The following is a guest post by my friend and fellow blogger John Haydon.  John writes about marketing strategies for social media sites on his blog at JohnHaydon.com.

Integrity, as Tanveer has talked about before, is a critical factor in attracting and retaining readers, subscribers and customers.

In the offline world, integrity is something people easily recognize. It could be demonstrated by returning something on time that you borrowed, staying true to one’s convictions, or having the courage to protect others from unfair attacks – even if they are “competitors”. In these examples, integrity and character is demonstrated through the actions of that person.

But how do you demonstrated integrity online, through the proxy we call the internet? How can people quickly get a sense of your trustworthiness and character – even though you’re not actually present?

The Trust Of Crowds

The answer is in your crowd – the hundreds or thousands of readers who, on a daily basis, give you the thumbs up.

Blogs by definition have several features that can easily demonstrate crowd-sourced quality checks, or “social proof“.

• Comments – Comments are a qualitative measurement of our character. How many comments, on average, do your blog posts receive? What is the quality and depth of these comments? Is there a diversity of people making these comments? Getting large numbers of quality comments takes years of hard work – even for people like Chris Brogan and Brian Clark.
• Comment Replies – One advantage bloggers like you and I have over people like Chris and Brian is that we are able to reply to each commenter. Two bloggers who do this very well are Grant Griffiths and Liz Strauss. They both take the time to comment back and forth with each commenter. A quick note: Make sure you have set your commenting system to support threaded comments – at least three levels deep.
• Admit When Your Wrong – Or At Least Not Completely Right – No one can know everything about a subject, and often times, it’s our commenters who help us fill in the gaps. When you acknowledge them, and amend a post in response, it says you respect your readers and can admit when you’re not completely right. Click here to continue reading »”How To Demonstrate Integrity On Your Blog”

A couple of years ago, my parents bought a new dishwasher from a major electronics chain along with an extended warranty plan offered by the retailer. A few years later, that extra coverage appeared to be a wise move as they started having problems with their dishwasher after it was no longer covered by the manufacturer’s warranty.

However, when my parents called the electronics chain to make their claim through the retailer’s extended warranty plan, the company refused to honour their contract, insisting that the problems my parents were having with their dishwasher were not covered by the extended warranty. After several more phone calls and written letters, the electronics chain grudgingly acquiesced to respecting the terms of the warranty plan they had sold to my parents. Although the problem was ultimately resolved, the fact that my parents had to fight for something they paid for left a lasting impression as to this day, they refuse to buy anything from this major retail chain.

What this story shows is that this company failed to appreciate the importance of integrity in their dealings with their customers. Sure, the retailer had succeeded in Click here to continue reading »”Why Integrity Still Matters”