I sometimes struggle with seeing other blogs having explosive success at first by conforming to ideas that I consider less than ethical or more of the “copycat” mentality, but…normally…those blogs don’t last long after everyone figures them out.

There are times that I write articles and provide resources due to demand, but that same theory still applies.

“Does that mean you generate ideas and content that nobody else has, or you deliver it in a different kind of a way?”

Both. The trick is to bring your own personal look at a given subject matter and present it in a way that speaks to who you are as a blogger.

You make some great points with regards to the multiple ways you had to work with your new pooch Hans to get him to relax, feel ‘accepted’ and eventually ‘trust’ you.

But another dog might have required different methods of creating trust. This story is a great analogy for bloggers, as each of your readers is an individual. So each reader requires something slightly different to capture not only their attention but their ‘trust’.

If your blog is about your life as a yoga instructor, then your readers will require a certain level of ‘trust’, but this would be a much different trust level if you’re blogging about stocks.

The level of trust required will vary from blog to blog, so one of the things I’ve been doing on my blog, which focuses on personal development through increased knowledge, is to create content which reflects the experiences I’ve had in my own personal growth.

My suggestions won’t grab every reader because many of us aren’t interested in personal development, but despite a 72% bounce rate, I still maintain a 4 minute average time on the blog. So 25% of my new visitors ‘stick’, and ‘sticking’ is a great way to measure the ‘trust’ of your readers, at least in my humble opinion.

Speaking of stocks, people usually buy a stock because they either ‘trust’ their financial advisor, or they believe they can ‘trust’ the company to produce growth, profits, or whatever else the purchasing criteria might be.

One thing I do about once a month is run my Google analytics report showing daily visitors from all the way back to my first day blogging. This produces a chart similar to technical stock chart.

I then sit back and ask myself, “If my blog were a stock, would I buy it?”

If I wouldn’t buy it, then why should others?

Write On!

Also, how would define being unique? Does that mean you generate ideas and content that nobody else has, or you deliver it in a different kind of a way?

Our blog was started as a way to save us time. We had many clients asking the same questions, so we started writing the answers so we didn’t have to keep repeating ourselves. But there’s nothing unique about the information we share. What makes us special is that we’ve consolidated the information into one area for our clients, and we simplify our explanations for the non-technical user. The trust we are building with our clients is that we honestly answer the questions, but I don’t feel like we’re giving answers that can’t be found elsewhere. Our clients just don’t know where else to look, so we’ve become a delivery pipeline. Our clients seem happy with what we’re doing, so maybe to them we appear unique. Just to me it doesn’t seem like our content is very unique.

Thanks for the great blog. I enjoy reading what you share!
Take care,
Bonnie