So much is published on the web with the purpose of making a sale. There are more and more videos, and pages written that start out explaining something of value, but then turn into a sales video.
Even my 85-year-old father is cynical when consuming content on the web.
He is an avid gardener and listens to a lot of gardening-related content online at LearningbyGrowing.com. Any video he watches he is expecting some magic pill or miracle solution to be sold at the end. The result is that even for good content online, his trust in the content is diminished.
We need to find a way of decoupling the creation of content from the marketing associated with the content. The ideal is to produce high-value content to build trust – end of story. It should be up to the consumer to make the transition from trusting to seeing what products or services a person or business has.
Content should be produced because we feel it is valuable for others. Use the content to create trust and then use that trust to introduce what you are monetizing. The content becomes evergreen content, content that always has value. The content becomes an asset that you can use to build trust.