You can’t cheat trust

Posted on September 30th, 2010 by Eric Dodds and currently 7 commenting.

I’ve been finishing a few odds-and-ends projects around my house lately, and it’s made me think about how doing things right generally takes more time and effort than I prefer.

One closet I wanted to paint made the lesson about time and attention very clear: when I removed the clutter I realized that a wall needed to be patched, the trim needed to be touched up, and it was probably going to be a three coat paint job. My first reaction was to settle for a one coat bandaid, but my dad’s words were ringing too loudly. “If you do it right the first time, it is done, and you won’t have to do it again.”

As I got to know my paint brush better over the four night period it took me to mend the closet, I thought about how today’s business world is littered with attractive offers for one coat bandaids. Whether it’s a branding solution or relationships with your customers (or employees, for that matter), doing things right often takes more time and effort than we prefer.

Not long after the paint dried, I ran across an interesting article (1) my friend Kyle Bylin wrote that put some numbers behind my thoughts. His opening comments:

Not surprisingly, we trust content from the people we know the most. But, the venue greatly impacts the degree to which we’re willing to trust that content. If my friend writes a blog post – not very skeptical. If a brand posts onto their blog, my BS detector goes into overtime. What if, instead, they took that same message and published it onto their Facebook page? As it turns out, research shows that people would trust the same content less, simply do to the switch in locations. –Kyle Bylin, “What Makes Social Media Trustworthy?”

It is actually a very interesting study. Here are a few highlights from the Invoke Solutions report (2):

• 26% of US frequent social media users completely trust blog posts by people they know
• Only 11% of US frequent social media users trust blog posts by a brand, over 40% neither trust nor distrust blog posts by a brand
• Only 9% of US frequent social media users completely trust posts by a brand on Facebook, and over 40% neither trust nor distrust posts by a brand on Facebook
• And last, but not least, only 5% of US frequent social media users completely trust Tweets from independent bloggers, and only 16% somewhat trust the Tweets

The internet and its social tools have had a profound influence on how brands develop relationships with their customers. But if it’s trust you’re after, you can’t use technology to cut corners. Just because your customers are on online and you’re ‘meeting them where they are’ doesn’t mean they’ll trust you. And just because you’re a part of the venue that your customer and all their friends frequent doesn’t mean they’ll trust you. In fact, the numbers show that they might trust you less. Technology or no technology, trusting relationships with people often take more time and effort than we prefer.

But doesn’t a lot of ‘influence’ buy trust? More from the study:

• Only 12% of US frequent social media users think that the “number of people who are fans, followers or participants” is extremely important, 26% think it’s somewhat important, and a whopping 62% think it is neither important nor unimportant, somewhat unimportant, or not important at all.

The numbers would suggest that bloated followings seem to garner more attention than they do trust.

So what does facilitate trust? A dialogue open to varying viewpoints, a high level of quality in both content and comments, and responsiveness from the sponsor or author. All of which sound like take…time and effort.

You can choose any number of ways to generate a following and turn a buck using the internet, but whether online or offline, you can’t shortcut the work that it takes to develop an authentic, trusting relationship.

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