Building Relationships: How To Build Trust In Your Community

You can hire a public relations company to organize a marketing campaign to build community awareness about your company or if money is sparse, the following low-cost techniques can be implemented:

1. Sharing with your community
Sharing what you know is an effective way to build your credibility. Your goal is to become the contact choice when people within your community need help. Whether they are in need of finding a good press release service or the best place to consider a mortgage—you’ll be the person who supplies this information to them.

On the Internet: You could offer a database filled with valuable web sites essential for business success or other links similar to your type of industry.

2. Offer free workshops
In this information age, people love to receive advice, especially when it pertains to their needs. If you sell custom gift baskets or own a yarn emporium, why not offer “craft” workshops after normal business hours? If you’re a commercial printer, you could offer a free brochure design workshop or teach business owners how to properly convey a business identity through logo design.

On the Internet: You could offer a weekly teleseminar tailored to your specific community.

3. Give away something valuable
We expressed how to share information in order to build trust, so why not give away an item to help people improve their lives? If you sell lawnmowers, you can give customers a lawn-care or gardening booklet. If we revert back to the commercial printing business, you can give customers a design booklet, a typeface guide or an instruction manual on how to design print newsletters.

On the Internet: You can provide the same valuable information by publishing an e-book and making it available as a free download from your web site. Provide permission for other web masters to place the book on their web pages and watch your credibility rise with each download.

4. Be a good neighbor
You may be able to attract the attention of the media by presenting a special promotional event to raise money for a charitable organization. Plan the event to include the local businesses within your community and offer a golf outing, car wash day, or talent show for your neighbors to enjoy.

Contact food vendors and arrange for them to participate and agree to donate a portion of the proceeds to charity. Consider sending the collected money to Jerry’s kids, the Cancer Society, or the local women’s abuse center.

What local newspaper is in your area? Prepare a press release and send it to the editor. You’ll never know if they’ll pick up the story unless you try!

On the Internet: Attract a crowd by offering a web site hunting spree or contest that involves donating $1 of your proceeds to charity for every click to a certain page on your web site. This allows your community to receive pleasure in participating, as their click means a local charity will receive funds, and it’s a great way to bring awareness to your products, programs, and services.

Successful entrepreneurs put a lot of hard work into building their credibility within the community, and with good reason. Rather than try to build trust with mere words, they let actions speak their loudest voice!

How do you build trust with your customers? Feel free to comment below.

Community Review: RSSHugger.com Blog Directory

Today, I decided I was going to plug my blog into as many blog directories as I could. And while I was at it, I was going to enter my RSS feeds into a couple RSS feed directories too. Little did I realize that it would become quite a cumbersome job to say the least. However, during this wonderful time of promoting my blog, I happened across a different kind of blog directory.

Now mind you, normally when I am asked to link back to a directory, I quietly decline and move onto the next resource on my list. The reason I do this is simply because Google, MSN, Yahoo, and the larger web directories don’t require me to link back to them so I don’t relish the idea of having to link to the smaller directories. After all, why does the directory exist in the first place? Do they want to be like Google or are they merely trying to build their reciprocal links?

Anyway, I digress. Instead of clicking away from this new blog directory, I decided to take another look and figure out what it had to offer. I went to the about page and read the contents. Impressed with the honesty of the owner, Collin Lahay (and his personal mission to fund the Kiva.com project), I felt compelled to help him out.

What is the name of this new directory?

RSSHugger.com

Who runs the directory?

Mr. Collin Lahay

What is the mission of the directory?

RSSHugger.com wants to bring blog owners and readers together in a community setting that allows surfers to gander at the listings and subscribe to RSS feeds if they so desire. Writers benefit from the added exposure that the RSSHugger.com traffic can bring to their blogs and RSS feeds.

