Understanding and managing trust is an essential skill in search engine business. In terms of sociology, trust is the willing acceptance of one's power to affect another - allowing actions that otherwise would not be possible.
Trust is a mighty tool when it comes to signing up new clients, achieving credentials and referrers or building a (social) network. Achieving trust is a matter of personal chemistry and marketing skills more than technical quality. One can always try using brute force or high-tech feature sets to achieve goals, but in the long run, building trust is a far more powerful and cost efficient option.
Google and other search engines are also heavy users of trust – trust is used as an essential factor to establish and manage rankings, authenticity, authority, privacy or any other factor you can think of. Search engine success is also due to trust - only this time the trust comes from common people who trust search engines to provide valuable, unbiased search results.
The Internet itself is very much built on trust. There are dozens of technologies that can be used to build the greatest websites / applications ever, but without trust of common people they have zero possibility for success. Trust is the major factor that defines how much publicity / “link love” a service will have and how much traffic will convert to sales/leads/actions etc.
Online trust is not currently the democratically shared asset it once was. Web 2.0 really marked the beginning of new era. Trust in the modern Internet is controlled by authorities, personal connections, fear and suspicion with a label of democracy over it. It's a case of the blind leading the blind. Thank goodness this is just a phase (like all the others the WWW has been through). Think of the Internet as a child of its age – a 15 year old teenager with a rebellious personality, an answer to all the questions of the world, and the brain of a headless chicken.
IMO building and managing trust is the most demanding ongoing task any professional has to face. In the field of marketing and managing business trust defines winners and losers. I can’t describe how good it feels when old customers recommend you to other business, or how much it sucks when you notice a lack of trust and there is nothing you can do to overcome situation.
As always, feel free to comment and share your opinions.
PS. Wondering how I received the idea for this entry? A customer of mine said recently “You know, I preferred your business since I didn’t trust those Indian guys that sent me proposals.” The irony is that I myself have heard “I just wish your business was from United States…” - xenophobia can create these type of trust-issues.
The Internet just as any business is built on trust. Trust that you will provide the product and services or information you say you can. The internet just like the offline world is heavily built on deception. We like to turn our heads to it but it seems more likely to obviously occur online than off.
A personal request... don't stumble with nationality issues; it was the last thing on my mind when writing this entry. Personally I don't give a damn if the untrusted nationality was finnish, indian, us, english, german or whatever. It just happened to be indian this time.
The issue of this entry is trust - what causes trust reactions, how to avoid / response trust issues etc. So let's return to real business.
With regards, -2k-
2K, great post and that is what I am trying to say with my comment above. The untrusted nationality was not the point and it should not have been mentioned to avoid this.
If you hadnt mentioned the nationality, then it wouldnt have been an issue. "don't stumble with nationality issues;"
so u mention them and if someone raises an issue, you want others to avoid it???
"It just happened to be indian this time."
so you take turns at insulting other countries?????
please give me a break.
whats so wrong in just saying "foreign"???? is that a censored word??
yeah, lets return to real business, i dont have all day keeping a track on this post and writing replies after replies to every "stupidly limited" answers.
So if I were to tell you that while I was talking to someone that person said, "I really don't like working with Jews because I don't trust them," you'd blame me for that person's remark? You're offended by what the client said, which is understandable and is exactly his point, but don't blame 2K or take it out on him.
If you had posted that remark, at a topic like this one, then yes i would.
whether the client is his, yours or mine, everyone has the right to say what they want.
But when you are going to put that on a place like SEOmoz and include it in a "sensitive" topic like this one, then whether its 2k or anyone else, they should have used what is referred to as "commonsense" and edited the remark.
I dont have anything against 2K nor is my intention to have a go at him.
I'm sorry, but at this point it seems that you're the only one who thinks the topic is too sensitive to even discuss. Censorship can be a dangerous thing, and I don't think the type you're condoning is something SEOmoz can get behind.
I dont expect everyone to share the same view nor i expect SEOmoz to support it aswell.
I expressed my views on it and its
as simple as that :)
nothing... I just quoted the words of a customer, and that's it...
Are you proposing that (limited) censorship is the right way to earn and build online trust?
Since foreign (see, I used the F-word) SEO services are a topic, what realworld advice is there to make foreign SEO services (and other business) more trustworthy in eyes of US business?
I like what rand is doing with moz - being open... IMO it's the most essential thing any foreign SEO business can do to promote business and wake trust.
