The ease of publishing content and media on blogs has flooded the web with business blogs, and as a result, skyrocketed the number of competitors you have in your playing field.

It’s not an even playing field, but you have the advantage. Why is this?

For starters, business owners are advised to get a blog setup, but left without any clear direction as to the purpose and process of leveraging the impact of a blog when a visitor arrives.

Secondly, many business owners who have blogs showcase a boring and stale representation of themselves with no personality and compelling story to engage their viewers.

Along with their ignorance of “a better way” and a failure to do more than what’s required, your competition will continue to do what they’ve always done, and get the results they’ve always come to expect.

Unfortunately for your competitors (and good for you), they do not have this “10 Step Checklist” to help them navigate their blog to boosting their credibility and establish authority in their field. You do. Now, your playing field is a different landscape and the game has just changed for you.

Let’s get started…

Enter the world of your customer or prospect.

Step into their “Allen-Edmonds” or “Manolo Blahniks”…

Imagine them at their MacBooks typing in a search phrase for your industry…

Imagine your blog appearing in the top 10 Google listing for their search and CLICK! Your blog appears on their browser screen.

Now what?

Tick-tock. You have 1 second to attract and engage them. If you’re lucky, 3 seconds.

Do you have the right stuff to involve them, to disengage their Back button, and to make them feel “at home” at your web destination?

Or is it Back button, baby! Game over.

As a blogging, podcasting and videoblogging consultant, I’m frequently asked by clients to overhaul or give their websites and blogs a facelift to “put their best foot forward”. In addition, I’m regularly critiquing websites and blogs at conferences and on my web TV show (http://ShermanHu.tv).

Here are my discoveries for what makes a credible and authoritative blog, packaged into a neat 10 step checklist for you. This 10 step checklist will give you a breakthrough, a leading edge over your competitors, and a chance to attract and engage your customer for longer than a flirting second.

10 Step Checklist (the first 5 are about “form”, the second 5 have to do with “function”):

01 :: Present a Professional Blog Theme & Logo Design

02 :: Showcase an Engaging Photo

03 :: Leverage Audio & Video

04 :: Reveal Accessible Navigation

05 :: Architect Contact Information Prominently

06 :: Give Value First, Self-Promotion Second

07 :: Solicit & Engage in Conversations

08 :: Share Your Engaging Story

09 :: Provide Publications & Presentations

10 :: Exhibit Testimonials & Endorsements

Now that you know the 10 steps, let’s unpack each of them.

You’ve heard the common saying – “First impressions count” – and it applies even more so with your blog. Oftentimes, you get a 1 second chance to prove your credibility and authority, and sorry, no second chances.

If you have 1 chance to prove your credibility and authority, let’s make the most of it and WOW your web viewer with a professional blog design layout.

The good news is you don’t need to spend thousands on a design layout from a designer. If you’re using a WordPress blog, all you have to do is Google for “free wordpress themes” (or search for a WordPress theme from your blog’s Dashboard) and you’ll be served with many websites that offer design layouts (aka “themes”) that you can download, activate on your blog and immediately you have a new facelift to your blog.

Below are 4 resources of WordPress theme sites that are popular amongst users. In fact, these services bridge on using WordPress as “Content Management Systems” (CMS) and some offer a complete package of varying themes to choose from. Some of these themes also come packaged with Plugins (‘a la carte’ features to add to your blog to extend its’ functionality).

These fee-based WordPress themes offer more value and features than their free counterparts. Here are some very popular fee-based themes…

StudioPress (http://shermanlive.com/go/studiopress) (1 Theme: $60; All Themes: $200)

My personal favorite theme, and what I use at ShermanLive.com. StudioPress themes give me a professional magazine layout (vs. a bloggy layout), attractive features (ie Featured Content Gallery) and flexibility to modify creative settings via the dashboard and CSS (cascading style sheets).

Purchasing one of their professional themes gives you access to detailed theme tutorials, limited customization techniques and private forum support. Future theme updates are offered at no additional cost.

If you service clients with blog design services or want to setup multiple blogs with different themes, it makes sense to purchase the “All Themes” package.

WooThemes (http://shermanlive.com/go/woo) (Theme Package: 1 theme purchase; Club Membership: All past themes, plus new themes over the course of your membership)

WooThemes offers some of the best-looking professional themes for the WordPress platform. They are expanding into other CMS platforms and I predict they’ll do well in those arenas too. Their subscription packages offer a minimum of 2 new themes every month to give you an expanding repertoire of theme choices for your client needs or your own personal blog.

I appreciate how easy it is to style a theme with a long list of styles and options to get you up and running quickly. Their support includes theme documentation, tutorials, knowledgebase and strong technical support in their forum.

ThemeForest (http://shermanlive.com/go/themeforest) (themes range from $5 up to $40)

ThemeForest is part of the Envato Marketplace network of sites, where you can buy and sell themes and templates for popular CMS (Content Management Systems) products, including WordPress.

