloggers/marketers will tell you to not be to helpful or give all your information away, but reality is you should write wide open. You will never give all you know away to the point that people will say…

“I’m not buying your product because I know everything from your free blog”

What will happen is they will be blown away but what you share on your blog for free, that they will be thinking…

“If JP gives all this great helpful info for free, I can’t wait to buy his product and see what’s in it”
Remember, blogging is about giving up front and benefiting from all that giving later on.

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Reply To Everything

You CAN’T have a relationship with your readers without conversation.

That is why replying to a readers comments or emails is so important since these are the only real opportunities you have to have a 2 way conversation with them.

Letting your readers see that you care about them and their opinions is a powerful thing, so when you have the opportunity to show that.. you must jump on it!

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Sell YOUR Stuff

Selling YOU and how YOU can help your readers is the best place to be to turn a reader into a customer.

If people read you blog regularly and look to you for help and advice, then it makes sense that they would rather buy you then the next guys product that they don’t know.

ex: I share my posts and other peoples posts on Twitter daily. I actually share more of your stuff them my own. Yet my posts get shared more.

Why?

It’s simple, they followed me not you. They followed me to hear from me.

I’m pretty sure this is how it works for you too. Your stuff gets shared more then when you share mine or other people’s.

It works the same with your blog. Your readers want to learn from you, not the other guy.

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Trust First

My man @DannyBrown shared something on trust the other day.

And my answer was “If you want people to jump, you need to jump first”

I learned this first hand when I released my Twitter Dummy guide 2 years ago. I fought with the idea of offering a 30 day money back policy. My thinking was that people would buy and then ask for a refund and get the guide for free.

After some back and forth, I finally decided to offer the 30 day policy and am happy to say I was very wrong

1000+ sales later, I have had 3 refunds, 2 weren’t happy with the guide and one was a refund request 2 min after the sale.

So what I was worried about ONLY happened ONE time in 1000+ sales.

Trust first – You will benefit in the end!

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Just Say Yes

This builds off of trusting your readers.

Take the “customer is always right” mindset a step further and say yes in the front way before they are a customer.

If a reader emails a question, answer it.

If they need a little help, say yes.

If they ask for a tweet or a share, say yes.

The more helpful you are to your readers/visitors the faster they will come back and become a customer.

Now this doesn’t mean to let people take advantage of you and your time. If you feel someone is, then just drop them quick.

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Follow Thru On Your Word

The internet moves fast and so do your readers. One way to stand out and gain trust is to do what you say you will do when you say you will do it.

Simple right?

If someone leaves a comment, then try to reply to it as soon as you can while they still remember leaving the comment. This will also give you a better chance at them coming back again to re-comment and keep the conversation going.

If someone emails you with a question, try to answer it as soon as they send it. When people have a problem it can be all they think about all day. If you reply to them and help them as soon as they reach out the happier they will be.

Giving solid support before your reader is a customer, is a great way to get that reader to BECOME a customer.

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Use Testimonials

There is nothing more powerful for a blogger than honest, real testimonials.

No matter how much some people like you, they will always have a little doubt about becoming your customer.

Having testimonials for people to read is the best way to relax their doubt…Period!

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Design It and They Will Come

I am all about having a unique blog design, to me having a unique design is a easy way to get people to remember you and stand out.

If you look around at other blogs, many of them look the same, they all have the same feel, and color scheme. It gets old fast haha

A unique blog design will have the same effect as a pretty well design sales page.  It will automatically make people feel the product or service you share it better just because of how you packaged it.

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Use Social Media…Don’t Let It Use You

As a blogger you know you need to be on social media sites to connect and build relationships. But the other benefit to being on social media is that it’s one big ongoing testimonial for you if you work it right.

The more your readers see you on all the social sites and the more they see positive things being said about you and what you share, the faster they will trust you.

On your blog you control everything…

If you want a negative comment erased, you erase it.

If you get negative feedback, no one sees it.

You share the best parts of your product or service.

Life is good on your blog island when you have full control of what is said.

BUT, you know blogging isn’t just about your blog island anymore. Now you need to be on social media sites and there you have very little control, and your readers know this.

It is very powerful to have positive things being said about you and your blog across all social sites if you want to build reader trust.

This will help you Learn Social Media to help get you started right.

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Stay In Front Of Them

Now that you are doing all the right things to build reader trust, you now need to keep doing it over time. Trust is not something you will gain quickly, but once you have it, it is yours to lose.

How do you keep that trust?

You need to stay in front of your readers so they don’t forget you.

Keep your content quality up.

Blog on a regular basis.

Email them weekly with something helpful. (not always about business)

Run a contest to give back.

Give something away free, like a ebook or video.

Keep sharing and helping and stay consistent if you want to keep and grow that readers trust.

Gaining reader trust doesn’t have to be a complicated thing. You just have to work at it and stay consistent and be real. Think about the things you would want and the ways you would want to be treated as a reader or customer and deliver that to you readers.

Without trust, you will have no customers!

The 14 ways I shared will get you to a great start… Leave a comment with anything you can add

Tags: blog tips, Blogging, Blogging Tips, customers, ebooks, gain reader trust, products, reader trust, social media