Reminder from Spike Jones: Nobody Trusts You

Originally posted by Spike Jones, Featured Speaker at Social Fresh Charlotte, on the Brains on Fire blog Did you know that: 76% of Americans think companies LIE in ads. (2009 Yankelovich Study) 77% of Americans trust companies less in 2009 than they did in 2008. (2009 Edelman Trust Barometer) Americans trust that businesses will do what is right has dropped from 58% to 38%. (2009 Edelman Trust Barometer) We all know that people trust people. People they know. People buy people first. But what constitutes “knowing” someone? You can chat with someone all day long on Twitter, but do you really “know” them? Do you trust them? Enough to make a financial investment? And even though you’re using social media to participate in the conversation, you’re still a company. And as you see from the stats above, you’re still not trusted. Why? It could be that you’re still towing the company line. It could be that social media, with all its wonders, allows people to become whomever they want you to think they are. And you can’t see the lies until you spend some time and dig down. It could be that people are naturally skeptical. It could be a lot of things. The movements we create are created by the people, for the people and people (most of the time customers) run the show. We do it for a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is that people trust people “just like me.” It’s not a top-down, push kinda thing. It’s just people connecting with people. Trust is very hard to earn and very easy to lose. It takes time to build and is not a physical line item on a P&L sheet. But boy, does that P&L sheet reflect it. People might like you, but that doesn’t mean they trust you. So what are ya gonna do about it?]]>