A great article on thinkvitamin today explains to online business owners, why they shouldn’t necessarily focus on price and quantity when selling their products online. If we have learned anything from blogging and social media practices, it’s that personality, transparency, branding and first and foremost, quality is the way forward.
“Instead, sell a small sub-set of your products that you think may sell well online. For each product, provide a high level of detail describing the product. Follow up with some solid advice on how to choose the correct product for you, or provide expertise and background on the origins of the product.”
People want to trust you, so let them. It’s simple; if people trust you, they will come back. Have a look at the most popular bloggers, they cover a small niche of subjects, they don’t try to be the ‘online newspaper’ with hundreds of articles everyday.
“Most products can already be found online, but there’s often a lack of detail and advice regarding the product. This can become an important and trust-building point of differentiation between you and your competitors.”
Online business is not very different from blogging or online journalism. You are trying to feed your users with the content they want, trust and transparency is one of the biggest factors in building a reliable reputation online.
The best thing you can do for your users and customers, which is not touched on in the article, is to come and play on their playground. You come to where they are, don’t just try and persuade them to come to you. Visit their blogs, offer advice (DON’T SELL) but don’t be that guy. Sign up to forums about your topic or product and start engaging with your users (DON’T SELL), become their friend.
One of the reasons that blogs can become so popular, so fast is that their authors probably had build their reputation way before they started the blog. Most blogs spring up out of interest from the author, bloggers love to engage online, they’ve probably been regulars on forums oand other blogs for years before they started their own. In other words; they already had a brand that people could trust.
Kasper Sorensen is an online multimedia journalist with everything that encompasses. Hook up with him on 