Earning trust is rarely about logic. It depends on how well you manage your audience’s emotional reactions.
Whether you freelance, are part of the startup crowd, or are starting a new venture following a traditional business model, earning credibility is one of the most critical struggles you will have to endure.
It’s not enough to be great at what you do either. How your clients and customers feel about you largely depends on their gut feeling. Facts and logic often come into play only in support of ideas arrived at emotionally.
Here are a few areas startup founders and freelancers do that ruin their credibility.
4.) You don’t proofread.
Mangled syntax and misspelled words shouldn’t affect how we trust someone, but it does. Aside from the risk of miscommunication, your copy’s consistent misspellings and logical disconnects make you appear less trustworthy and capable.
And it’s not just for copy that appears on your promotional materials and website. A badly-worded email can, for instance, make it seem that you lack attention to detail — which might be fair enough concerning that email but not necessarily with your work. In any case, you shouldn’t be taking a chance with such a simple, straightforward fix.
3.) You don’t use social proof
Your customers love what you can give them, right? If this is the case, it pays off if other potential customers can find at least some evidence of this. This also helps you retain existing customers, as it helps assuage fears they made some mistake by choosing you. A good example is using user-generated content on your Instagram page. Using a photo taken by a customer and their feedback as an Instagram caption will instantly build a potential customer’s trust.
It’s vital that these testimonials come from parties with no vested interest in your enterprise. We’re far less likely to listen to what people have to say about themselves compared to what others have to say about them. It works almost the same way with brands. Brands try to make up positive reviews on Yelp and Amazon under sock puppet accounts.
If you really think about it, social proof (which most of us agree is good) isn’t as reliable as mob justice (which most agree is terrible). But we’re not shaping our brands according to the dictates of logic, and we need to shape them according to human behavior.
2.) You aren’t specific
There are exceptions to this. Many brands rely on the charisma that can’t be readily explained. Arguably, a brand should earn this undefinable quality.
However, the line between the good kind of “undefinable” and “annoyingly vague” is paper thin. Not being specific about what you can deliver makes it seem like you don’t know what you are talking about or have something to hide — and rightly so.
For instance, which phrase sounds better?:
A.) “We’re committed to excellence.”
or
B.) “Our quality testers run manual checks at each process step.”
How about these?:
A.) “My graphic design work was featured in internationally syndicated publications.”
or
B.) “My graphic design work was featured in internationally syndicated publications including Fake Magazine, Fresh Example, Non-existent Rag, and others.”
1.) Your claims seem too good to be true
Whatever you have to say about how bad the overall quality of education is these days, and how Mike Judge’s Idiocracy is becoming real — but consumers today are far more sophisticated and far less likely to take things at face value than they have been at any point in history.
Whatever the reason, it often helps to dial back your claims and go for a softer sell than you would expect from a more traditional sales approach. This holds true even if you are specific and honest about your claims. If there are any extraordinary claims, they shouldn’t come from you but your fans (see #3).
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