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Cold Hard Fact #7: Your online reputation will make or break your blog or business. Sky-high credibility is what you need to get noticed (and to have readers/customers coming back day in and day out).

Your Big “Uh-Oh”: There are people out there who are much bigger than you, possibly much better than you, and who already have your readers’ oh-so-coveted attention somewhere other than your rocking website.

How To Fix This Profit-Sucking Problem

Guess what? No matter how big those A-List bloggers/celebrities/corporations are, someone was still changing their diapers not so many years ago. Everyone starts at the beginning from day one, and so many fricking times the business world has proven that you don’t have to be first, biggest, or best to get tons of attention and sales. You just have to rock out, day after day, and let people know about it.

First Step: Don’t Let The Big Dogs Get You Down
In your mind, you have to refuse to focus on how much bigger everyone else is. Stop thinking about your competition. Follow their progress? Yes. Learn from them? Absolutely. But don’t let it turn into a me-vs.-them, confidence draining issue. Instead, commit yourself to the customer/reader/subscriber and focus on giving them great stuff. That’s what will lay the foundation of an enduring, defensible reputation.

Second Step: Keep Your Eyes On The Prize
While sales/ad revenue may be your end goal, the way you get there is by keeping people rabidly satisfied with how incredible your content/service is. The love of the readers is the prize (and not all readers, because some will love you, and some will hate you). Because when you’re online, it’s unbelievably easy for people to tell when you’re focusing on delivering for them … or delivering only for yourself (but if you’re delivering for them first, they will support the fact you’re delivering for yourself in the process).

Third Step: Get Crystal Clear On What Your Content Is About.
If you want to be an authority on something, you better figure out what that “something” is. And focus on that. An easy way to do it is to complete this sentence: “When somebody says, ‘I need to know more about _______,’ my name/site is going to be the first thing the think of.” That’s what your content needs to be about. (Note: If you’re a ‘personality,’ people may be interested in your off-topic content, but when you’re establishing yourself as an authority, it can really dilute your message.)

Fourth Step: Create A 12-Pack of Pillar/Flagship/Cornerstone Content to Prove Your Mightiness.
Now that you’ve decided that you’re the go-to person for _______, prove it. Imagine that someone was paying you $1000 a post to write 12 killer articles. These will be the foundation of your reputation. I’m working on mine right now, but you can see how well they’ve worked for bloggers like Brian Clark, Chris Garrett, Yaro Starak and others.

Many of these people recommend that you write at least 5 or more of these articles, but I’ll tell you to write 12. Why 12? Because 12 is a bigger number. It requires that you really come up with some good stuff (and you should be able to do that if you really are the go-to person for _____). It boils down to going the extra mile. It just makes you look that much more of an authority.

There’s an additional reason for this - it gives you plenty of cross-link potential. If you wrote 12 pillar articles, and then made a “list post” summing up all 12 and linking out to them (and have each post linking back), you set things up so that whatever article someone comes to first leads them to your web of pillar content. And that makes you look extra-good. Keep your eye on this post as I build it into a series of pillar articles - new links will sprout out of it each week.

Fifth Step: Use Your “About” Page To Build Credibility
The “About” page of a blog or website is often pretty sparse. It’s easy to let that slide in the name of other important business activities (such as creating that killer content). But if someone comes to your blog and says, “Wow, what great articles!” and then sees an “About” page that says the equivalent of “Hi, I’m Dave, this is my blog. I like ice cream,” what do you think they are going to think of you, credibility wise?

You don’t have to write War and Peace here, but you want to lay out something that shows you took the time to describe a little bit about your expertise, your experience, and the ups and downs of running your business. Remember, this is the page where people come to solidify their judgment about who you are (and how credible you are as well). Use it well.

How Do You Build Online Credibility?
Over the next few weeks, as I build up this blog, I’ll go into a number of other things you can do to establish blog credibility, but this is definitely a powerful place to start. Work on these while I work on another few steps for you … and take a moment right now to discuss how you’re building your online reputation in the comments section below. Don’t be shy.

Keep rockin’ -

- Dave