What I like about RSSHugger.com

Directory Page Layout:

Each blog is given a single web page, which means my listing doesn’t share any web real estate with tons of other blog listings, advertisements, or flashy banners that fight for the surfer’s attention. Indeed this is proof that Collin truly cares about my ability to gain exposure through his RSSHubber web site.

Side Note: Mr. Lahay placed a Google Adsense section on each blog page but luckily it’s at the bottom of the page and doesn’t compete with the blog information shown above it.

Page Colors:

The rest of the RSS Hugger community is acceptable to the eye, using brown color tones, pleasing fonts, and an easy to use navigational system at the top of each page. Crisp and clean!

Other Features:

The site provides a Top 100 list to highlight the active blog-sites, which send the most traffic back to their RSSHubber.com directory pages. This feature is reset every month thereby giving others an opportunity to participate and receive additional promotion in return.

What I don’t like about RSSHugger.com

I needed to review the site to get a directory page listing for my blog.

While I did state that I am creating this review because I felt compelled to help Collin, please realize that other blog directories merely ask for a reciprocal link which is much faster to accommodate than it is to write a full-fledged review for a web site.

I believe putting people through the added pressure of creating a review, prevents the web site from being as popular as it could be, compared to just asking for a simple reciprocal link; could be detrimental to its long term success.

I need to contact Collin, if I change my domain name, to assist me in updating the URL listing on my directory page.

If I discontinue my current blog and want to use a different web address, I would need to rely on another person to make this type of change. Dependent on his time frame, it might not happen as expeditiously as it would if I was allowed to make the changes myself.

Conclusion

Overall, I do like the RSSHugger.com web site and would be pleased to have my blog listed in the directory.

Now I’d like to ask you to help Collin out too. (You knew I was going to ask, didn’t you?)

If you want to raise awareness for your blog or be a part of an upcoming viral community - I suggest visiting RSSHugger.com and register to get your blog listed too. Obviously, you’ll have to write a review for Collin’s web site, just like I did, but isn’t that what building community is all about?

Rated: * * * *

Building Community: Social Networking Success

Belonging to any networking group (including the web 2.0 social networks) is a simple method for any business professional to increase their visibility, credibility, and sales.

Plus, networking groups provide opportunities to exchange talents between contacts. This not only makes a social media group a great choice for the established business but it also opens doors to the new business owners who might be tight on funds. A community of like-minded professionals will often barter talents in order to achieve what money normally would buy.

Establish Your Profile on Several Social Media Sites

This enables you to be WIDELY transparent and accessible through different outlets. While it may seem a daunting task to visit every media network within a week, a schedule could be maintained giving you the ability to visit each one periodically throughout the month.

The idea is to place a profile within each networking group that will work on your behalf during your absence. Since your profile harbors links to your products, programs, and services - increased exposure is a given!

It’s essential that we understand the true purpose of a social media site: Connecting with your audience, building relationships with new contacts, and gaining an opportunity to pull those contacts BACK to your web site to continue the process. Always remember that the social networking groups are a starting point. The transactions that take place on them should never end there.

What do YOU think? Talk to me. >:)

All good things,
Bonnie Gean

Building Community: Your Personal Touch

My name is Bonnie Gean and I am the gal to call when you’re ready to build a community of clients and prospects.

I’ve been establishing profitable communities, online and offline, since the early 1980’s and my success stories have been published countless times as a result of my ambitions. (Check out my About page.)

While most were just learning about the Internet, I was already building community and profiting from my first web based business. I guess it’s safe to say I was testing the pulse of the Internet before others knew it existed.

By 1993, I was publishing articles, about building communities, way before article writing gained popularity as the infamous BUM marketing method discussed on the Web today. After 15 years, my articles are still posted in Fidonet’s archives.

Now, I’d like to share some of my community building experiences to help you create a place on the Internet… your personal connection place… that drives people to your community site with a fevered hunger to do business with you.

Sounds like a good plan to me. Are you ready to get started?

To your success,
Bonnie Gean