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I’m sure it’s something you’ve already noticed in your professional career:

Clients are more likely to hire companies they trust.

Your chances of making the sale grow exponentially if they consider you a credible company.

The trouble is, how do you build credibility if you aren’t generating much awareness and in our case, website visitors?

How do you become perceived as a trusted resource when there’s no one to share your case studies with, or to demonstrate your social proof, and share your expertise with?

That’s EXACTLY what I’m going to talk about in this post. I’ll show you the 5 marketing channels you can use TODAY to establish credibility and build trust for your business without an existing online audience or web traffic.

I’ll even outline what you need to do to get started with each of them!

Intrigued? Let’s get right to it.

#1. Publish Your Advice on Linkedin Pulse

I’m sure you already know the benefits of business blogging.

You know that it can help you attract traffic, prove your expertise, and generate leads.

But here’s the catch:

Growing blog traffic ON YOUR OWN WEBSITE takes an awful lot of time and patience to start seeing results. You need to publish plenty of content and spend hours, upon hours promoting it before you can expect audience would start paying any attention to you.

There’s nothing wrong with this approach, but the process is simply too long if your goal is to build credibility from scratch.

You need a way to share your knowledge with the audience much quicker. And ideally, without having to do that much promotion to get in front of new potential customers.

Enter LinkedIn Pulse

Pulse is the social network’s publishing platform, allowing users to post articles, much in the same way as you’d add new content to the blog.

The only difference? The content you publish on LinkedIn Pulse has the potential to instantly reach your entire network and beyond, and your networks-network and so on.

Plus, every article you post becomes part of your profile, building your credibility online – which in turn leads to speaking gigs, and other credibility building opportunities.

Just take a look at one the marketing experts we follow – Neil Patel. To date, he’s posted 93 articles on Pulse, and has over 60 thousand people following and potentially sharing his his advice on LinkedIn.

marketing channels to build credibility

Getting started with Pulse is actually quite simple:

When you log into LinkedIn, you should see a “Write an Article” button.

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Clicking it takes you straight to text editor where you can paste (or directly type) your blog post, format your text, as well as add graphics and other interesting elements that you’d like to include.

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Once done, simply hit Publish and your content will go live, alerting everyone in your network in the process.

#2. Repurpose Your LinkedIn Posts on SlideShare

SlideShare, LinkedIn’s platform to display presentations and visual content offers equally excellent opportunities to build your brand and credibility:

  • Instant access to LinkedIn’s audience. SlideShare is now part of the social network, which means that your presentations can reach your LinkedIn connections and beyond.
  • Search visibility. Given SlideShare’s popularity and authority, its presentations have a much higher chance of ranking for competitive keywords. Not sure what keywords to use? Check out our post on SEO for Managed Service Providers.
  • Authority and Credibility. Much like in the case of Pulse, sharing your knowledge and expertise with such an immense audience will help build your credibility and your authority in your field.
  • Leads. SlideShare offers an opportunity to generate leads too with different types of opt-ins / lead captures. Give it a whirl!

And the best part… you don’t actually have to create any new or original content for SlideShare, as you are just repurposing what was done elsewhere in the form of presentations!

Here’s a quick run through the process:

  • Convert your article into bullet points (simply highlight the text in Word and click the list icon). Each bullet point will represent a separate slide.
  • Delete any bullet points that aren’t necessary for the presentation. Your SlideShare should be no longer than 40-50 slides, with each slide containing a unique thought.
  • Open up Powerpoint or Google Slides and create the presentation. Check these free templates from Hubspot to get you started.

Done!

What’s left is to upload your presentation to Slideshare and start promoting it through your LinkedIn profile and other social media channels.

#3. Participate in Twitter Chats

Twitter chats – live events on the social network, focused around a specific topic offer you an opportunity to promote yourself right in front of your target audience.

But if you haven’t heard of Twitter Chats before, let’s stop right here and cover the absolute basics first. Buffer defines a Twitter Chat as:

“A Twitter chat is where a group of Twitter users meet at a pre-determined time to discuss a certain topic, using a designated hashtag (#) for each tweet contributed. A host or moderator will pose questions (designated with Q1, Q2…) to prompt responses from participants (using A1, A2…) and encourage interaction among the group. Chats typically last an hour.”

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(Example response in one of the SEMrush’s Twitter Chats)

Participating in Twitter chats gives you an opportunity to:

  • Network with people eager to share their expertise but also, learn something new from you
  • Showcase your knowledge to everyone observing the chat
  • Get your name in front of a target audience
  • Grow your social following.

And doing so requires nothing more than watching a Twitter stream as your time permits for the chat’s hashtag, and adding your replies when you feel you have something to add.

You can find potential Twitter Chats to participate on ChatSalad, a site dedicated to listing upcoming events. Or scout the schedule of upcoming chats on Tweet Reports.

#4. Get Interviewed on Podcasts

Did you know that listenership to podcasts grew by 23% since 2015? In fact, right now, the number of Americans who listen to podcasts matches the number who use Twitter!

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They also consume podcasts more intensely. According to data by Clearvoice, podcast listeners stay tuned in for 5 minutes longer than when reading a blog post.

All this makes podcasts a perfect channel for getting exposure, building credibility and trust in your business.

Being interviewed on podcasts also helps you attract traffic back to your site through links mentioned during the show and in the show notes – which as we need helps you generate sales leads and more opportunities for exposure!

As Dave Schneider from Ninja Outreach puts it:

“People really begin to relate to you when they spend 30 minutes listening to you talk – it builds trust.”

But what’s more, they’re also a highly time effective method to gain exposure and credibility. In fact, all you have to do is show up and talk about yourself and your business for half an hour or so.

To learn more about finding podcast interview opportunities, check out this amazingly simple process Dave Schneider describes in this post.

#5. Guest Post on Top Industry Sites

Many marketers see guest posting as nothing more than just an easy way to build links…

…and miss out on its enormous ability to provide brand exposure, not to mention the opportunity to build trust and credibility with a brand new audience!

As Mark Scott from Doc Marketing highlights in this article:

“Regular and quality guest blogging helps boost credibility in four major ways:

  • Stronger online presence
  • Increased authority in industry-related topics
  • Additional leverage in link building & SEO
  • Expanded audience base”

In fact, building credibility through guest posting works in a similar way as publishing on LinkedIn Pulse or SlideShare.

Your goal is to introduce your company to a target audience by regularly sharing advice with them on the sites they frequent.

To land guest posting opportunities:

  • Identify top websites and blogs your audience reads. You can do this by analyzing what content they share on social media the most or by Googling for relevant blogs.
  • Analyze each site to come up with topics that would resonate with their audience.
  • Reach out to the team who manages the site – pitching the post. The whole process can be quite complex so check out this fantastic guide to guest posting outreach by Ian Cleary to learn what you need to do. Or you can simply pick up the phone and make the connection!

At first, target as many sites as possible. In time, however, you will recognize blogs whose audiences engage with you the most. These will be the sites to which you should consider posting regularly to strengthen connections with their audience.

Conclusion

Clients prefer buying from companies they’ve heard of and trust. However, it’s hard to develop that credibility when you’re first starting out or have very little web traffic.

Overcome this problem by reaching out to your target audience via external channels like LinkedIn Pulse, SlideShare, social media and top sites they frequent!

Good luck!