Social Media Strategies and Technologies

Social media boosts your brand trust among your consumers, okay, I am NOT the first to say this but do you really think  consumers trust your brand online communications (blogs, micro-blogs and community sites etc) easily,  because there is a difference between how people and  how brands perceive social media?.

Image Credit

I was intrigued by a recent conversation with a friend on why do people have low trust factor on brands online communications? and what it takes to build such trust? after I found a Forrester research report released in December-2008 that highlights  few people trust the data in your brand online communication channels like corporate blogs and social network profiles pages despite growing adoption of social media.

Below are the trust factors used by people in decreasing preference:

As you can see from above report data - corporate blogs and social networking profiles of a company or brands are the least trusted sources of information for consumers - while this trending is changing as more people are adopting social media platforms as not only their personal life streaming channels but also as knowledge/information sharing medium.

So why people don’t trust  brand online communications easily? .

Building online trust is one of the challenging tasks for marketing and communication folks at organizations as they tend to push marketing messages on product or service or brand through online channels. Thanks to growing online participation behavior of consumers - brands cannot fake what they are to new users or prospects. It is known fact that people are increasingly becoming averse to marketing messages, forced selling or spamming with ads and claims of “the best” by every brand.

Building Online Trust  - How? .

It is very evident that building brand trust among online prospects or consumers takes time, considerable engagement effort and requires continuous focus on:

• Managing collaborative community - your consumers engage with each other.
• Continuous listening with your brand customers/prospects/competitors - Online trust is not a  build once and use it forever model.
• Being open to positive and negative conversations on your product/brand - You cannot control social web.
• Willingness to offer help to all complaining consumers to the best possible extent - Trust builds on your brand engagement nature.
• Most importantly letting your consumers take lead in online conversations or discussions around your brand/product  - your brand acts as a catalyst in creating new brand evangelists.

Well Known, Peter Kim posted a valid perspective on Forrester Blog about why people easily don’t trust your brand online communications.

Consumers don’t trust company blogs for the same reasons they don’t trust corporate advertising (reference: Consumers Love To Hate Advertising). Today’s corporate messaging intends to spin, convince, and persuade consumers to buy stuff. Technologies like contact optimization and behavioral targeting only exacerbate the problem, helping marketers to target consumers like a sniper and drill them with a message that has been calculated for potential affinity. And now that consumers can fight back, they are, with technology: DVRs, satellite radio, ad blockers.

Objectives start to solve the problem, but you need to make a stronger call. There are certain purposes for which social media should not be used and marketing communication leads the list. I.e. “speaking” should probably be removed from your list, because that’s what most people choose, despite claiming to “embrace” or “support.” Marketers must lead the way to true customer-centricity and social technologies can be the tools to drive true collaboration and community. Combine Social Computing, Reinventing the Marketing Organization, and The Connected Agency and that gives you the answer. It’s nothing short of a revolution in the way business - not just marketing - operates.

What are your reasons or attributes that help to build online trust? - would love to hear your thoughts?.