Secrets of Influential Blogging

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First Comes Attention, Then Trust – And Finally Influence

Photo credit sxc.hu

Having influence is the ‘Holy Grail’ for many bloggers, as it can translate into money, power and wisdom.

Yet influence is but the natural end-point of a sequence of events that begin with attention.

Without grabbing your readers by their eyeballs and sucking them into your personal vortex, the game doesn’t even get started.

You may gain attention by being outrageous, funny and crazy. Or by being persistent, steady and reliable. Or anywhere in the middle.

You can grab attention by offending sensibilities, catering to sensitivities or doing your own thing.

Your approach may be to stun visitors with visual impact, provocative and controversial writing or providing extensive and enormous value.

Gimmicks, tricks and ’switch and bait’ tactics all work – short term. Once you’ve got attention, you must respect it and nurture it until it turns into trust.

How you do it will depend upon your individual style.

You may keep giving great value. You may make your audience laugh or cry, delight them or disgust them, treasure or trash them. Whatever else it takes. But the one thing you cannot do is leave them bored, indifferent, uncaring.

And when you keep doing what you’re doing well enough, in the fullness of time, the attention of your audience changes into something more powerful and almost tangible – the magical relationship based on trust.

Reaching this point is a significant milestone. Very few achieve it. And by its very nature, this is a slippery slope. Trust must be guarded, protected, nurtured. Get careless, make a few mistakes, and you’ll damage that trust to the point it cannot be fixed.

The metamorphosis from being trusted to becoming influential is subtle, slow and subliminal. You may not even notice it – except suddenly, in a flash of insight, you become aware of how you are able to change the way people think, feel and behave.

You have influence. It is powerful. And carries a huge responsibility.

Don’t be scared. By the time you reach that point, you’ll be well prepared to handle it all!

Where are you currently on the ‘Attention – Trust – Influence‘ continuum?

What steps are you taking to make it to the ‘next level’? How can others learn from your experience? Leave a comment sharing your thoughts.