Leveraging Leo for Credibility

Note: This post was guest blogged by me, Mitchell Harper of www.HarpzOn.com

As you know, John was on Leo Laporte’s show “The Lab” recently. Now this got me thinking “how can John leverage his air-time to boost the credibility of his blog?” Sure, John is popular and his posts are great, but Leo has a far greater reach, so wouldn’t it be good if John could leverage Leo to build some of his own credibility?

How could he do this? An “As featured on The Lab with Leo Laporte” link *somewhere* on JohnChow.com would do the trick. This could then be linked to this post and possibly even the video of the entire episode when John gets his hands on it.

John already has a large following, but for those coming to the site for the first time, it will help establish John as a trusted and credible technology and blogging expert, which will change their frame of reference towards him: instead of looking at John’s site as a new blog, they will automatically think of his as an expert and be more likely to blog about him and link back, thus boosting John’s reach even further.

My recent post on public relations ties into the general ideas in this blog post too: being on Leo’s show was an excellent public relations activity for this blog and it cost John nothing – he did everything himself and didn’t need a PR team to land him on TV.

Sure, a lot of people don’t have the luxury of being able to dedicate themselves 100% (or even 80%) to creating a blog like John’s, but if you have a website and sell products or services (this includes selling yourself and your ideas on your blog) a well-planned public relations campaign like John’s can get you some serious media coverage, leading to a flood of website visitors, back links and a boost in your credibility, trust and “Internet celebrity” rating – which is why we all blog anyway, isn’t it? 😈