Imagine a tempting offer drops onto your doormat or into your inbox. It’s a fantastic deal for something you’re interested in but you’ve never heard of the company; what do you do?
I suspect you do one of two things. Either you throw the offer in the bin because you don’t want to risk your hard earned cash or you ‘Google’ the organisation to find out more. Depending upon the type of service you might read customer feedback or testimonials or you might look for evidence that the supplier is competent.
Now you may not make unsolicited offers but if you’ve been following my advice you will be doing things to build your network. The person you meet at a networking event will probably want to check you out before furthering the relationship. What will they find?
At the very least they should find your website. Does that have testimonials or customer feedback? If you position yourself as an expert, coach or adviser how will your prospect be able to measure your competence?
There are a number of low cost things you can do to establish your credibility:
- Write regular blog posts which demonstrate your knowledge of your topic.
- Extend the discussion on other people’s blog posts (including mine!) by posting comments. This creates an opportunity to piggy back someone else’s audience. Post via your Twitter, Facebook or other account to make sure you are traceable.
- Contribute to Linked In discussion groups in your area of expertise or where your prospects hang out.
- Tweet short hints and tips or answer people’s queries. You can always include a hyperlink to a longer article you’ve stored in ‘the cloud’ (maybe your WordPress site) .
- Post articles and white papers online or offline. Make sure your contact details and preferably website are included.
- Look for opportunities to speak at business events or to groups of your target customers. Try to get Press coverage for your talk.
- Run a teleseminar or webinar so people can try you out for little or no money.
- Publish regular hints and tips or informative newsletters to your list and on your website.
So this month’s action is to put some regular activities in place to establish your credibility and expertise.
Perhaps you’d like to start by posting a comment in response to this article or any of the others on this site. Maybe you could look out for invitations to contribute to other people’s blog posts like the one I did here, http://www.carolroth.com/unsolicited-business-advice/?p=6325. My contribution is No. 46.
If you are not sure how to proceed email me at glenda.shawley@thetrainingpack.co.uk for details of our courses and one to one help.
Great advice for start up entrepreneurs!
Thanks Lin. If only it was just start up entrepreneurs who needed the advice. I know a number of quite established owners who are not very visible outside their immediate network.