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Quick announcement: credibility is our topic for today and for next week. We’re exploring how to build a credible brand today. Next week, I’ll show you how to build credible offers. Why two issues on a similar topic? Because it’s a VERY important one.
Credibility is what gets your audience to:
- Stop scrolling and pay attention to YOU
- Believe what you’re telling them
- Do what you’re asking them to do (click, buy, subscribe, share)
So let me ask you this, who would you rather get financial advice from? Warren Buffet or someone who’s drowning in debt.
Yeah, I’d go with Uncle Warren too. The financial empire he built lends him the credibility you need to take his advice to heart.
As Robert Cialdini so aptly put it in Influence, “The messenger is the message”.
Psst, my subscribers read this before you did. Want to be the first to see analyses and roadmaps like this one? Subscribe to Ideas to Power Your Future and get them in your inbox every Thursday.
I’m sure you’ve seen something similar on social media:
- Two people share nearly identical messages
- One of them gets a ton of approval and engagement, the other one gets crickets.
Or: a popular creator shares a platitude and everyone fawns over it. It’s because they built a fanocracy, a community of people who respect and trust them.
Without credibility, you can’t sell anything. Not even social media engagement.
Today, we’re digging into what makes a business leader credible.
What the heck is credibility anyway?
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
Abraham Lincoln (probably apocryphal)
There are a lot of studies and essays on credibility and they all draw on Aristotle’s ancient wisdom in (On) Rhetoric, so we’re going straight to the source.
Credibility is the image of the source in the minds of receivers. This is what Aristotle calls the source’s ethos.
Ethos, logos, and pathos were Aristotle’s three forms of rhetorical proof, and the cornerstones of his theory of persuasion. Ethos (the Greek word for moral character) refers to the credibility of a speaker and includes three dimensions:
- Competence: the “speaker’s” expertise in relation to the topic being discussed.
- Trustworthiness: the degree to which the audience perceives the “speaker” to be presenting information in an accurate and non-manipulative way.
- Dynamism: charisma and energy or how engaging the “speaker” is.
Thus, to be credible, you need to be:
- Competent in your field: yes, your audience will eventually catch on if you “fake it till you make it”.
- Trustworthy: why would they trust you? Are you trying to manipulate them into buying something?
- Charismatic: the way you present information, irrespective of the medium, has to be engaging.
Let’s bring Aristotle into the present and see how his wisdom still applies to building credibility in today’s business leaders (that’s you!)
Respect over likeability
We’re wired to look for our peers’ approval, so most of us tend to be yespeople:
- Readily agreeing to everything and everyone online, with little or no thought to how you actually feel about their stance.
- Not taking a stand for what you believe in because you’re afraid you’ll upset part of your audience.
- Keeping your mouth shut when you disagree with someone.
Fake internet positivity is rewarded by our peers AND by social media algorithms, so we tend to keep everything positive. #Goodvibesonly might bring you some likeability but not respect.
I’m not suggesting you should be a jerk and a nitpicker. But if you come across as someone with no moral compass of their own, why would people trust you?
Your audience and your buyers look for someone whose values align with theirs, so never be afraid to showcase yours.
Did you notice that most business leaders are associated with a cause larger than themselves? Whether it’s an environmentalist stance, an anti-racist one, or an inclusive one, they all have something they believe in. And they’re not afraid they’ll scare off those with different values because they know no one can be liked by everyone.
Integrity goes beyond honesty
“When speakers behave inappropriately,” wrote Aristotle, “their credibility is questioned — even when they speak the truth.”
Bill Clinton’s campaign was centered on family values. Luckily for him, his passion for blue dresses *cough-cough* didn’t become public knowledge until after he won the election. Otherwise, his credibility would have been shattered before he even set…um…foot in the Oval Office.
The lesson here?
Your actions should be aligned with your values. Walk the talk.
Also, if you have a past that doesn’t align with your current values, come clean about it. The internet never forgets.
Or take a page from Monica Lewinsky’s book: she has built quite a brand for herself by owning up to her past and being the first to crack jokes about it.
Fallible humans are more trustworthy
Counter-intuitive, right? But there’s a reason every entrepreneur talks about their mistakes and failures. Perfection is a myth and people know that.
When you show yourself as a fallible human, you are more relatable, more authentic, and, thus, more credible. Yes, there’s science to back this up.
Own your mistakes, your failures, and your struggles. There’s no such thing as a perfect scorecard in business. Worse yet, you’ll come across as a narcissistic sociopath if you say everything you ever did was perfect.
