25 January 2022

5 Steps To Building More Confidence With Your Readers.

So you have built up your blog and are getting a reasonable amount of traffic, say over 250 visitors a day.

You’re getting some comments, stumbles and Facebook shares and at this point, you’re feeling a bit proud of yourself.

There’s only one problem and it’s eating you up inside. You have no or few subscribers and zero product sales. You start to wonder what all the people are doing in your site if they don’t even have the decency to subscribe to your list or feed.

This can get really frustrating and play on a bloggers confidence until the point he/she just gives up. You definitely don’t want this to happen.

Table of Contents

Why No One is Converting

The main reason random visitors don’t end up converting i.e. subscribing to your lists, feeds or buying a product is simply that they do not trust you. They have come to your site sure enough but you haven’t given them a reason to stay or keep coming.

For people to convert, you have to build a certain level of trust and confidence with them. You can take for example a soft drink. One is a popular brand name and another isn’t. They could taste exactly the same but you would rather pick the branded one rather than the no-brand. Why? You trust their brand.

A second reason people don’t convert is because your content isn’t compelling enough to make them take action. Your landing page or blog is so basic and uninteresting that they leave just as quickly as they came. They feel like you wasted 2 or so minutes of their precious time and will try to avoid you in future.

A third reason people don’t convert is because they don’t know how to. Your subscribe links and buttons are hidden away deep in your blogs and the reader gets tired of looking and moves on.
The third reason can easily be solved by making buttons and forms more prominent but the first and second need more in depth explanation and is what I want to focus on.

Step 1: Focus your content

Be specific with your content and your niche. Try as much as possible not to divert from your original niche idea and you will build confidence. When a reader visits your site and sees everything from cooking to plastic surgery to SEO, alarms go off in his/her head. You begin to look undecided and the reader’s confidence in you diminishes. I mean ask yourself. Would you trust a site like that? Of course you wouldn’t. Google and other search engines wouldn’t either. How do you expect to get targeted traffic if you’re not targeted yourself?

Your Task: Remove all irrelevant content as soon as possible and you should start to see improvements.

Step 2: Find A Compelling Angle For Your Content

Like I mentioned earlier, if your content isn’t compelling enough, people won’t bother making a decision. Set yourself apart from the crowd and actually do your homework. The reason most blogs fail to create trust and build confidence is because the author did not do enough research and left too many holes and questions in the readers mind. Be thorough while at the same time making sure you are to the point. Write the sort of posts that could turn into eBooks not because of the length but the amount of research and thoroughness that it possesses. And take your time. It is far better to write one amazing post than a hundred useless ones.

You will remove any doubts in the readers mind. Give them the sort of adrenaline rush they desire and they are more likely to convert into regular readers.

Your Task: Check your past blog posts and edit them. Rewrite them in a more attractive and compelling way.

Step 3: Create a Posting Schedule

Have a regular posting schedule. You don’t have to post every day. You can post twice a week, twice a month or whatever you are comfortable with though I would recommend no less than four times a month. This keeps the subscribers you have already managed to acquire happy and they are more likely to convert in other ways e.g. by buying your products.

No one likes a dead blog and with a lack of posts comes a drop in confidence. Why would you buy something from someone who just suddenly starts pushing products in your face without warning or proving that they are legit?

Your Task: Get a regular posting schedule if you don’t already have one and keep your readers happy.

Step 4: Reply to All Your Comments

Readers need to know that you are a human being with feelings and experiences and not some soulless robot or heartless marketer who is just in it for the quick buck. Reply to comments and share your experiences. People are more likely to trust you if they feel like you are or at least were one of them. Show the readers that you have faced most of the problems they have and help them through your comments. You start to build engagement and trust.

Your Task: Go through the comments of at least your last five posts and reply to each comment, no matter what it says.

Step 5: Build a Relationship with Other Bloggers

If your readers see that you are friends with other prominent bloggers in your niche, you gain credibility which increases chances of conversion. Building relationships is easy if you know what you are doing.
These are my two favorite techniques:

1. Guest Blogging: A good way to siphon some subscribers to your own blog. They already trust the blog where they have read your post which makes it easier for them to convert once they reach yours.

2. Blog Commenting: Getting on a big blog and starting a good debate can also get you noticed a prominent blogger who will be tempted to find out more about you and visit your site. And if you followed the previous steps, he/she should find something compelling and link to it, giving you free publicity.

Your Task: Do 1 and 2 as soon as possible.

All in all it’s about building confidence. No Confidence = No Conversion.