The “Trust Factor”
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If you’re not incorporating The Trust Factor into your existence and your website, you’re missing connections and sales! Period, there’s no debate on this.
You’d think this was a given these days but there are still companies and sites missing the boat…missing the ship, the yacht! It’s absolutely imperative that you offer up everything about yourself, be visible and be accessible.
You MUST have:
- Some sort of social presence – preferably on the Big 3 (Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn) but this may be adjustable, depending
- Access to your social sites via your website
- An “About Us/Me” on your site; tell us who you are/who your company is, what you offer and what your guarantee is (guarantee can be somewhere else visible but if it’s not somewhere, be here)
- An easily accessible “Contact Me/Us”
- A “Testimonials” page or section if applicable – it makes people feel better (but please do abide by the new laws)
- personal pictures are a plus
Further you MUST up your game on Social Monitoring – even if it’s on a small scale like Twitter and Google Alerts. You’ve really go to be listening because we are completely spoiled and attached to quick support response on social avenues when we complain or call for help. This is quickly becoming less and less negotiable.
In the past few days I’ve passed up on 2 services that I was very interested in largely due to lack of social presence or social monitoring & response; in whole because they didn’t have The Trust Factor.
This is the thing – people NEED to interact with you or your company/brand reps in the social sphere now to feel comfortable buying from you; to believe that you’re legit and accessible if there’s an issue; and to be comfortable that they’re not getting scammed. Period. Case closed. It’s the current belief that if you are engaging with consumers, there’s a higher probability that you’re legit and safe to do business with.
No visible social presence + no social monitoring and engagement = lost business.
I can guarantee you that if those 2 sites/services I passed up in the last couple of days had a grip on that, I would have done business with them. Now I’m continuing my search for similar services who have integrated The Trust Factor.
Are you integrating The Trust Factor into your brand/business? How or why not? Do each of your sites and social profiles all link back to the others?
Karen J
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Categories: Social Media, Twitter n Tools!
Tags: social customer service, social engagement, social media buzz, social media montoring, social presence, trust factor, twitter customer service
2 comments to “The “Trust Factor””
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:09 pm
You said it best Karen, I can definitely agree with that. As it is said “People only buy from people they know, like and trust” Those are the 3 required factors to build and manage a successful business. That’s why as you mentioned sites like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are all releationship builders, sure they will make you sales if you do it right and build relationships first instead of asking for the sale.
Another biggie is your branding, it’s what people remember about you or your business so you want to always be on top of it. As it’s been proven, you don’t always have to find new customers ALL the time, build more relationships and touch base with your existing customers, they will be your repeat business
January 9th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
[...] media before, Why Social Media is So Effective, Marketing on Twitter and I recently talked about the Trust Factor but I wanted to follow up by my own recent success [...]