Trust and Social media marketing trust is now becoming integrated into various facets of our online lives. In fact a world where banks consider online reputation along with credit ratings, or you are hired based on expertise shown on online forums is not completely unimaginable. (Image credit: Flickr)
Rachel Botsman shows that the concept of social media marketing trust and reputation are not new by saying –
The value of reputation is not a new concept to the online world: think star ratings on Amazon, PowerSellers on eBay or reputation levels on games such as World of Warcraft. The difference today is our ability to capture data from across an array of digital services. With every trade we make, comment we leave, person we “friend”, spammer we flag or badge we earn, we leave a trail of how well we can or can’t be trusted.
You can check out Rachel’s TedTalk on trust below.
Today there are a number of aggregators available and accessible to the general public. Reputation data is almost becoming a way of viewing how people might behave, how peers view a person but perhaps most importantly whether we can be trusted. In a sense our online history is becoming more powerful than our credit history. The challenge for influence and reputation aggregators that currently operate in the market is use the reputation data in a responsible way and in a way that is transferable to other situations. The potential for aggregated online reputation is huge across segments where trust is fractured. For example banking and e-commerce, peer to peer marketplaces and recruitment.
Social media marketing trust and reputation is really built over time across different places. It is in accumulating all of this information that a true picture of who you are as a person emerges and how value in different contexts can be attributed.
Norihiro Sadato, a researcher at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Aichi, Japan, through experiments has come to an interesting conclusion –
“The implication of our study is that different types of reward are coded by the same currency system.” In other words, our brains neurologically compute personal reputation to be as valuable as money.
With reputation and social media marketing trust being critical factors in building an audience and keeping them it follows that there need to be a concerted effort in building ones reputation capital. Rachel Botsman’s 10 steps to build social media marketing trust and reputation are –
1. Be a maven
Demonstrate your knowledge on something — music, maths, movies — on MavenSay, Mahalo or StackExchange.2. Get tagging
Use a platform such as Skills.to to tag your strengths and make it easy for others to know at a glance what you can do.3. Become super at something
Be a great host, runner, seller, renter, lender, in an online marketplace such as Airbnb, WhipCar or Zopa.4. Build a portfolio
Make a note of references, ratings and reviews on various platforms that give a snapshot of your online value.5. Collect trusted opinions
Ask people who know and trust you to write about your skills and trustworthiness on platforms such as LinkedIn.6. Follow, like, befriend
Concentrate on building a deep social network on at least one platform. Interact, follow and “like” on a daily basis.7. Review and recommend
Get your name out there: be active in writing reviews and vouching for friends and colleagues on a range of websites.8. Monetize your profile
Build some kind of virtual currency account, whether it’s Linden Dollars, Gold Coins, IMVU or Facebook Credits.9. Spring clean your reputation
Use a service such as Reputation.com or Veribo to clean up any misleading or false information about you.10. Gain some social capital
Become an active part of your local community and demonstrate you are trustworthy in your personal life.
Are there tips that you would add or recommend to add to ones reputation capital?
How do you see yourself building your social media marketing trust and reputation?