Once you’ve created a brand for yourself, the next job is to start making that brand worth something by creating a reputation around it that will encourage people to seek you out and to order more of your products and services.

The idea here is simple: build your brand to the point where people consider your logo and/or your name to be a ‘stamp of quality’ so that they know they can trust you. People will then seek you out to get your opinion and at that point, selling will become considerably easier. This is essentially how you become an authority and a thought leader in your industry.

How to Use Content Marketing to Build Your Reputation

One of the best ways to reach this point is through content marketing. This means publishing content on your site and on other channels that will demonstrate your knowledge and gradually help you to build a name for yourself.

The mistake that a lot of bloggers and business owners make here is in thinking that they can build that name for them with just one or two posts. Business owners make this mistake as well, spending a few weeks on Twitter or Facebook posting random content and then throwing their hands up in frustration when they aren’t famous.

Yeah… ok. That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

Actually, the ‘process’ of content marketing and of building trust is lengthy and long-term by its very nature.

A Content Marketing Funnel for Bloggers

This is the essential process that a blogger usually goes through to become an authority in the eyes of any one customer… I say usually because there are always exceptions to the rule.

However, it becoming an authority in your niche to a single customer typically happens as follows:

1. A visitor finds a blog post by accident and reads it, finds it valuable and entertaining. They then leave your site and give you no further thought. They may have found it via organic search on Google, or perhaps they saw it on social media. A random occurrence.
2. They then find another of your posts somewhere else and find it entertaining again. They then make a mental note of your website name/brand.
3. They then find your blog a couple more times and eventually come to think of you as someone they can trust on a particular subject. They may actively look around the rest of your site at this point and possibly subscribe to your mailing list.
4. If they subscribe to your list, they may actually actually open the first couple of emails you send. Then their open rates may dwindle, but they stay on your list because they value your expertise.
5. In future, when trying to find out about a given topic, they will specifically search for your website or business name along with their question because they know they can trust your answer.
6. They now are at a point where they consider you an industry leader and if you suggest something for them to try or buy they will be more likely to make a purchase.

As you can see then this is a long-term process and is predicated on you delivering consistently high quality content for a long time!

Ciao,
Miss Kemya