HR Hero Line editor Wendi Watts reviews the book Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogran and Julien Smith. She says that the book is not a how-to book on social networking or social media, but rather an insightful look at the concept of trust and how you win trust in the digital age.
A long time ago, in a land where network television ruled and all phones had a cord, the rules of mass communication were simple. Building influence, improving your reputation, and earning customers’ trust required lots of money, talent, and time to get your message out to the masses. Today, in less than two minutes you (or your unhappy customer or irate employees) can set up a Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace account at no cost and build your own mass audience. And your friends or followers can spread your message to their audience with just the click of a mouse.
Now your employees, customers, and competitors can talk about you both good and ill without your permission and knowledge and completely erode your influence, reputation, and trustworthiness.
How do you navigate this brave new world while maintaining your influence and good reputation? Chris Brogan and Julien Smith say it’s by doing the things that have always made you appear trustworthy but you have to do it using new tools in a new medium.
In their book Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust
This is NOT a “how to” book on social media and social networking. It’s a book that explores the human aspect of social interaction online that is often ignored in favor of technical mumbo jumbo and promises of quick fame or money. It’s refreshing to be reminded that communication is about talking with other human beings, not at them. You have to become what Brogan and Smith call a trust agent.
Trust may be one of the scarcest commodities out there today. Who or what do you trust? Do you trust the advertising or marketing messages you see on everything from TVs to gas pumps? If someone tries to push their product or service on you do you feel like you have no other option than to say “yes”? Probably not. People are highly suspicious of the motives of obvious advertising and marketing. As Brogan and Smith argue, trust agents are people who focus on building other people and themselves up without tearing other people down and making a hard sell.
Trust agents have established themselves as being non-sales-oriented, non-high-pressure marketers. Instead, they are digital natives using the Web to be genuine and to humanize their business. They’re interested in people (prospective customers, employees, colleagues, and more) and they have realized that these tools that enable more unique, robust communication also allow more business opportunities for everyone. (p. 15)
I found myself nodding my head in agreement with much of what I read in the book. While you won’t come away from this book with a checklist of what you need to do to become a trust agent in the digital age, it will help you understand why you need to do this and how it is different from communication in the past. And it will reassure you that, fundamentally, communicating is what it was before the Internet came along — developing relationships and trust one person at a time. I highly recommend this book.
Wendi Watts is the Web content specialist at M. Lee Smith Publishers and editor of HR Hero Line. Before moving to the online world at HRHero.com, Wendi worked as an editor for the state Employment Law Letters. She has worked as an editorial assistant for the IT Division at Middle Tennessee State University, was the school and community liaison for Rutherford County Schools in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and was a journalist at two Middle Tennessee newspapers.