The following is a guest post by my friend and fellow blogger John Haydon. John writes about marketing strategies for social media sites on his blog at JohnHaydon.com.
Integrity, as Tanveer has talked about before, is a critical factor in attracting and retaining readers, subscribers and customers.
In the offline world, integrity is something people easily recognize. It could be demonstrated by returning something on time that you borrowed, staying true to one’s convictions, or having the courage to protect others from unfair attacks – even if they are “competitors”. In these examples, integrity and character is demonstrated through the actions of that person.
But how do you demonstrated integrity online, through the proxy we call the internet? How can people quickly get a sense of your trustworthiness and character – even though you’re not actually present?
The Trust Of Crowds
The answer is in your crowd – the hundreds or thousands of readers who, on a daily basis, give you the thumbs up.
Blogs by definition have several features that can easily demonstrate crowd-sourced quality checks, or “social proof“.
- Comments – Comments are a qualitative measurement of our character. How many comments, on average, do your blog posts receive? What is the quality and depth of these comments? Is there a diversity of people making these comments? Getting large numbers of quality comments takes years of hard work – even for people like Chris Brogan and Brian Clark.
- Comment Replies – One advantage bloggers like you and I have over people like Chris and Brian is that we are able to reply to each commenter. Two bloggers who do this very well are Grant Griffiths and Liz Strauss. They both take the time to comment back and forth with each commenter. A quick note: Make sure you have set your commenting system to support threaded comments – at least three levels deep.
- Admit When Your Wrong – Or At Least Not Completely Right – No one can know everything about a subject, and often times, it’s our commenters who help us fill in the gaps. When you acknowledge them, and amend a post in response, it says you respect your readers and can admit when you’re not completely right.
- Creative Commons Credit – When you use a CC photo from Flickr, and note attribution, it says you value what another has worked hard to produce.
- Subscriber Counts – This is the number of people that have said: This person offers value that outweighs the pain of getting yet another email in my inbox each week. Feedburner, an RSS service from Google, offers several tools to show off subscriber counts on your blog.
- Twitter Lists – I’ve spoken about Twitter Lists before. They demonstrate how much perceived value a Twitter user has and can easily be displayed within a WordPress sidebar.
- Facebook Shares – Facebook beat Google last month at directing traffic. This is because how we use the web has shifted from searching for something we want to bookmarking or saving articles we receive from trusted friends. The more often your content is shared, the more social proof it demonstrates. Simple Facebook Sharer is a WordPress plugin that will display how many times a post has been shared on Facebook.
- Retweets – Allthough retweets might not have the same weight as subscriber numbers or comments, it’s still a factor in the overall social proof formula. Tweetmeme has a WordPress plugin that shows how many times your post has been retweeted.
- Consistency – Post consistency implies trustworthiness. It is better to post once every week, than five times one week and then none the following week. This is also a powerful way to grow subscribers. During January, when I published a daily series, my subscriber counts shot through the roof. And although I lack the bandwidth to post daily, I still publish a blog post every Monday, Wednesday and Friday – no matter what.
The Greater Whole
Any one of the above factors may not communicate character and integrity by themselves, but together, they can speak volumes. It’s almost like a person’s face. A wrinkle under an eye, doesn’t mean much, but together with laughter and a smile, happiness is conveyed.
How do you demonstrate integrity on your blog?
John Haydon writes about social media marketing for nonprofits.
Tanveer – Thanks for having me post here. Looking forward to the comments!
Very interesting John. The measures are a difficult one, as some people place much more weight on some than others. For example, I value RTs much higher than Facebook Shares, but for another blogger this may be different. Some people don't care about RSS subscriber counts but do very much about email subscribers.
However your post isn't about measurement but integrity and you nailed it.
As a new blog owner I try hard to focus on: (as I build Subscriber counts)
1. Comment Replies – I make a special effort to continue the conversation by replying to each comment. It forms a bond between me and my readers that is hard to achieve any other way.
2. Consistency – I also post on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule. It helps me with scheduling and helps, build a readership. The number one turn off I have with bloggers is going to their site and seeing that they have not posted for weeks, even months.
In regards to Social Media, I think integrity can be seen in how bloggers post their stuff. It’s really a matter of how often. Constant spamming of your last post on Twitter or Facebook leads to frustration in social media circles. This poor practice can eventually shoot you in the foot.
Thanks John – as always – thought provoking stuff!
I think one of the ways that integrity shows (especially on a blog) is the way the community connects. Not just via the comments (but that is important), but to the blogger as well.
Two bloggers I think get this are Mark W Schaefer and Danny Brown. I've seen times when someone's attacked Danny and his community has rallied, and Mark is excellent at saying things many other bloggers won't and has an appreciative community because of it.
So by all means, how many shares, etc, you get can count, but how many you properly have on your side says more.
Nice post, John, will check your blog out.
Frank and Joel – Thanks for stopping by!
@Joel – Good point about Twitter vs. Facebook shares and RSS vs. email counts. It does all depend on what means “social proof” to the reader.
Another way of demonstrating social proof is to use testimonials. Readers who don’t “get” Twitter would probably “get” a few impressive testimonials.
Jessie – I completely agree. What commenters say about the blogger, and how willing they are to “fall on a sword” for that blogger, says a lot about character.
Great post John, thanks for sharing. This is a tough one, like you said, to convey over the internet, I like how you worded it, it came across clear and concise. Integrity is big and you nailed it!
Thanks, Ginny!
One of the things that makes integrity on blogs to me is responsiveness. I will check back often if I know the blogger will respond back to comments and it gives them credibility that they will stand up for what their article is about in the first place.
I couldn’t agree with you more, James, especially because I view comments as a discussion between the writer and the readers about the piece in question. Of course, there are many blogs that focus more on the number of comments than on fostering any dialogue between the writer and the blog’s audience. Personally, I think those bloggers are missing out on the opportunities that come from engaging with your audience.
Thanks James for sharing your thoughts on this.