Building Trust With Your Audience

Having a social media following is one thing, yet having an audience you’re continuously communicating with, building into, and learning from is completely different.

Oftentimes people will only use their platforms to sell. Pushing products, running deals, and pestering your audience to buy from you is not what you should be doing. This can quickly turn your following away and make them steer clear of you and your company moving forward.

One of your businesses greatest tools isn’t your product or service, it’s your audience. While your products and services are great and ultimately what helps keep the lights on, there are better ways to indirectly communicate your message than just constantly pushing a sale.

A healthy relationship with your audience will lead to business growth. You shouldn’t be worried about how large your audience is, but rather how much they care about what you’re doing. If your audience is engaged with what you’re posting, who you’re partnering with, and what you’re putting out, that will continue to become more and more valuable over time.

Your audience is searching for people to do business with. While that might not be immediately they are subconsciously seeing what you and your competitors are doing and remembering what stands out. If they are seeing all that you’re doing for your current customers, the reputation you’re continuously building, and all that you are doing for the industry, they’ll take note. By continuously producing content that accumulates over time and offers value to your following, you’ve continuously been a resource and built trust with your audience.

Show up, pay attention, and be honest with your following. You don’t have to be the best at everything as often your audience can see through that and will know you aren’t. Instead highlight your business's strengths without stretching the truth. The worst thing you can do is lie to your audience and promise things you won’t deliver on. If your business has a bad reputation and is known for manipulating its customers they’ll be hesitant to buy from you. Instead if your business is known for helping their customers reach the finish line and succeed they’ll selfishly want that for themselves and contact you. People buy from people they like and who they can trust, so make sure that you’re sticking to that.

You should be listening to your audience. Understand who they are, their needs, and their struggles. Once you listen and understand, you can shift your marketing efforts to helping them check their boxes and helping them achieve their goals. If you help a customer achieve their goals via the services you offer and they enjoy the process, you just landed yourself a long term customer.