With all the research being done around marketing online and how people use the web, it’s come to light that people just don’t trust corporations as much as they used to, especially not with the way that most companies have managed to smear themselves and sacrifice credibility for a quick buck. So who do they trust?

Well, honestly – people like me.

It’s not the hair, although I have to admit that my machismo gets the best of me sometimes. No, it’s the authority that comes from blogging.

Some have said that within the realm of social media, people don’t generally trust bloggers, however research into that area has shown otherwise. I don’t particularly go for the assertion that bloggers have no authority. I agree that the category of “bloggers” as a whole isn’t necessarily trusted but there are plenty of people who come to specifically trust and form relationships with bloggers and their blogs.

eMarketer did a recent study that clearly demonstrated what I’m talking about. Their study “what makes social media trustworthy” looked into which sources of information are most and least trusted by the average user:

Consider the percentages in this image. 30% or less actually trust brands, products and companies based on participation within Twitter and other communities and less than 40% trust brands on Facebook. Remarkable, over 60% trust blog posts from an individual that they know or have come to know through blogging.

What does this mean for someone who is involved in marketing? It means you and your company need to step out from behind the corporate logo, stop drawing lines in the sand and establish a real presence through blogging. Whether you do it on your own, outsource it, or let your employees develop a voice through blogs you need to do something.

It need to be apparent to customers that there are real people within a company that have real opinions that aren’t being glazed over or astro-turfed. You should be willing to let the employees that work for you represent your brand in a productive, authentic way that matters to the people you’re targeting.

Honestly, it’s more about what you do and what you say than where you’re participating. It doesn’t matter where you hold the conference, as long as what you’re saying to the people that are gathering provides value – the type of value they’re looking for.

People want the opportunity for a two way dialogue, they have very little interest in being talked “at”. One-way messages from any brand have far less impact than an engaging situation where the individual has a chance to actually be heard in the middle of a conversation. They don’t just want a place to vent, that’s only a small portion of the population that can’t control their tongue.

This is how real people speak – in dialogue. Blogging allows just that, and here is proof that it’s effective.

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I recently produced a post regarding Twitter being in its death throws and received a query from one of my readers on it:

Thanks for your thoughts on Twitter. I am interested in where you think those who have found Twitter useful in the past might migrate to. Forums and blogs are invaluable sources of interacting with like minded marketers, but where do you think things are trending, if ultimately away from Twitter?

Which is a great question.  Let me recap just a little bit.  In the previous article I talked about how Twitter had its uses but in my opinion those are a bit limited.  I think the usefulness of Twitter isn’t to any specific form of contact or method of engagement.  I think it’s very dynamic, as social media tends to be, because we’re dealing with people and growing communities.  That kind of thing is very fluid, without any solid form or color.  That means that like all things, what works for one won’t work for another.  Twitter has a lot of limitations that are being clouded in a lot of hype right now, however it’s still working to some degree for a few primary purposes.

Twitter is a useful tool for listening, as long as you know how to tune out the noise.  Companies like Ford have social media customer service agents that scour the web in places like Twitter and other social media networks looking for dissatisfied customers that they can reach out to.

For anyone who is trying to reach out and touch someone (minds out of the gutter people) then any social network can be effective as long as you’re managing the engagement properly.  The problem with Twitter is that among the select few who are actively hunting for specific people, there are a LOT of people who are running around the party speaking gibberish and just making noise.  It’s a room filled to the brim with talking heads, yes-men and parrots.

Where do I see people migrating to as the novelty wears off?  My initial reaction is to simply spit back “Facebook”, but then they aren’t really moving away from Twitter and moving toward Facebook - most people are already on Facebook.  It’s the social media giant with by the far the largest number of users hands down.  If you combined the user counts of Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn you still wouldn’t hit the total user count on Facebook.

And that’s assuming you account for all the fake profiles.

