How to write trustworthy content?
Once people are on your website, you need two things to improve your conversion rate: high-quality content and your ability to make people trust you.
Writing trustworthy content is one of the biggest challenges faced by content writers and those people who want to write content for their own business websites.
How do you make people trust you, especially through your writing?
Trust in terms of doing business with you carries two implications for the other person:
- They are going to spend money on you.
- They don’t want to regret spending money on you.
Putting trust in someone also makes you vulnerable.
Nobody wants to be taken for a ride.
It is not good for one’s self-esteem.
Our defense mechanism automatically kicks off the moment there is a possibility of trusting someone.
Take your own example: you’re casually browsing through a website, even liking the information that they have put up.
If they offer you something for free, for example download one of their e-books or use one of their digital services, you will gladly lap up the opportunity.
But the moment they want you to pay for a service or a product, your analytical antennae stand-up.
Suddenly, you are thinking about the pros and cons of using the service or downloading the e-book.
You will quickly look up other websites if you can download an alternative e-book, or use another service that is free, or buy it at a lesser cost if you really need to use it.
On the other hand, if you trust the website, even if right now you don’t intend to purchase something, when the time comes to purchase, you will have no problem purchasing from that website.
You trust Amazon. You trust Google. You trust LinkedIn and Facebook.
Even if you don’t trust these renowned websites, at least you are familiar with them and you know that millions of other people are doing business with them and hence, they must have some system setup.
But a smaller website neither enjoys familiarity nor trust.
The only way you can make your visitors trust you is through the quality of your content writing, and the sincerity that jumps out of your writing.
Building trust with content writing
Here are a few things you can do to build trust with your content writing:
Write and publish content regularly
Familiarity breeds trust.
The more people see you, the more they trust you.
If you appear in front of them only when you want to promote yourself or want to sell them something, they’re going to be put-off and they’re going to take measures that you stay out of their vision.
On the other hand, regularly offer them something useful.
Become a part of their lives.
In the times of social networking it is very easy to become a part of people’s lives: write and publish high-quality content that people would like to read and share with each other and then post it on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
You can also build a mailing list to regularly send your updates to your subscribers.
Having said that, familiarity is a double-edged sword: you can inculcate trust, and you can also piss people off.
Make sure your content adds value to people’s life and doesn’t annoy them.
Negative association is worse than no association.
Write and publish authoritative content
Everybody knows that writing and publishing authoritative content takes effort, knowledge, wisdom and time.
People who make an effort to publish authoritative, high-quality content are taken to be hard-working, and hard-working people are easier to trust.
The general perception is that people who want to take others for a ride are lazy and avoid hard work.
Hence, the opposite also works: those who are hard-working don’t want to take people for a ride because they want to enjoy the fruits of their hard work in a righteous manner.
How do you write and publish authoritative content?
Do lots of research.
Link to other pieces of authoritative content.
Take your data from sources that are highly regarded such as Time, New York Times, Howard Business Review and such.
Quote multiple sources that show your readers that you have done extensive reading.
Increase your knowledge and then use your knowledge to present a unique perspective.
Respect the wisdom of your readers.
For example, I don’t want to trick you into hiring my content writing services.
I know and accept that whether you want to hire my content writing and copywriting services is entirely your own choice and you are intelligent enough to make a decision.
On my part, I have put enough content on my website to give you an insight of how I write and what I can deliver.
After that, it’s up to you whether you want to work with another content writer or a copywriter or you want to work with me.
This is my way of building trustworthiness for my business.
This brings me to the last point of the blog post…
Stop constantly promoting your business through your content writing
On your various services pages you have explained to your visitors what a great product or service you are offering and what they stand to lose if they don’t do business with you.
Good. There’s a reason you separate your business website from your blog.
Here is a nice thing I read about building trust:
“People don’t trust words. People trust actions.”
This is where storytelling plays an important role.
Instead of constantly harping about your great product or service, tell people what difference your product or service is making in others’ lives.
If you can’t do that, at least educate people.
For example, if you have built a project management app and right now you don’t have many stories that tell how you have changed lives, you can describe various features with real-world applicability.
You can create a comprehensive FAQs section.
Recently I found out that even Microsoft doesn’t have a good FAQs section for OneDrive.
Result: I moved to Google Drive.
Inform people. Educate them. Provide them information they can use to improve their lives. Give them better options. Share with them your knowledge. Trust their judgement. This is how you build trust with content writing.