How do you increase your influence with your customers?

Shep Hyken interviews John Hall, author and CEO/co-founder of Influence & Co., a content marketing agency that helps brands and individuals leverage expertise to create, publish, and distribute content. John shares how everyone can overcome trust barriers and build confidence and top-of-mind awareness through content marketing.

First up:
Shep’s opening comments focus on creating trust and confidence with your customers. The old saying is people like to do business with people they know, like, and trust. The knowing and liking are easy, but the trust takes more. Trust requires your customers to see you as an expert, and they must value your knowledge. In order to influence your customers, trust is crucial.

Featured Interview:
Shep begins the interview discussing with John Hall how to influence your customers. John discusses trust barriers, and how to overcome them by creating trust in another way, with content marketing, which includes articles, blogs, videos, and more. Look for content triggers (which are ah-ha moments that reveal ways you can provide content to help your customers) to spark ideas for key points to focus your content on. Your goal is to add value for your customers to be able to engage with you and stay relevant in their minds. John introduces us to the term moment of vulnerability, which is a moment that emotion is tied to an interaction. This moment will most likely be remembered – it is up to you to manage that moment into a positive interaction, or a Moment of Magic®. These emotional moments, or moments of vulnerability, can lead to trust by helping a customer at the right moment.

Top Takeaways:
• Consolidation. This happens when you move from the customer’s short-term memory into long-term memory. It is easiest to make this happen by having an emotion tied to an interaction or a moment of vulnerability.
• Build trust. Consistently work on building trust with your customers, whether it's through content marketing, a gift, or even a simple phone call – keep your customers engaged.
• Engage your customers. Stay “top of mind” with your customers. The easiest way to do this is to consistently provide engaging content to your followers and prospects. Important Note: It’s not necessary to create all the content yourself. It can be an article written by and/or about someone else, but it’s of interest to your customers. The key is to provide valuable content regularly.

About:
John Hall is the CEO and co-founder of Influence & Co., a tech-enabled content marketing agency that helps brands and individuals extract and leverage their expertise to create, publish, and distribute content to gain influence, visibility, and credibility with their key audiences. John has been called “one of the most powerful people in media that you’ve never met” by Inc. and a “must-see keynote speaker” by Forbes. He is the author of the book “Top of Mind: Use Content to Unleash Your Influence and Engage Those Who Matter To You.”
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, best-selling author and your host of Amazing Business Radio.
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