I predict that Facebook is going to continue to improve on an already solid network for businesses.  Thus far they’ve done a fairly good job at giving businesses of any size a place to establish a face and personality, with a unique method of engagement that puts a company on the same level as the people.  Through the profile pages of businesses, consumers now have an outlet to like, enjoy and interact with a brand that they support.  Likewise, those who don’t like a particular brand can throw eggs all they like.

Facebook offers far more potential, but that’s not saying that it’s the end all be all of social media marketing either.  For every Goliath, there is a David.  I highly doubt that our David is going to be Twitter.  Google has tried and failed (a few times).  Until one comes along, Facebook will continue to be the go to place.

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Every once in a while we get wind of incidents that occur in social media, specifically Twitter, where someone practically swallows their feet immediately after posting. As if their fingers we were working faster than the processing center of their brain – either that or they simply had no real regard for the position of other people and were just talking for the sake of talking.

A few incidents that come to mind might be the Attorney General announcing the execution of an inmate on death row via Twitter.

There’s also the Arizona based video producer that sent multiple Tweets about going on vacation, only to find that his home had been burglarized of his expensive video equipment when he returned home with his family.

Or Al Roker Tweeting and taking pictures of fellow jurors that he posted to his Twitter stream, a violation of the court rules.

Dig a little online and you find this kind of activity all over Twitter. Does the service inspire people to make stupid mistakes? Does it inspire it more than any other social network? Perhaps. The brief space that is given for content to be pushed on Twitter gives you little room to push details. 140 characters really isn’t room for anyone to establish deep context or subtle intent such as the case with the execution of the inmate.

It also gives far too much room for people to make broad sweeping statements that are easily misunderstood and misconstrued. As people fire off little one sentence blurbs, they aren’t often considering exactly what they’re saying. What’s worse, many aren’t thinking about what they’re NOT saying when they aren’t saying anything.

Take that into consideration as you also think about the mass of spam that goes on in Twitter. The auto follows, the auto replies, the retweets just for the sake of a retweet (in hopes of getting a little attention) and what you’ve got is a crowd of people that are all trying to crowd surf at the same time.

That won’t work people, someone has to hold the people up and someone has to surf. Otherwise what you have is a pile of people crawling all over one another and it’s just a writhing tangled mess of bodies. That might have been appealing at one time in ancient Greece but not in social media. Twitter is turning out to be a fairly self-centered medium, and I say that with the understanding that there are still plenty of people both giving and taking. Unfortunately, the majority are only taking and they feel that recycling the same stupid quotes is contributing.

The fact is, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of people listening. Many of the people who are listening tend to be listening for selfish reasons as they look to leverage their own position and network, and those remaining few people that actually provide value are going to realize that there are better channels for networking and socialization – whether for personal or business.

In my opinion, Twitter will remain useful to some extent for a select type of people, but the sweeping popularity and user base is going to implode and decline sharply once the novelty wears off.

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Personal branding is hitting a bit of a brick wall as of late.  To say the least, personal branding is running into branding issues.  If you ask a  lot of people what comes to mind when you mention personal branding and you’re likely to get a lot of responses centered around the typically ridiculed “social media guru” identity.

You know, someone who speaks at great length about social media, is well known online for their knowledge of it, but doesn’t have much real experience at much of anything save for talking about themselves.

Recently a journalist for CNN sparked a back and forth on the subject, discussing the lack of value in personal brands inside an article featuring Scott Monty of Ford Motor Company.

The journalist portrayed Scott as:

“Someone whose personal brand doesn’t take a back seat to anyone else’s - not even that of Ford Motor Co., his employer”

Of course a slew of people jumped in to defend Scott, and it’s not the first time that debates have erupted over personal branding - where believers take up arms against skeptics who are hurling rocks.  I doubt it’ll be the last time something like this occurs, and it raises an important questions:  Is personal branding legitimate or is it just a method for people to catch their overflowing ego?  Obviously I’ve spent a fair amount of energy and time working on my own personal brand here on this blog while managing my positions in a number of businesses that deal specifically with social media and I’ve had to wrestle with this question myself.  The whole concept can fall into 6 main assumptions between Truth and Fiction:

The Fiction of Personal Branding

Personal branding is about ego, not reputation

Ego is an ugly word and carries with it connotations of arrogance, narcissism and a boat load of pomp.  Guess what?  We all have it.  We all carry an ego to some degree.  It’s likely rather easy to shift into Ego mode if a person doesn’t check their position but personal branding isn’t about ego.  It’s about reputation.  When you develop that reputation, people know who you are when they see you coming.  You just can’t develop a positive personal brand on ego.

