A friend of mine asked me recently, while we were in Starbucks:) – “Just what the heck is credibility marketing anyway?” I think if I were to describe it honestly, it would be the purposeful acts and actions you take to build the credibility of yourself and your brand. Credibility builders are things that create “trust” between the client or customer and you.

Seals
You probably don’t even pay much attention to this, but when you go to a retail website to purchase something, you are subconsciously relieved when you see trusted seals such as the UPS logo, Fedex, Mastercard or Visa, BBB (Better Business Bureau), TRUSTe, HackerSafe etc. This is because these companies (among others) have spent zillions:) of dollars building their credibility – so much so that if you add their logo to your own site, you get to piggyback off of their trust factor. Just make sure you are adding a logo that you actually use and are affiliated with, because if you fake it and someone finds you out — that defeats the point of credibility right?

Associations
If you align yourself with the “right” associations and organizations in your field, that will go a long way in helping you build your credibility as a “trusted professional”. This will work in building credibility with colleagues as well as the public. Even if your customers don’t know what the organization actually does in respects to your profession, that’s okay – because once they see that you are even affiliated with some sort of larger entity, they tend to trust you more. Whether they recognize the organization or not. Of course ones that they know are better. Google your niche’s name plus the word association (ex. marketing + association) and see what results you come up with. While there is a fee to join most organizations, it’s worth it to piggyback off of the credibility they offer and they actually may have information, workshops, and conferences that you could use!

Information
What kind of content are you putting out in the world about you and your business. Do you sound like you know what you are talking about? Do you have a pulse on what your potential customers and clients want from your industry? Have you published a LOT of articles, white papers, reports, ebooks, etc. on topics in your field? It is key when you are looking to build credibility in your field that you appear knowledgeable and professional. Don’t put out crap! Put out good content and put it out often.

I have recently received several email inquiries on how to start an advice column. Based on these various letters, I am assuming that these readers have read my advice column “Ask GirlShrink” and want to create a similar question and answer (Q&A) model for their own column(s).

So this is the deal. In order to create a regularly produced column, you need questions from people interested in your topic and your expertise. For this, you need to establish a few things first…

Your Expertise — What is it that you are knowledgeable about? What can you answer questions on? And how do you show others that you know what you are talking about? If you are giving advice on a very general topic (such as I do), then make sure you give your column a twist — some flavor:) Write in your own unique voice.

Your Visibility — There are two reasons why someone will follow your column – because your writing is exceptionally clever OR because you have made yourself visible to your target market. They have heard of you. They remember something you wrote before. Or just remember your name. You can of course begin to easily present yourself as the expert on your topic through a series of marketing tactics (one of my favorites is of course article marketing:), and establishing a website and subscriber list.

Regular Communication — Once you have a list and you begin communicating to them regularly through regular emails or your newsletter – they will begin trusting you and then asking for your help. This is a very important step or you will always be talking to “new” people and never start building a base of loyal fans. And what you want are loyal readers.

Can you begin writing your advice column without all this in place first? Well, you could based on what you “think” your clients need answers on. But that would be writing more like a work of fiction or a well-written FAQ page:) And the key to a really great advice column – one that gets syndicated – is to generate authentic content. I mean there are just some questions that people send in which I couldn’t make up if I tried! So authentic content over contrived wins every time in my book:)