Thought Leadership Times: News media authority can deliver credibility that drives more quality leads

Thought Leadership Times Blog (Nov 17 2009)

1. 

   Introduction:

   “We get visits to our blog after all our energy and effort putting our best content online.  However, the people who visit aren’t buying or can’t buy!”  Does this sound familiar?  The company blog project is a success.  With the right tools, your team created an SEO optimized, content-relevant, online community that features your company’s information and insights on the industry.  However, where are the buyers you want, especially those who have budget power to purchase your product?  Your content-marketing efforts created online traffic, but the inbound lead quality measured by those who register is low.  These visitors don’t convert or they are not the executives with purchasing power or influence.

   
   You need to secure the attention of the people who have the budget to purchase your product, but although they’re online, they’re not reading your blog or your website.  How can you get to them?

   
   Below I’ll briefly review a 2007 paper published in “New Media & Society” on the study of website credibility and share some thought how you may be able to fastrack your website and online blog to an industry authority with the help of relevant industry news.

   Web Credibility: The research paper and its objective

   In their 2007 paper “The role of site features, user attributes, and information verification behaviors on the perceived credibility of web-based information” professors Andrew Flanigan and Mariam Metzger performed a study of 574 participants to assess their perception of credibility across various types of websites and web sponsors.  Their objective was to build on the initial studies of web credibility of online properties.  How did the design and information on a site affect the perceived credibility of an online property?  The paper users 2 primary dimensions of credibility such as source credibility and trustworthiness.  Other secondary dimensions of credibility include site dynamism, composure and sociability.

   What was discovered?

   Regarding their first hypothesis, Professors Flanigan and Metzger were able to verify, with a high degree of significance, the following findings:

   1. News organization websites were perceived to be significantly more credible than e-commerce, special interest, and personal websites.
   
   
   2. Sponsors of new organization websites, advertisers,were rated significantly more credible than sponsors of all other genre of websites measured.
   
   
   3. Message credibility of news organization websites were rated significantly higher than all other genres of websites measured.

   Thus the team concluded that “the genre of website under consideration impacts the perceived credibility of the [website] sponsors, the message residing on the website, and the website overall.”  News websites sites are the most credible web properties online. 

   How can marketing executives get an edge?

   Marketing executives can leverage this research in the several ways. I'll highlight three that could have an immediate impact:

   1. Become a sponsor of quality, relevant, industry news on your own web properties.  Marketers can supplant their corporate blogging with quality 3rdparty news articles relevant to their industry focus or topics.  News articles from established authorities would increase corporate website and corporate blog credibility with website users. 
   
   
   2. Marketing executives are very familiar with the news authorities their customers and prospects consume on a daily basis.  If they were able to provide access to these articles to customers and prospects, they would add convenience and familiarity for the executives that currently consume the same information, elsewhere, but must manually filter through thousands of different articles.
   
   
   3. Marketers should take advantage of the 2nd dimension of credibility mentioned in the paper and build their online communities with depth and dynamism from the flow of news media content from the news authorities of their industries.  Depth of content means that newmedia content can be referenced, as a credible resource of information at any time.  Dynamism means that content consists of continuously fresh and highly relevant information from trusted sources.

   Conclusion

   The executives who have budget influence in your industry are getting their daily industry news from several sources that you consume as well.  How would your brand credibility change, with these important customers and prospects, if they could secure the most relevant news from you, their corporate partner?  It takes several years to establish the authority successfully achieved by news organizations and industry trade journals that provide industry news.  Leveraging the authority of these news sources will increase the perceived credibility of your brand and establish your own thought leadership.  Such credibility should attract more of those inbound leads who have the power to choose your product or service.

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