Trying to build trust with your blog…You might want to try something else
April 29th, 2008 - Posted in Concepts |You have been told over and over that blogging is the key to building your online business, and then a report like this comes out. Simply put, people trust their peers first and blogger least.
Who do people trust? (It ain’t bloggers)
I’ve been spending more and more time pouring over data, medium usage, behavioral and preference data for clients, and am learning more and more about how humans behave on the web.So who do people trust? Three research studies indicate it’s peers, or people they know. And social clout from bloggers, or those with a lot of online friends ain’t it.
Source: The Web Strategist - Jeremiah Owyang
This hits real estate bloggers hard, and further demonstrates how real estate is all about relationships.
So, is your blog worthless? Of Course not, but you need to focus more time on getting a following, building that trust with your readers. Tested factors still set many guidelines for marketing. You are all using your blog to market, so your blog falls into the same guidelines. New visitors to your blog probably will not contact you for business. Just like people that get your postcards, or newsletters in the mail will not contact you. The last I heard, it takes eight postcards, or pieces of direct mail to get a response.
Most blogs die in just a few months, well before they get any type of following, and the sad thing it, they die because they have no following. Make sense?
So stick with it, and focus more on touching people (virtually) and you will build trust much faster then just blogging about your market stats
This was discussed heavily in the comments on my post, in fact, many bloggers build relationships with their audience and trust builds.
The question on the survey (the Forrester one) was “do you trust a review by a blogger”. I’m not sure it indicated if this was a blogger you normally follow, or some random one found in google.
I was assuming a blogger referred to a random, non-followed, blogger.
matt -
just wanted to say thanks for brining Rate Window to the market.
In my humble opinion, Rate Window is the future of the mortgage industry.
More transparency and disclosure is always a good thing. It instills trust and confidence for the consumers and public.
Most importantly, transparency protects everyone involved before a situation occurs; not after a problem arises, often before it’s too late.