How to Build a Loyal Audience Through Your Blog: The Secrets of "Know, Like, Trust."

In our last segment, we talked about why your website needs a blog (hint: it's the cornerstone of your entire social media strategy) and we shared the importance of a little formula we call “know, like, trust.”

Today we’re going to dig a little deeper into that, and we'll offer a few ideas of how to build on that foundation with your audience.

With that in mind, here are some of the ways we've built our relationship with our audience, and how you can do it for your own business!

Go behind the scenes

‍Our businesses can seem pretty mundane to us, because we live with them day in, day out. But they can be surprisingly interesting to other people! Audiences love behind-the-scenes content from the businesses they’re interested in, and that includes yours — and bringing people in behind the scenes is a great way to help them know, like, and trust you.Try sharing pictures from around your office, or inside peeks at how you make your products. It may seem a bit silly at first, but it can make a big impact! This is the sort of stuff that makes your company seem more human.

Consider adding in employee interviews or Q&A, and other personal touches to kick this into even higher gear. Showing off your human side is the perfect way to help your audience form an emotional connection with your business.

Show off your expertise

‍If you’re going to have a blog, you may as well use it to demonstrate that you’re the top dog in your industry. It’s okay — you don’t have to feel like a showoff for doing it!In the early days of Edgar, we leaned a lot on the success of our founder and fearless leader, Laura Roeder. Laura's a thoroughly humble person, but sharing her success story helped establish Edgar as the product of Someone Who Knows What She's Doing. It may feel like bragging... but it's not! If you're making waves in your industry, share it with your audience! When you win awards, have cool speaking engagements, or otherwise shine in your field, share it with your audience! You'll be surprised how excited they'll be to celebrate with you.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can also just post things that you think your customers will be interested in reading! Depending on your business, your blog doesn’t have to be super focused on the topic of the products or services you sell. Maybe you sell a commodity product. Maybe it’s something sensitive or somehow private that you shouldn’t be that forthcoming about. Heck, maybe it’s just a little... you know... boring.

There's always more content that your audience will want to see.

But you know what? That’s okay. Whatever it is that’s holding you back, there are other directions you can go. Don’t assume that your business philosophy is too boring to sustain a blog, or that your customers don’t want to hear about you or what you do.

It makes the audience feel a real connection not just to the product, but to the person behind it. That affinity — which comes from the real human moment that we share — is exactly what people are looking for before they commit to buying. And that’s what your blog can achieve on a regular basis.Just remember that no matter what you’re blogging about, the big, capital-p Purpose of your blog is to drive social media links back to your website! So anything that your customers are going to be interested in clicking on and sharing on social media is great fodder for your blog!

For example, one of our most talked-about blog posts of all time had to do with Facebook's algorithm changes, which we're experts in because, well, it's our job to be. But it's also a highly important subject for a lot of our audience who rely on Facebook to be a huge source of traffic. Sharing knowledge like this helps you to establish yourself as an expert, which is an easy way to build traffic for your site and trust from your audience.

Post frequency

So you may be starting to think of a few ideas for blog posts, but that leaves one big question unanswered: how often should you be posting these things? Ultimately, the answer depends on one simple thing: quality over quantity. I’m going to repeat that, just for extra emphasis. Quality. Over. Quantity! Because most new bloggers post either way too often or not at all, and surprisingly, one of those actually leads to the other.

But that's a story for next time, when we'll go into detail about your posting schedule and the best ways to promote your posts. Until then, start creating a list of ideas for ways to bring your audience behind the scenes, pieces of expert knowledge you can share with your followers, and other ways to build up that all-important relationship of know, like, trust.