Building Trust in a Virtual World
March 5, 2010 · 2 Comments
People live their lives today pressed between the flowing pages of Twitter and the back and forth banter of blogs. They connect with professionals via their profiles on LinkedIn and run them through Google search as a matter of routine background check. Presented with rich content, they sift through the information trying to determine the desired level of connection.
The tentacles of their personal brand are out there on the social media highway, reaching out and touching each person who zips by. These “brands” try hard to be engaging, hoping that the hook they thrust out is the one that will spear them in, bringing the friend/fan/follower front and center to the hub of their existence: the place where they make the sale.
This can’t happen without taking the conversation to a deeper place where they can become intimately connected to each other. How we get there is a matter of trust and is a crucial point in establishing lasting relationships. Those who have presented themselves in an authentic way on-line will appear seamlessly the same in person, while others who have experimented with on-line personas that don’t truly represent who they are will find continued relationships lacking as purchasers of the brand discover the existing holes.
Trust will always be an inherent part of taking the next step, but it is a developed risk needed to arrive at a deeper level of doing business. Today establishing a brand identity and a unique value proposition involves not only trust but truly being authentic in a very transparent way.
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