The themes are priced according to their complexity and quality. You can search for themes via Category, Keyword Search, Popular Files, Collections, Featured Files or even Top Authors.

Thesis (http://shermanlive.com/go/thesis) (Personal: $87; Developer: $164)

Thesis is an extremely popular and SEO-friendly theme for your WordPress blog. The option panels make customizing your font controls, design changes, layout combinations and other choices super simple to modify.

An attractive and well-designed blog theme will portray a professional image for you and your business, increasing your credibility and boosting your image of authority in your industry.

(Above) Yolande Citro (YolandeCitro.com), a real estate agent reveals her photo in the sidebar of her blog.

When I visit a website or blog, more often than not, I’ll click on the “About” page to discover who the author or personality is. I’m looking for a vibe, personality, culture, image, voice….anything.

In the above image, Yolande Citro knows that prospects need to trust and “buy into” the agent first, before allowing her to represent their home. Her color photo offers a welcoming vibe to her blog, and she receives many compliments on this photo.

John Maxwell, a renowned leadership consultant and New York Times bestselling author, shares “People will buy into the Leader first before they’ll buy into the Leader’s vision“. In the same manner, I’m looking to “buy into” the author first, before I buy into the author’s blogging.

And oftentimes, an engaging photo will give me that image. You don’t have to portray a “serious” photo – just showcase your personality that connects with your audience and industry.

In addition, showcasing your engaging photo makes you ‘real’, ‘human’, and draws your audience one step closer to you. All this makes you seem more credible too.

While we’re on this topic, embedding photos and images within your blog posts is a smart way to attract and engage your readers to focus on your content. Reading (or scanning) a block of text is boring for anyone. Break it up with photos, images, and even video.

“Face it” – you have 1 second to flirt with your web audience, so engage them with your photo.

With YouTube, Google Video and 50 plus other video sharing sites competing for your viewing time and pleasure, its very apparent that online video is here to stay. The video services and camcorders of today have made it very simple for you and I to record and publish office or home-made videos very quickly and inexpensively.

As you know, audio and video – when deployed effectively – can be powerful mediums to attract, engage and convert your viewers. Observe how your family and friends remember commercial jingles or succumb to late night TV sales messages. You can and should leverage media on your blog to connect with your customers.

With a video sharing account, compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL) for cool and inexpensive daylight source, a curtain backdrop, decent mic, camcorder and a good “script”, you can easily craft a short yet engaging video for your blog that helps you “break the ice” with your viewing audience, and draws them one step closer to realizing your credibility and authority in your industry.

Have you ever walked into a new mall only to be confused about the location of a store you’re looking for? I have. I’m sure you’ve experienced it too. Frustrating, isn’t it?

If you’re fortunate, you come to a Mall Directory that shows you the “You Are Here” red dot and a directory of stores categorized by type. This directory is your saving grace to getting your bearings, navigating the maze of people and hallways, and finally arriving at your destination.

In the same manner, your blog is the new mall to your visitor. They’re new to your blog and will approach with preconceived notions about where the content they’re looking for should be. Your top, side and footer navigation, along with your Search Bar is the Mall Directory – so make it easy for them to find it and locate what they want.

This is leaning towards Website Usability concepts, but I won’t bore you with it. Long story short, don’t make them think, keep it simple and give them shortcuts to your important content.

Consider a visual survey of the biggest and most popular sites on the web, eg. Amazon to see how they lay out their navigation. Or perform a visual survey of popular blogs in your industry. This will give you an idea of what your customers will have already been accustomed to seeing on other blogs.

Don’t get fancy. Remember, just because you’ve flirted with them for 3 seconds doesn’t mean they won’t leave your blog in a hurry if they’re confused about the “lay of the land”.

Keep your navigation accessible so you maintain your credibility.

Have you ever experienced a wild goose chase hunting for a website owner’s contact information? It’s not fun, is it?

Let’s re-step into your customer’s “Allen-Edmonds” or “Manolo Blahniks”…

If you were him or her, where would you prefer to see the contact information on your blog? Good. Now make it happen.

My preference is to show contact information (telephone number, email address, mailing address, link to Support Desk, live chat button etc) on the Home page of the blog or on the Contact page – first choice would be the former. This way your customer does not have to drill down the information on another page.

Back to this example of Yolande Citro’s blog, I was responsible for the blog setup and design, and I chose to create the masthead graphic to include her telephone and fax number. Why? Because in the real estate business, speaking to a client on the phone typically returns a higher conversion than any other method.

As a result, regardless of what page a client is on, they’ll see this realtor’s contact info “above the fold” (the top portion of her site) and it makes it simple for them to call her. Plus, we’ve also added her contact numbers in the right sidebar, which also appears on every page of her blog.

Whatever you choose to do, architect your contact information prominently – either in the masthead, sidebar or footer – to make it easy for your customer to contact you, which makes you look good.