Quick note: don’t go to the other extreme either and call every little mistake a massive failure just because you want to be relatable and credible. The fetishization of failure is a widespread disease that doesn’t do anyone any good.
Five months ago, I wrote a newsletter issue on this newsletter’s 6-month anniversary. In it, I talked about my F-ups more than I talked about my wins because I think transparency is important and because I knew most of you could relate to my story of moderate success.
I was right: that issue was one of the most popular ones to date. Relatability bred credibility.
OK, now let’s piece all of these together and build your own roadmap to credibility.
The three pillars you need to become a credible business leader
You surely have some of these pillars readily built, you simply need to showcase them better. Others, though, will take some time to build.
The good news is that they compound. The bigger these pillars get, the better your credibility gets too.
1. Your expertise and achievements
Think:
- Professional background
- Education
- Prizes
- Business wins (and lessons learned from the failures)
- Prizes
- Even the occasional 15 minutes of internet fame. If you’ve seen my About page, you know I still milk my “Top 100 content influencers in the world” status. It’s barely 16 months old, OK?
Showcase these things everywhere: About pages, social media profiles and posts, podcasts, and so on. This is the competence part in Aristotle’s credibility trifecta and the most important.
2. Social proof
There’s one thing people trust more than a credible business leader and that’s their peers. In a fun circular way, their peers’ trust in you also boosts your credibility.
You’ve got the background, the expertise, the accolades but do you also have other people’s trust? No one wants to be the first to try a product or a service from a brand they don’t know.
I know I’ve said it a million times, but it’s worth repeating: social proof is the biggest growth lever you can pull.
- Testimonials
- Reviews
- Recommendations
- Referrals
- Follower and subscriber counts
- Glowing social media comments.
Screenshot, record, and archive every shred of social proof you can get your hands on. Then use them every time you promote your offers.
You’ve probably seen how obnoxious the social proof on my newsletter landing page is. Better yet, I add at least one testimonial to every email, social media post, or landing page that promotes my products.
On the rare occasion when I forget to add social proof to my assets, my conversions drop massively.
Bonus tip: too polished looks slippery, so don’t be afraid to use screenshots of comments. You don’t necessarily need spiffy-looking testimonials.
You can read more about building and using social proof here.
Since audience size matters for establishing credibility, learn how to build a sizeable audience here and a relevant audience here. (Yes, they’re different things and they both matter.)
3. Your content
The pressure to put out a ton of content is real. Whatever industry you’re in, you’re expected to produce content for a couple of social media platforms, a website, perhaps even a blog and/or a newsletter.
It’s a lot!
Worse yet, it doesn’t matter how much content you produce if it’s not credible. To avoid wasting time on creating content that no one reads or acts on:
- Always back up your claims. Is there an independent study that supports the need for your service or product? For example, the need for my Guided Strategy Template is supported by CoSchedule research that says you’re 414% more likely to report success if you document your strategy. I know this fact too but backing it up with research by a respected outlet that’s not affiliated with me makes a world of difference.
- Avoid grandiose promises. Can you really 10x someone’s business with a single blog post? Even if it happened once, it’s not the norm and you shouldn’t promise exceptional results unless you have hard proof you can achieve it every single time.
- Talk about your own shortcomings and limitations: on my 1:1 Strategy Session page, I openly tell you that I don’t know everything. I may not have the answer to your every question, but I’m willing to look it up and get back to you after our session. The alternative would be to tell you that 15+ years in marketing have made me an unbeatable guru who unlocks growth for any business anywhere. Would you buy that? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
- Go circular and build 1. and 2. into your content. You can back up your claims with your own expertise and case studies.
One last piece of advice before I sign off: your spine is your most important asset when it comes to credibility. It’s very tempting to associate your brand with anyone (client or partner) who can bring you a quick win today.
Beware of associating yourself with brands that don’t share your values. The internet never forgets and these things have a way of coming back to bite you when you least expect it.
Remember that the value of $10 today is lower than that of $1000 tomorrow. Some things take longer to build but they’re worth the wait.
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Adriana’s Picks
- An AI deepfake depicting Mr. Beast selling 10K iPhone 15 Pro for $2 made the rounds (and the scams) on TikTok.
- Political ads are now allowed (again!) on X. The ban has been lifted, so behold internet flames just like in the good ol’ times.
- Google is working on new, harsher anti-spam policies. If you do any email marketing, you should watch this story closely.
That’s it from me today! Next week, we’re talking about building credible offers, so look out for my email.
Here to make you think,
Adriana
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