There’s a saying in the business world that people do business with people that they know, like and trust.

Cliché? Well, yes.

But clichés tend to become clichés because there’s often an element of truth to them, as there is with this particular one. But I think it’s worth unpacking this statement a little more, especially in the context of blogging.

To do this, let me tell you about a gentleman we know. We also like him very much. He’s a fun guy, has a great sense of humour and is very entertaining in social situations. He also (ironically, given what I’m about to say) has a good heart. The thing is, this particular gentleman is a builder, and while I don’t think he ever intends to screw his customers over, things always seem to be going wrong with his building projects. To listen to him, you’d think he was the unluckiest person on earth. The upshot of all of this, however, is that he lets his customers down. A lot. And, as a result, when it came time for my husband and I to do some building work to our house… well, despite knowing and liking this gentleman, there was no way on God’s green earth that we were letting him anywhere near the project.

We simply didn’t trust him.

If we look at our business cliché again, then, I think it’s fair to say that, while knowing and liking someone are important and nice to have, they’re not necessarily fundamental to business relationships. What is fundamental, however, is trusting that the person you’ve hired will deliver whatever it is that you’ve hired them to do.

Blog: A technical definition

A blog is a series of articles, known as posts published on a web page in reverse chronological order.

Great. That tells us what a blog is.

But we often forget what a blog does

When we focus on the technical definition, we lose sight of what a blog is really doing for us and our businesses. At the heart of it, a blog is a demonstration of our trustworthiness to potential customers.

Please note that this new definition of a blog assumes that you already possess integrity as a business owner. Blogs are good at showing us for who we already are.

How this plays out in practice

One of my blog posts on how to create a custom tab for your Facebook page gets an incredible amount of traffic from Google.

It’s one of the benefits of having a blog on your website – because you’re constantly adding to the content on your site, as well as adding to the number and variety of keywords on your site, your blog posts start showing up in more and more search results, driving more and more people to your little spot on the big ol’ web.

The thing is, all of this traffic – those hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands of visitors – is, in a sense, wasted if you’re not converting at least a percentage of them into paying customers.

Don’t get me wrong, blogging is fun. Heck, if you own your own business, most of what you do (bar those few annoying and boring admin tasks!) is probably fun. But fun doesn’t pay the bills. I tried, but unfortunately my bank manager didn’t quite see things my way.

At the end of the day, we’re business owners, and regardless of how much fun we’re having, we need a return on investment for our time and effort.

That return on investment comes from converting random site visitors into actual customers. And that conversion happens when your site visitors enter into a trust relationship with you. They know that if they throw money at you for a product or a service, you won’t let them down.

Your blog content helps this trust relationship to develop. For example, through your blog posts, you’re constantly demonstrating your expertise in your chosen field. It becomes very clear to your readers whether you know what you’re talking about or not.

Your blog comments also feed in to this trust relationship developing. Again, when you answer questions, it shows that you know your subject. But, just as importantly, your attitude towards your readers (who are your potential customers) is on show: Are you genuinely friendly and helpful when answering questions? Do you even bother to answer questions at all, or do you routinely ignore your comment section? I know it can be difficult to respond to every comment when you have a busy blog, not to mention a busy offline life, but it can make people think twice about hiring you if they feel that you may ignore them or that you’d treat them patronisingly!

On the other hand, if your interactions with your blog readers provide a clear indication of the fact that you do excellent work and treat your customers well, people will trust you, like you and get to know you… and do business with you.

[This blog post is based on a presentation I did for local businesses at the East Lothian Coffee Morning on 23 April 2010. You can download the slides from that presentation from the East Lothian Council.]