Amen.
no. i am not proposing limited censorship is the way ahead to build trust.
what i am saying is the person writing topics like this should use some commonsense and not include terms which are sensitive and can cause some discomfort to other. Obviously that didnt happen in this case.
If we were mindful of not offending every single person with every post we publish, we wouldn't be able to publish anything. I'm sorry, but you can't please everyone.
That is confusing several issues that are not related. This has nothing to do with censorship or me telling you how to build online trust.
I am saying that if you don't want your good post to unnecessarily and unintentionally offend some people, be more sensitive to those groups and use general examples instead... especially when the specific example is not needed to illustrate your point.
I do wonder: If you'd written "I don't trust those New Zealand guys" if we'd be having this discussion?
Disclaimer: I am from New Zealand and thus do not want to be contacted by any angry Kiwis, thanks. You know you can't be trusted!
trust is the most important thing in a relationship!
Rand,
thanks for editing to add the xenophobia.
2k,
i wanted to highlight how it can be misinterpreted and how *stupidly limited* people can be when they write something (and/or read something) with a single frame of mind.
And why i shouldnt start reading blog posts early in the morning esp on a monday...
Let's just say I got flooded with various issues and I had to cut off some lower priority tasks.
Which is very suprising since in most areas people and especially business don't have this kind of barrier towards North-America.... Sadly, this is not US only feature, in Europe there is still lack of trust for business coming from east or south of Europe...
Like all established business. Sad, but true.
Praveen. I meant not to offend any group, so I apologize if it hurted. It is just an example of how *stupidly limited* people sometimes are (and why I shouldn't type posts at late night hours ;).
PS. Thanks to rand for editing the post content smoother.
2K - Haven't seen you in a while, so it's good to know you're around and kicking :)
I think the last part of your post is the most interesting - noting that you've been on both sides of the geography of trust issue. There's lower trust for in the US for foreign firms and that scale extends doubly for non-Western firms (many times, unfairly).
Life in the real world has always been about who you know and not what you know. As search engines grow to try and mimic users who are able to tell the difference between BS and quality from experience that SEs would take the same path.
The future of SEO is who you know, not what you know.
I think you should have removed the "indian jibe". That would have been the sensible thing to do.
Praveen, I don't think 2K meant it as anything other than an instructive example. He commented that as a Fin, he too has seen companies lose trust over his geography. I understand your sensibilities, but I don't believe the criticism is warranted in this instance.
Rand,
Whether 2k is an American or a Fin is not an issue at all. When you say something against a country/community in a place like SEOmoz, it is not taken as a personal remark.
i dont have to say how much SEOmoz is looked upon by many. When they see this, they will not see whether 2k is a Fin or British or Spanish, they would see this as a remark by SEOmoz.
ps: i used the terms Americans as an Instructive example only.
OK, but he's not saying "I don't trust Indians," he's saying "a client called me and told me they didn't trust Indians - this is tough because I've had people tell me they don't trust me because I'm Finnish/not American."
He's empathizing with your position, not antagonizing it.
if this sentence "I preferred your business since I didn’t trust those Indian guys that sent me proposals."
had been rephrased as
"I preferred your business since I didn’t like some of those proposals sent by Indian guys"
it would have fine and most would have understood it.
but now its a case of individual interpretation.
i interpreted the way i did, you did the way you did and others will do the same way it feels to them.
He's stating someone else's words, not his own. Why should he rephrase those? I think he can expect the average SEOmoz reader to understand what he means, instead of what his customer meant...
I also edited the end of the post to hopefully bring additional clarity to his point.
This point could have been made without referencing the particular example (which could have been any country or nationality and was not relevant to the point being made):
This:
You know, I preferred your business since I didn’t trust those Indian guys that sent me proposals.
could have been:
You know, I preferred your business since I didn’t trust those 'foreign' guys that sent me proposals.
That is my issue with this.
I think its more valuable to be transparent and see what's actually going on.
I have a question then. Would you have posted the comment if it hit closer to home? Lets say the original comment would have been:
You know, I preferred your business since I didn’t trust those black guys from Chicago that sent me proposals.
It would still be his customer's opinion, not his own...
Good post! There's lots of little things that can help your site look more trustworthy:
*) Add an image of the one selling the service. Seeing who you're dealing with on the internet matters. *) Make sure you remove all spelling and grammar errors. You don't want to do business with some kid do you? *) Don't go haywire and tell customers only new stuff, saying things that they already know helps them reinforce that what you're saying is correct.
Anyone that has more of those?
Totally agree. I really lose respect for sites that are sloppy with their grammar and spelling. It looks really unprofessional and slap-dash.