Sustainable relationships are built over time — which no one has.
Everyone is short on time, trust, and attention. This makes it a challenge to build ANY meaningful customer, business or personal relationship — in the real world or online. In the book Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust , authors Chris Brogan and Julien Smith share their recipe for building TRUST over TIME using TECHNOLOGY.
The result? Comfort food for pitch-weary marketers.
FD Soto, an Amazon.com reader of Trust Agents, puts it elequently: “Before the social media, entrepreneurs and big businesses marketed themselves like battering rams at the gates of your potential patronage. They would hammer away via commercials and advertisements that told you of their greatness and how you needed their product like a fish needs water. Now, these same people – through the advent of social media – are no longer high and mighty intelligentsia looking for a buck, but are like-minded individuals in the same boat as the rest of us. Producer and consumer now have a new relationship of sorts – one of pseudo-friendship (and sometimes real friendship).”
Trust Agents is filled with practical hands-on tips for online marketers to apply a ‘human touch’ to thousands of people in your social network in a reasonable amount of time. The insights provided by the authors are mined from case studies and are accompanied by activities.
For example, Brogan and Smith encourage social marketers to comment and ‘comment back’ often on blogs and social networks. The team provides helpful tips for leaving comments (such as ‘Don’t explicitly mention or link to your stuff, even if its pertinent – atleast for a few comments’ and ‘make sure you are adding some value to the post’). Then, readers are challenged to leave 10 comments per day to develop good commenting habits.
When companies make mistakes (poor service, recalls, errors), readers learn to put ‘the Three A’s into motion: Acknowledge, Apologize, and Act.
“If you’re going to work as a trust agent, an element of what you do, every day, is customer service,” Brogan said. “Your role is to empower and equip the people who choose to do business with you. ”
The most valuable walk-away for Trust Agent readers is the change of mindset the book reinforces: That social media tactics are only as good as the relationships behind them.
Over time, social media tactics can be used to build deeper relationships in the digital age. They can also sustain shallower relationships.
It’s all in how we use it.
Truth in Advertising
A cynical and humorous look at an outdated ’mindset’ in marketing. Enjoy!
About Troy Janisch
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