In the ongoing dialogue about Social Media you can find a number of recurring themes.
There is:
- “the conversation”
- being authentic
- paid, earned and owned media
- ROI
- Influence
- …and a whole host of other topics.
One of my favorites is trust.
The Feeling You Get
Trust is a foundational element in successful social media marketing as well as sales, leadership, and teamwork. Trust is a prelude to loyalty. When someone trusts you, they are more willing to take your advice, buy from you, recommend you to others or come back for another visit.. Trust is something that gives people a warm, fuzzy, and comfortable feeling about decisions.
When we discuss trust in one-to-one personal relationships, it intuitively makes sense. Because it is something felt, it is very easy for an individual to listen to their gut and decide whether they find another person trustworthy. This feeling can rely on a number of things: body language, choice of words, reputation or just a feeling. Everyone comes into new relationships with some sort of “baggage” and therefore are more or less inclined to trust people. Some people are the type to start out distrusting and make people work to earn their trust. Others start out trusting and give people the opportunity to maintain that trust.
Earning It
We can run polls to determine a sense of how people relate to a company, but that data is similar to a balance sheet, it only represents a moment in time. Trust is not a static feeling, unflinching and immovable. Trust is a constantly evolving, frequently tested sliding scale and therefore, generally speaking, trust is hard to quantify and hard to measure. However in spite of that, we get the sense that some brands are more “trusted” than others.
Why is that?
If trust is constantly evolving, then we can assume that it is influenced over a period of time. For instance, someone you’ve known for 1 week has a volatile sliding scale; one false move could plunge a person into the no-trust zone. By contrast, your best friend that you’ve known since grade school, that has never lied to you and has always had your back, will need to work much harder to lose your trust, they’ve built up years of it.
A Source of Inspiration
I have the pleasure of knowing someone that is, in all facet of his being, a leader. His name is Clint Westbrook and he is the Vice President of Strategic Solutions at Aramark. During one of our discussions about leadership we began talking about the nature of trust and he said something profound which I will paraphrase.
Confidence is the prelude to trust. Before someone trusts you, they have to have confidence in you.
I don’t know how you, the reader, are struck by this, but I actually asked him to stop talking so that I could really absorb what he said.
Confidence is the Prelude to Trust
Think about those people that you trust, and whether or not you have confidence in them?
- Do you have confidence they will do the right thing when the time comes?
- Do you have confidence that they will get the job done if you give them a task?
- Do you have confidence that recommending them will not make you look foolish?
The answer is probably yes to most of those. Confidence, as it turns out, is a leading factor in the acquisition of trust. When you have earned someone’s confidence, you are on your way to earning their trust.
The Process
So now we can begin to look at this as a process. Work backwards: If you want trust, you need to earn confidence; if you want confidence, you need to…
- Consistently deliver results–Get the job done right.
- Do what you say you are going to.
- Go above and beyond–for no other reason than because it’s what should be done.
- Work through problems.
- Accept criticism.
Companies that follow this pattern earn our trust because we are confident that they will meet (or exceed) our expectations. On the flip side, companies that don’t do this will rarely ever earn our trust.
…and then, Social Media
We are no longer solely influenced by an individual incident. What was once an individual experience is now a collective experience. When a brand betrays our trust and we take the Internet, we influence the perception of others which colors the lens. “Brand” is now defined as the aggregate of everyone’s voices. The importance of individual interactions is magnified. The imperative to consistently earn confidence is higher than ever. This is why Social Media can not fix a company’s brand issues, it can only magnify what already exists. It is not just the voice of the customer either, because employees have a voice too, and so do vendors.
Therefore if Social Media is going to be used to affect the way people relate to a brand, the company culture is the first thing that needs to be looked at. We can all agree that Social Media is simply something that now exists and is not going away anytime soon. We collectively participate in this new world of open dialogue and sharing. This is why the concept of Social Business is so important. A company that understands how this new world is changing the nature of business, will alter it’s business accordingly.
Trust is vital to the long term success of a company; confidence is the prelude to trust. If the doors and windows to your business were opened, if every customer were to relay their experience, if every employee were to contribute their input, would we have confidence in your business?