Before social media, branding was the buzzword of the marketing and advertising industry.  Like social media today – many in the “biz” were familiar with the term branding – but really didn’t “get” what it was really all about.  As a result a lot of “noise” has been made about branding which focuses upon the choice of colors, logo or other visual elements used in marketing.   But branding is so much more than just the visual packaging of your business or even your business name.  While the name and the visual elements are a way to quickly communicate the “core” or DNA of your business to consumers who don’t know you yet – your true BRAND is built through interaction with your customers.

I’ve always said that branding is not something you do to your business – but rather it’s something your customers do to your business.  Just as a calf does not control the hot metal which sears a symbol into it’s flesh – your company’s brand is controlled consumers.  This is why focusing upon the consumer and striving to meet their expectations is the foundation of branding.  Social media gives businesses a way to make that connection – to collect that information – and to actually see your business from the consumer’s point of view.

Peter Drucker was a self-described “social ecologist” whose insight helped to build some of the most successful companies in the world including General Electric, Coca-Cola, Citicorp, IBM, and Intel. Drucker attempted to unveil some of the “mystique” surrounding branding,

“Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.”

According to Drucker – the essence of branding is building trust and long term business profitability ultimately depends upon building trust with consumers.  Branding is all about building trust with consumers.   When consumers can trust you – they’re more likely to buy from you.  Social media provide the communication tools necessary to engage consumers and build that trust.

The process of building trust with consumers used to be as mysterious and abstract as quantum mechanics.   Companies had no way of knowing whether they had made a “connection” with consumers other than to watch for the cash register to tally up another sale.    Social media is providing revolutionary insight into this once obscure concept but  it’s increasing the importance of actively striving to build trust with consumers as well.

 

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In Blogging, Authority and Trust I talk about how in order to gain access to a prospective customer’s emotional triggers you have to engender a level of “trust” with a prospective customer or client.   That level of trust begins as “trust” and can grow into “authority” with time.

In “Trusting your Gut“I shared the word picture which illustrates how the whole process of building trust with prospective customers and clients works.

Now I’d like to illustrate this complex process of how trust plays such an important role in social media marketing by sharing a recent person experience on how a blog post worked to build – and destroy – the most basic elements of trust needed to make a sale.

I was searching for software to automate a time consuming task in my business.   This type of sale is an example of a major sale – as it’s one that is worthy of investing a significant amount of time into research.  I entered the keywords to describe the software into Google and -not surprisingly – one of the first results returned was a WordPress blog post. In the post, the author asked his readers to share what software solutions they had used.  The blog post had almost 60 comments by the time I arrived and I had high hopes that I would quickly and easily discover exactly the software solution what I was seeking.

At this point, while my trust account balance is low -  I’m willing to give this blog author the opportunity to earn my trust.  After all – his post is appearing first in Google, it appears he talks about issues affecting my business and he’s not featuring affiliate links to preferred products in this post so this is off to a promising start.

At this point, he has “earned” enough of a trust deposit for me to invest my time reading his blog post.  The post itself held little information.  It was basically fluff and the author intended on allowing his readers to provide the “meat” of the content though comments.   I didn’t mind this – as a matter of fact, I was happy to see it.  I started reading the comments with high hopes and a fairly high – but fragile – degree of trust.

The first few comments were apparently authentic- which were like making deposits into the newly opened trust account even though they weren’t encouraging. Most of the authentic comments on the blog post fell along the lines of “I still use pen and paper to perform this task.”  UGH!  That’s what I’m doing now.

Notice that these are what I call the authentic responses because it was obvious that these were real readers with real businesses.    Unfortunately,  there were only about a dozen “authentic” responses – followed by about four dozen “inauthentic” responses.

There were several comments which looked authentic at first glance.  They included a photo gravatar combined with a first name – like “John” – followed by a comment which went along the lines of “we looked long and hard for an easy to use, intuitive software program to handle these tasks and were delighted to find [insert software name here].”  The comment then went on to describe the software’s benefits in glowing terms.

The problem with “John’s” comment and many others began with a simple hyperlink.  See, one way a reader “gauges” the authenticity of a comment is by following the hyperlinks in the comment.  In the case of these inauthentic “shill” comments,  when you clicked on the link to see if you could “trust” the glowing recommendation.  – surprise surprise -you would find the hyper linked went directly to the website selling the software program described in the comment.

John and several others were obviously shill posting as a satisfied customers promoting their software solution via this blog post. Yeah – this is what some people call “social media marketing” which involves spamming the comments of blog posts by posing as a satisfied customer.   It’s yet another example of a blunder in online reputation management – one that can’t be easily erased.

Only a few were as insipid as John and couldn’t resist trying to gain a little “link luv” by including a hyperlink from the comment to their software’s website.  Unfortunately, there were others who were so blatantly hyping their product that even though they didn’t hyper link the comment – there was little doubt that the comment was not authentic.

Now – ask yourself where would YOUR level of trust for John’s software would be upon recognizing that his glowing customer review on this third party blog is actually a shill comment?   Yeah – it was one of those moments where I started scrambling to find my tin foil hat and  I quickly reverted into “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you” mode.

The moral of this story is that several software developers who tried to promote their products via shill comments lost the valuable opportunity to be “authentic” and showcase their software product to a prospective customer who was actively researching a purchase.

Instead of leveraging the power of a blog post with a #1 SERP on a valuable – albeit long tail – keyword term to capture high quality sales leads by leaving an authentic blog comment – a surprising number of software developers settled for a link with very little SEO value and absolutely no potential for real customer engagement.

This experience illustrates a lot of “blogging truths”….

