The Importance of TRUST in Social Media Marketing
55Establishing Trust = Time to become Credible
The Core of Social Media Marketing
At its core, Social Media Marketing is about establishing Leadership in a field. Leadership is only ever achieved over time by being consistent, authentic and knowleagible. Leadership is about people, about being social, about communication and about being respected. The sphere of Social Media Marketing provides the perfect platform for this.
Leaders are by definition extremely visible in this environment. True Leadership is transparent. The Social Media do not provide a platform for clever behind the scenes strategy. Everything is public, visible and open. Everything is available to be scrutinized by ever critical followers.
Social Media Leaders have carisma
Credibility simply takes TIME
There are no short cuts in the Web 2.0 environment. Anyway, things move so fast, if there were we'd miss them if we blinked. Establishing Credibility is simply about delivery of what your followers consider VALUE, consistently over a period of time.
Its the same with Establishing Leadership through TRUST in the Social Media Marketing world. Consitant delivery of the key elements to establishing Leadership TRUST will ensure its achievement.
There is no way of saying how long it will take to establish TRUST. Trust is simply a by-product of delivering value without being self-serving. Delivery with your followers interest at heart. Delivery with Integrity.
This will all take the time it needs to take and it cannot be accelerated.
Keys to Leadership TRUST
- An investment of TIME. Regular and generous amounts of time establishing the BRAND. In Social Media the brand is of course the person. People dont buy a product or a business. In the first instance they buy Leadership.
- Leaders generously give their KNOWLEDGE away, creating value at every possible contact. People will continue to follow people that they learn from
- Good Leaders will always subscribe to the holy trilogy of Openess, Honesty and Integrity. A Leader who slips up in one of these areas loses credibility for life.
The Social Media are very unforgiving of Leaders who cross the barrior of the holy trilogy above.
Ultimately TRUST is earned over time, during which time the best we can do is deliver value through knowledge in a consistant and generous manner never doing anything that might be seen as self serving or spammy..
Trust, Scam and Strategy
Trust in Social Media Marketing is an essential ingredient in determining whether the campaign is a Social Media Marketing Scam or Strategy. Web 2.0 is however unforgiving in exposing those who take advantage of the platform and abuse the "privilage" of interacting with followers and friends.
Further Study Information
- Improving your Social Traffic
Getting Social Traffic to your business requires further study. My recomendation follows:
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Comments
Hi Steve, interesting point above. And just to follow on with what Rebecca said about being unforgiving. I actually think people will be more forgiving than we think...but we need to have built up a strong trust account with them. If someone consistently and steadily adds value, is seen to be authentic across a number of platforms well then even if they screw up by making a mistake and then apologise..I for one would respect them even more. We are all human and we all screw up from time to time..even saints!
Couldnt agree more more Anne. This is the whole motivation behind Global truth and reconciliation initiatives. Imagine a world that was totally unforgiving..
rebeccahappy says:
4 months ago
Great points on building trust over time Steve. One of the things I guess I dislike about social media world is its critical unforgiving nature. For all its power and possibility to create wondrous things and build community compassion and understanding of our basic humanity soon goes out the door.