Rule Two: Don’t Sell… Teach

Many people think the main barrier to online marketing success is a lack of traffic. But it’s really a lack of trust. People love to buy stuff, but they hate to feel sold. So despite the fact that you’re building a website that will build your business, you need to concentrate on delivering value that builds authority.

Educational, tutorial-style content works online. It attracts links, it brings traffic, it builds trust, and it causes you to rank for relevant keyword-phrases in search engines. And all the while, you’re decreasing sales resistance, because after all… what is effective selling?

Selling is simply educating people about the benefits of doing business with you.

For the newbie getting up to speed with Internet Marketing when the outer limits are accelerating is a daunting prospect.

The whole thing is moving from Keywords and Adwords to Content, Context, Influence and who knows what next.

Luckily there are people who generously share their experience. Unluckily there are also pretenders who claim expertise. The unhappy lot of the beginner is the hard yards of following both lots and, over time, figuring out who to believe on which topics.

Brian Clark and the team at Copyblogger just impress the hell out of me.

When it comes to explaining the new phenomena of selling through blogging with authority reinforced through engagement in social media these guys are the REAL THING.

This is a tiny extract from Brian’s free white paper Authority Rules. Having just read the extracts in the site I’ll happily confirm that authority does indeed rule – a fact which is self evident when you read Brian’s rules.