  1. Leaving thoughtful comments on other blogs which add value to the conversation are a great way to get new readers for your blog.
  2. Finding blog posts which use powerful keyword phrases and leaving authentic comments is a great way to promote your product or services.
  3. Trying to “game” social media is a waste of time and energy.
  4. Trust which is quickly earned is fragile – and must be earned over time to fully develop into authority.

The best social media marketing practices begin by recognizing that social media is transparent.  Unfortunately it’s relatively easy to “stand out” from the crowd by simply being honest and telling the truth. In the blog post mentioned above, one software developer was “authentic” in his comment – sharing that he was the developer  and asking for input about his software from readers.  Too bad the software wasn’t even REMOTELY related to the title of the blog post.

The web is big – and often you’ve got a limited opportunity to engage with a prospective customer.  If you’re lying in the comments section – why would I think you won’t lie to me as a customer later on?

While building trust and establishing authority is a difficult process to “quantify” and measure -  it’s one of the best reasons to launch a blog for your business.

Years ago, a close friend of mine entered into therapy with her husband to try to save their marriage of 10 years.  Her therapist initially diagnosed the “primary problem”  in their relationship as my friend’s lack of trust in her partner.  The therapist provided her with a powerful word picture which she shared with me.

The emotional trust word picture goes like this:  Trust is like a bank account – when you initially meet someone – the trust balance on the account is zero.  Over the course of time, you make deposits to the account.  Deposits can be small at first – like calling when you say you’re going to call or showing up on time when you have a lunch date.  However, just like money – small regular deposits can add up quickly to create a sizable balance in the trust account of a healthy relationship.

Withdrawals from the account in this word picture are made when one party asks the other to take a leap of faith.  For example, in my friend’s case – when her husband called and told her he was working late – he was making a withdrawal from her trust account with him.   My friend’s counselor painted this picture for her because he believed that she had not been properly “crediting” her husband’s trust “account” and as a result – she didn’t trust that he was indeed working late as he claimed.

Hindsight is always 20/20 – and it turned out that my friend’s “trust accounting system” had been spot on. Shortly after sharing this word picture with me, my friend’s husband announced he wanted a divorce and revealed that he had been involved with a co-worker for over a year.  My friend’s gut instincts about his late night work sessions had been right on target all along.

While the therapist missed the mark in the above situation (caused by believing the narcissistic lying sack of sh*t to whom my friend was soon freed from the bonds of not so holy matrimony) his word picture about how building trust works is right on the money and one that every business owner who is considering using social media marketing needs to keep in mind.

When a prospective customer finds your blog post,  the balance of their trust account with you is low.  You begin making “trust deposits” immediately with seemingly simple details like the theme you choose.  However, the best way to quickly build the balance in the trust account quickly is to provide access to LOTS of high quality and relevant information.

Which is why a blog with a hundred or so blog posts is a great trust building tool for your business.  When prospective customers discover the first blog post about your product or service – they can dig deeper and learn more by simply reading other blog posts you’ve written.  When you create blog posts from questions asked by potential customers via email – it’s a powerful way to build a library of informative business building blog posts.  While fellow bloggers – who are the ones most likely to leave comments on your blog posts -  may find your blog posts “redundant” – prospective customers who are finding your blog for the first time won’t see redundancy but rather lots of valuable information they need to know to make a decision about whether or not to give your products and/or services a try.

Next – I’ll share a customer’s eye view of the whole “trust building” process and demonstrate how a blog post can serve as a powerful trust building tool.

Blogging, Authority and Trust

August 3, 2010

Dale Carnegie once said,  “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.” It’s commonly accepted that people buy products and services based on emotional triggers.  Only after the emotional trigger has been pulled will consumers then try to use “logic” to justify the purchase.  That’s why [...]

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Blogging for your business – It’s a numbers game

July 28, 2010

In Blogging for your business I shared that one of the reasons a business blog is a valuable business building tool is because you can quickly and easily publish content to the web.  The value of this ability is often lost upon those who don’t eat/breathe/sleep the web. The Web Game is Just Another Numbers [...]

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Blogging for Your Business

July 19, 2010

When I say “blogs” – many business owners start seeing horrible visions in their mind’s eye.   Some see self-obsessed, narcissistic egomaniacs for whom the ultimate goal is fame – or infamy – either one, as long as people remember their name.  Others see blogging as a six inch thick chain, locking them to their computer [...]

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Treating people like people

July 12, 2010

When you start treating people like people, they become people.  ~Paul Vitale Social media is becoming a force to be reckoned with in the world of business. The consumer controlled conversations happening online are literally reshaping the way brands are perceived.  Consumers have more power today than ever before in history.  You’d think that would [...]

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Blogs for Business – The Never Ending Story

June 29, 2010

In 1984 – the tale of a boy who steals a book called The Neverending Story” was brought to life on the movie screen.  In the movie, the book magically transports the boy to the fantasy world of Fantasia where a dark force called “The Nothing” threatens it’s existence.  In the end – the boy’s [...]

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Updating WordPress and Backing Up Data

June 23, 2010

People are smart – really!  I know sometimes it doesn’t APPEAR that way but they really are – IF you understand the WHY behind what they’re doing.  In my experience, you must identify the “why” behind a problem before you can begin to provide a real solution. When it comes to updating WordPress and backing [...]

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Introducing WordPress 3.0

June 21, 2010

WordPress 3.0 was recently released and it has caused quite a stir in the WordPress community.  I had to chuckle when I saw the RSS feed widget below appear in my iGoogle. The first post is the post at the bottom which is  “Dowload WordPress 3.0 now.”   It was promptly followed by two later posts [...]

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