Matthew Clark's Key Ideas from Top of Mind: Use Content to Unleash Your Influence and Engage Those Who Matter To You
by John Hall

Being authentic, honest, and truthful is your best promotion, because if your customers trust you, then you will be the first thing that comes to their minds in case they need your goods or services.

• Since today’s customers are not passive; they are even more suspicious of salespeople who don’t ask for permission to invade their privacy; a salesperson's job isn’t anymore that of a marketing rep, but the far more humble and noble of being a friend.
• Customers today don’t like to buy from people who are intrusive. You can trick them once or twice, but the minute they find out, you’ll lose them for eternity. Them and about a million other people who’ll find out about it on social media. So instead of tricking them – earn their trust.

To get to your customers’ “top of mind,” you need to earn their approval. And you can do that the very same way you would get the approval of people you’d like to be your friends: by expressing genuine concern about their likes and dislikes, by establishing a type of communication between you two that’s based on mutual trust and commitment.

Most importantly, by helping your customers from time to time without seeking any compensation.

Staying in touch with the needs of your audience and sharing information they can use is one of the best ways to give to and help them.

The most scalable way to help them is through creating and publishing content. You can exponentially expand the number of ways you can help people and the number of lives you can effect through content.

Creating written content is a daunting task for many of us, from the solopreneur to the CEO. Lack of time and inspiration keeps us procrastinating and pushing this critical activity further down our to-do lists. Fear of being a bad writer also sabotages our efforts.

Try the practice of “morning pages”. Rather than waiting for inspiration to strike, it’s easier and more helpful to adhere to a habit of daily writing. Writing every morning encourages and allows for more creativity and it will also help to dispel the fear of writing.

• Likability matters. It’s hard to trust someone you don’t like. Finding that balance starts with understanding yourself and your personality and exactly what kind of “likable” you want to be.
• Familiarity is the other side of the likability coin—it evokes a sense of closeness, a feeling of genuine connection. Familiarity emerges at its purest in face-to-face conversation.

If you treat your brand as an afterthought, you’re simply fortifying the barriers between yourself and opportunity creation. A vibrant, flourishing brand is one of your most powerful tools in creating trust and opportunity.

Take a look at Tesla. If you’re not a luxury electric vehicle industry insider, you may not know much about the inner workings of the company. Chances are, however, that you’re familiar with Elon Musk’s reputation as a rocket scientist/climate activist/genius innovator.

Have you ever read an article that feels like it was written especially for you? Maybe it answers a specific question you’ve had on your mind for a while or it gives you some piece of advice that seems tailor-made to your life situation.

When this happens, it creates a sense of connection to the author that makes you want to read everything she’s ever written and anything she’ll ever write.

That is because knowledge is power. When you educate people, you are empowering them.

One of the most effective and easily scalable ways to unify these practices is through high-quality digital content.

Content’s potential as an educational tool is limitless. Use it to share whatever knowledge you have that others will find valuable—industry insight, best practices, experiential learnings—and they will reward you with trust.