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Do People Trust The Advice They Gain from Social Networks?

Your customers are tapping their social networks to learn how to solve their business problems. For example, if they’re researching marketing automation tools, they may check out discussions on a LinkedIn group or ask tweeps for recommendations. Therefore, it makes sense to understand and manage how your company is being perceived in the social networking landscape.

Market research firm, Invoke Solutions, recently studied how users of social networks [in the USA] perceive the advice they gain. Respondents were given five choices to questions related to source of content: trust completely, trust somewhat, neither trust nor distrust, distrust somewhat, or do not trust at all. Here are the results:

• Blog posts by people respondents know are more likely to be trusted completely (26%) or trusted somewhat (38%)
• Blog posts by a company are trusted somewhat (25%) or neither trusted nor distrusted (42%)
• Tweets by people respondents know are trusted somewhat (33%) or neither trusted nor distrusted (35%)
• Tweets by a company are trusted somewhat (20%) or neither trusted nor distrusted (48%)
• Fellow (people) community member comments are trusted somewhat (29%) or neither trusted nor distrusted (44%)
• Company community member comments are trusted somewhat (22%) or neither trusted nor distrusted (51%)

Additionally, respondents told Invoke Solutions which features inspire trust in social media:

• Open dialog on both positive and negative comments
• Quality of content and comments
• Responsiveness

Two takeaways: One, the most trusted information is posted by people. Two, people are sceptical of information posted by companies. How can we, as marketers, use this information? Answer: Become a person they know. There are many bloggers and tweeps that I have never met in person; however, I feel that I know them and I trust their advice specifically because of their dialog, quality of content, and responsiveness—the features that Invoke Solutions uncovered.

How can you become a person they know?

• Add your photo to your LinkedIn profile
• Every time you meet a person for the first time, consider whether to add them to your professional LinkedIn network
• If your company has a corporate blog, make sure each blog post is attributed to a person. That person should update their status field with a key message from the blog post and a URL to the post.
• If tweeting from a corporate account, use a call sign (^IC) to subtly remind followers that these insights come from a person. If there are a number of you who tweet, add your photos to your twitter page. If at all possible, add your photo instead of logo to your tweet stream.
• Whether you blog, tweet, or use LinkedIn, always be insightful and always add value to the conversation

What else would you add to this list?

Crosby out.

PS—For the complete statistics revealed in Invoke Solution’s study, visit http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007863

Tags: social media, social networks, marketing communications
 

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