Personal brands come at the expense of corporate brands

The previously mentioned article was set to vilify Scott Monty, that by boosting his personal brand he was doing more for himself and less for Ford.  Instead we know when we talk about Scott it’s in our mind that Scott works for Ford.  Through his blog he shows his knowledge and through the success of Ford he proves it.  There’s no separation, and he certainly isn’t using his corporate identity to elevate who he is.  Instead, I believe that Ford is gaining a boost because of what Scott knows.

Only certain people have personal brands

Personal brands are about reputation.  The same goes for corporate brands.  In that regard, we all have a personal brand.  Some are stronger than others but we all have one.  Consider the new reach that digital media has given us and those simple personal brands get even larger.  The web has made it possible for anyone to get their 15 KB of fame, some just understand how to apply their experience and knowledge in order to take it to the next level.

The Truth About Personal Brands

It all starts with me

The funny thing is, a lot of personal brands start from a point of egotism.  A lot of people start in social media by talking about themselves - more from egotistical side.  It’s not that they are arrogant, self-centered or boiling over with arrogance.  They’re just a little naive.  When we first get started with this whole social media engagement thing, it’s just easier to talk about ourselves but we have to remember that like customers who don’t care about products, our followers don’t care about us personally.  Good personal brands break out of this mold and go on to talk about more important things.

Like golf.

Tension will continue

We’ve heard some stories already about individuals that built up a large personal brand and then had some issues maintain a corporate or work position.  There have even been individuals terminated or asked to resign over such positions.  Personal branding isn’t always to blame, I think it’s more likely that these people simply outgrow the positions they have in many of these cases.  Though on the reverse of that, the growth leads to a desire for personal branding which can cause people to want to spread their wings.

Personal branding is important because people are important

Personal branding puts a face to the people that exist within a corporate entity (or any business).  When consumers and clients of a company can see the personality of the people that work within, they can become more attached and comfortable.  That deep emotional connection is comfortable - and achievable.  The concept of the faceless company is going the way of the Dodo.

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There’s a number of ways that you can approach a customer on your website and in your content marketing that directly affect the way people perceive your company, products and services.  Despite the fact that many companies have a number of ways to approach consumers, they typically fall into a pattern of selling.

When you write from a sales position, you’re pushing content on the visitor that is completely irrelevant to their current needs.  They are online looking for information relevant to a problem that they’re having.  Through searching for the information, they subconsciously seek for a relationship to be established.  One that will help them see the credibility in a company.

They are looking for content that is engaging, that speaks from a position of relevance.  They desire content that will pull them in not through force, but with permission - where it establishes itself as someone thing they need.  Through that content marketing, the visitor falls under conviction; decide whether or not they need it now and how the opportunity speaks to their unique position.

They want to know that there is value, and they want to know how they will be affected in the long-term by opting in for the product… and by not taking it at all.  Most importantly they want to know that it’s about them.

Unfortunately with many businesses, it’s now about the visitor.  Their content is all about the company, the products and the services.  It’s formulated to focus on transactions - broadcasting a slew of content that pushes interruption in the thoughts of the visitor in an effort to place itself in a position of importance.  Once there, it hammers on things like cost, commodity, utility.

Instead of focusing on the most important aspects that the visitor needs, businesses tend to write copy that does nothing but fire an onslaught at all the available holes in hopes of hitting it’s mark.  The value, if any, is short lived.

One style, the most important, is about the visitor.  The other style, most commonly used, is about you.  Are you offering what you sell (them) or are you selling what you offer (you)?

Look at your content marketing - where do you stand?

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