How to establish credibility with my target audience?

People trust those who they know and like.

Look at your previous examples. Your family and your work colleagues. I bet if you had tried to recommend remedies to your work colleagues the first day you started, they would not have been quite as receptive because they didn't know who you were.

So you need to become familiar to people. That happens by hanging out where your target audience hangs out. Places like forums are great for that. Offer advice, tips, whatever. Anything that helps people get to know you and get to like you and in turn they will get to trust you.

Write a solid bio and focus on quality info. Respect is EARNED.

No, if you are take those nuggets from Will, hanging out and offering tips on forums should not get you in anyone's black book.
Create an authority for yourself. It sure requires time,which I can see you can exercise.
Tons of luck.

Hi Peter,

What I would suggest is that you share you personal story with your health experience and the exposure that you've had with friends in the industry.

What I also strongly suggest is that if you would like to be taken truly serious in the health niche, and if you really want to help people with their heath, then go get certified in a specific area of healthcare - whether it be in holistic or allopathic medicine. We are speaking about people's health here after all.

I respect that the fact that you'd like to help, however there are things that you may not know which may cause adverse affects to someone with allergies or specific issues that you are unaware of without proper understanding and diagnosis. We cannot simply "treat/ medicate" on symptoms alone. We are all individual and our structure and function are interrelated. I know from my personal educational experience in healthcare that this is a very serious topic and cannot just be thrown together by things that someone has heard from friends who have done the schooling.

Just being open with you friend. Have a great weekend.

There is a lot of great advice here on how to build credibility in your niche and I want to throw my two cents in as well. As WillR stated you can gain quite a bit of credibility from becoming a regular in some of the forums in your niche. I have a very good friend, who is not a marketer, who has a hobby he is very passionate about and frequently posts in a couple of the main forums in that niche. He would spend a lot of time interacting with the members there while also answering various questions that came along from those who posted. One day when I was at his house he was talking to me about some of the threads on the forum that he was looking at and responding to. While he was responding to a question on one of the threads he turned to me and said "people think I'm some sort of expert here but I'm just trying to help them when I know the answer to their question." So, without any intention to ever become an expert in that niche he suddenly became one because people got to know him, like him, and trust him through his posts. Eventually he did start a business in that niche and it has turned into a nice little side income for him.

By the way, it didn't hit me how powerful this can be at the time and I only just thought of it by reading through this post so thanks for the question that brought these responses.

Start putting together a blog. I found your introduction very interesting, and I'm sure if you have many similar sorts of stories from your experiences, you will get others interested too.

The credibility will come from the results your readers get - if they trust you, and you deliver on your promises, whatever those promises are - free content, reports, or products, that's when you build loyalty and authority.

You just have to be clear that you're not medically qualified and these are recommendations that worked for you, else you could land yourself with legal problems.

I think that you need to get out there, and promote your ideas, then come back with questions once you have done that.

If you want to establish credibility, connect and engage with your audience. For the expertise issue, I would write a kindle book, put it up on Amazon. Next, I would do some podcasting, and start doing videos for YT. Basically, anything that you can point your potential prospects to when they have questions. But as Will pointed out, people buy from people they like and trust!

Be well,

Lane

People have mentioned a 'blog' a few times for you, here... But I'm going to help focus that in even more and say you really should build a WordPress blog and publish to it 2-3 times per week for 3 years.

By consistently publishing new, relevant and helpful content, you will prove your expert status and your worthiness for the opt-in.

Stay focused on putting out the best and most helpful content you can and don't spend too much time 'learning' about the marketing stuff here... That will all fall into place and make more sense with time. Keep what time you do have available focused on creating and publishing new, high-quality posts, because getting good at quickly and effectively publishing quality content is the most valuable thing you can do at this point.

At the pace of 2 posts per week, you'll have a massive WP site with over 300 posts in 3 years... Each post will get a bit of organic search traffic and your site will be connecting with thousands of new people each and every month.

Nothing will prove your expertise more than well written, helpful articles that others can use. When they use your advice and have positive experiences with your info... BAM! You've won! Because once they have that positive personal experience, they will opt in to your list, they will buy your books/products and some will even start sharing your content with their friends/family/audience.

This is all based on what we've done to create a niche wordpress blog that now connects with something like 10,000 - 15,000 new visitors each month, dozens of daily email list subscribers and lots'a info-product sales.

your asking the wrong question, you don't need to prove your credentials, you just need to prove you can help them by always offering up good value that will help them.

They could careless about you, all they care about is how you can help them

Yes good response from Will.
If you share quality content with them on a daily basis,or rather often anyway, for instance through your blog,in time you will get their trust and they wil be interested in what you share with them.

I agree 100% with Will - get legal advice on this one to protect yourself.

But as a general rule credibility is created online by helping people without the expectation of something in return. I would share information based on your personal experiences - like you might do with a friend.

****With health stuff you are going to want to always give the disclaimer that you are not licensed, etc., etc., etc. You will always see disclaimers from doctors and nurses who are licensed who answer questions on a forum or over the Internet.****





Disclaimer:
My comments on this topic are intended for entertainment only and are not intended to treat, diagnose, or cure any ailment or mental disorder. In the event you need immediate medical attention, stop reading this now and dial 9-1-1. If you just need a hug, I can't help you with that either. Please keep in mind this advice is worth every penny you paid for it and should be valued accordingly.