You’ve been invited to a good friend’s cocktail party. Both your date and you arrive at the party looking your very best.

After you pour yourselves a couple of cocktails, you proceed to the nearest group of guests who are engaged in conversation and laughter. Flipping open your golden business card case, you begin to introduce and pitch your services to every single person in that group. Your keen observation skills detect that between awkward glances and uncomfortable shifting, all of the guests gave a valid reason to excuse themselves.

Is this your practice at parties? If not, why do you see so much of this prevail on the web? Do you see this practice on blogs?

Generally, bloggers have an etiquette of publishing conversational entries to their blogs. Unlike corporate websites that use corporate speak, effective bloggers write with a “personal voice”, effectively bridging the gap between them and their audience.

Furthermore, smart business owners “lower the free line”, offering good value-added content and resources to their readers *first* to begin a relationship and a platform of credibility and authority, before they move towards a fee-based transaction. The latter is typically smoother in process after the reader knows, likes, trusts and respects the author after consuming their blog content. These “deposits” in the customer’s “trust account” will serve your ROI very well.

When you’re writing and publishing on Twitter, Facebook or your blog, consider it a “24/7 virtual cocktail party”. You’ve been invited. You’re dressed with somewhere to go. Now how will you establish credibility and authority in your field?

Let’s return to the “cocktail party” story above, and this time, you see a guest standing in a corner of the room, speaking to himself. No one’s around him, he’s just merrily speaking to himself. Odd? Probably. But not too far off from how most bloggers communicate on their blogs – a one-way conversation.

It’s a cocktail party, people! Let’s solicit dialog, engage and be engaged in conversations – a two-way street.

Likewise, on your blog, ask for feedback, comments, thoughts, opinions, perspectives – whether in line with your thinking, or controversial, that’s alright. It’s the beginning of a two-way dialog, which serves to add life and vibrancy to your blog. This two-way dialog will spark interesting conversations and offer others reading your blog an insight into your familiarity and subject-matter-expertise on your topic, lending to your credibility and authority status in your field.

All the greatest teachers from the past to present deliver important lessons or wisdom through the power of engaging story. In this case, “your story”.

Do you know the wonderful nature of “your story”? You can’t mess it up, its yours. You know it best and you can share your story with great passion and detail.

Your story – be it business or personal – will attract and engage your blog readers to you. Oftentimes, your story will effectively “put some skin” around your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), the key element that makes you stand apart from the rest of your competition.

Take for example a chocolate blog I recently reviewed. Let’s name the blog author: Barbara Cocoa. She loves chocolate – milk chocolate, dark chocolate, any kind of chocolate is fair game.

When she takes her son traveling to different parts of the world, they’ll scour the streets and find hole-in-the-wall shops that sell chocolate that give you that “I’ve died and gone to heaven” feeling.

Her chocolate blog is a gorgeous romantic red and white, well-designed and very “delicious”. The usual critique reveals all the above points in this 10-step checklist that Barbara should add to her blog.

In the middle of the critique, she reveals her passion for chocolate and her travel habits. Voila! That’s it. I clung on to her story and “milked” it for all its worth. She needed to share it, on her blog, in text, and if possible, on video.

This is a golden credibility & authority building exercise and will draw your visitors closer to you, leading to increased transactions and profits.

Find your heart. Find your passion. Find your story.

Whether you are a print or digital media publisher, leverage it to your credibility and authority-building benefit.

Do you have reports, white papers, audio MP3s, videos, radio interviews, newspaper clippings and other sources of content you’ve created and published?

If you DO NOT, begin creating it.

If you DO, offer them on your blog as value-added intellectual property, which can be exchanged for your readers’ contact information (typically their name and email address).

These publications and presentations – online or offline – provide you with efficient sources to help you build credibility and authority in your field.

In showcasing credibility and authority on the Web, it’s not what you say about yourself that’s important, it’s what others say about you that counts. Consider it an unbiased review of your credibility or offerings.

You can shout from the mountain tops that you’re the best “_fill in the blank_ professional”, but it doesn’t hold the same powerful impact as when you have a series of honest, relatable “customer evidence”, testimonials and endorsements from customers, industry colleagues and professionals to back up your claims.

If you have these testimonials and endorsements to exhibit, don’t be shy. Publish them on your blog for display. They’ll add to the proof that you are a credible source and an authority in your field.

When you present a professional blog theme and logo design, along with your engaging photo, audio and videos, it’ll WOW your customers.

Creating your navigation to be accessible so that they can find your important content, along with your contact information when they need it, is critical.

When you’re giving value first before self-promotion, and engaging in conversations and your story, you’ll be amazed at how much reciprocity returns to you in more ways than one.

Lastly, when you offer value-added publications and presentations, along with testimonials and endorsements, you’re holding the golden ticket to showcasing your credibility and authority through your blog.

Are there any of the above 10 tips that you will implement? Are there other credibility factors that you recommend? I’d love to get your thoughts and feedback on this topic, care to share?