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05.22.09 Building Your Online Authority And Trust 
By Peter Da Vanzo
There is an interview on Open Forum in which Seth Godin interviews Richard Branson. The question is: Why is small business is better than big business? Branson explains how he structures Virgin so that it is a series of small companies. People know each other by first name. People need to know each others strengths and weakness, and collaborate, and be responsible for the work they do. Branson believes this open small company results in a better service to clients. Check out this article on Harvard Business: In the worst economy we've seen in decades, Passlogix, a privately owned 100-person software development company, just received over a million dollars in prepaid commitments for the next three to five years of service.Now, how do you explain that? The bigger companies aren't getting similar deals..I think it's a trend. And understanding it might just be the difference between failing and thriving in this economy. The difference, the article goes on to suggest, is the trust factor.
People need to be able to trust companies to deliver. And in the current climate, where big companies are just as likely to go to the wall as small ones, big companies no longer have the advantage of being trusted to deliver by virtue of their size. Small companies can build trust quickly in ways that big companies cannot. How To Establish Trust SEOs and marketers spend a lot of time trying to get traffic to sites. This is a difficult task, but it's a task that only solves half the problem. The problem is how do you get traffic to you site and get it to do what you want. If my traffic dropped by 50% tomorrow, I couldn't care less, so long as conversions stayed the same or increased. Traffic, like ranking, is is not a good metric of success, unless you're selling advertising by the page view, and even then it can be seriously misleading. i.e. how many people acted on the ads? What makes people engage? Underlying all transactions, is that the buyer trusts the seller to deliver. In order to help establish trust, consider these factors, especially if you're operating in an area where you're looking to sell an ongoing relationship: Familiarity & Personality It's never been easier to build a personal, trusted brand. Twitter, social networks, e-mail lists, blogs and other personal communication channels all make it easy for people to see how you think and act before they engage with you. If you're seen often enough, in the right places, doing good things, people will come to you, because the known feels safe. The unknown is risky. This is why PR and networking are critical. They help establish familiarity, which leads to trust, especially if the same person customers see writing articles/Twittering/networking is the same person who answers the phone. Continue reading this article.
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