Let’s think about average Social Media users. They are taking a short break from whatever thay were doing and jumping into this perfect Social Media world.
Every part of their screen screams “look at me, I’m funny”, “I’m all you need”, “I’ll solve all your problems”.
Is that the best moment to make a connection and to build Brand Trust?
We asked 18 experienced marketers what the best way to Use Social Media to Build Brand Trust is? Here are the answers:
Chris Richards, Business Energy UK
It is important to realise that social media can be used for more than just promoting products, services, and other content. The communication process between a business and its customers and prospects is a two-way street.
In turn, you can build a sense of brand trust and create a community around your brand because of these interactions. Building trust with your clients is essential if you want them to be repeat customers and refer your business to others.
Your audience lives on social media, and that is where you and your business should be. There is almost a 100% chance that your target audience is on social media no matter what demographic they fall into.
There may be some differences in their preferred platform (older audiences might be more likely to use Facebook, while younger audiences might prefer TikTok), but social media is an integral part of their day-to-day lives.
Mitchell Cornell, The Webmason
Social media can be a great platform to build up a strong reputation with your target audience and increase your chances of building great relationships. But it’s not just about showing how reputable you are and can be utilized to increase the awareness of how important it is to give back to your community and remain socially responsible.
Amanda Thomas, Konstruct Digital
Social Media is one of my favourite “funnel boosting” marketing tactics. While the ROI of the channel is often difficult to explicitly pinpoint, the evidence is clear that social media helps boost the efforts of other channels. Social Media helps build brand trust in a lot of ways. Whether or not a customer or potential customer follows you, viewing or researching social media profiles is an important stage of many buyer journeys.
There are a few key indicators that a user is looking for when they review your social profile:
1. How frequently you post. If your last post was from 6 months ago, they might think your business is no longer around or is having troubles.
2. Do you respond to comments and questions? If you’re ignoring user/customer questions it gives the appearance that you don’t have good customer service.
3. Do you seem like someone they want to do business with? Related to #2 above, how you respond and interact with customers also provides clues to your customer. If your responses are always defensive or blame the customer – potential buyers will likely be highly critical.
4. Are you an expert? Do you provide the service/product the customer is looking for? For example, if you are a social media marketing agency and your social content sucks, customers will move on.
5. Can the customer visualize themselves working with you or using your products? Producing content that helps your potential customer imagine what it would be like to be your customer can give an added boost to conversion rates.
Carlos Obregon, Bloom Digital Marketing
Social media can be a blessing and a curse, often both! But you can leverage social media to build brand trust by following these tips:
1) Post updates regularly, this is self explanatory, nothing worse than checking a brands Facebook page only to notice their last update is from 2013 right?
2) Take the time to chose the right topics for your updates, add value, share tips and actionable items.
3) Ideas for valuable topics: ask your sales and support people to give you the top five questions they get asked the most and build posts around answering those questions.
4) Look for questions being asked on LinkedIn and Facebook groups and provide useful, detailed answers. This will go a long way in building up trust in your brand.
5) And last but not least, consider writing white papers about the topics you are very good at. And then share them across your social media profiles.
Also Read: New Website Launch Announcement Ideas
Tommy Gallagher, TopMobileBanks
One of the main reasons why social media marketing works so well for the last decade because brands got the ability to build trust with customers like never before.
The universal keys to trust are transparency and authenticity. No wonder the same works for social media.
Here are my five tips on how to use social media to build brand trust:
Enlist the support from influencers in your industry. Easier to say than do, but it’s still possible, with any budget. Be sure you are transparent, authentic, adding value to the industry, and the collaboration opportunities will arise, often for free.
Make sure the content that you post is consistent and genuine.
Use social media to post about not only your products but anything that is happening inside your organization. Showing what is happening in the background is an excellent way to increase trust.
Be responsive. Make sure that you don’t miss any comments or questions.
Be ready to admit your products’ shortcomings and show that you are working hard to improve them.
Do not build a marketing channel but rather create a community around your brand.
Jordan Slover, Neon Ambition
Social media fundamentally changed the way brands communicate with their customers and prospects. No longer can you do all the talking; you must communicate and listen to what your customers are telling you online.
Social listening is key to success with social media as it allows you to monitor mentions, key terms for your industry or niche and can play a key role in enhancing your understanding of your target audience. If you know what drives your target audience, you can position your brand as supportive and a champion of the things that matter to them.
By social listening you can get a fuller picture of your brand’s social health and create more targeted content which gives your audience the added value they’re looking for.
Brands who want to build trust on social media must first listen to their target audience, then plot their next steps based on what they discover.
Also Read: 5 Best Channels To Promote B2B Content
Garit Boothe, Digital Honey
Your followers will trust your brand when they see you projecting a consistent message that is related to your niche.
For example, I work in finance. I create content via the written word, images, and videos.
One article that I wrote on Quora got over a million views. It was successful because I told a story from my pizza delivery driving days about when I got an $88 tip. It was relatable and fun. People really engage with stories.
On LinkedIn, I share work-related stories, marketing tips, and case studies. Regardless of the platform, I speak to my audience in a way that is relatable to them.
And it works. I get leads and clients from my organic social media content. It’s a repeatable process that anyone can follow.
I think the hardest part of getting a company to do effective social media marketing is authenticity. Executives don’t want to share their real feelings publicly. Companies don’t want to take a risky stand.
But when you look at who is most successful on social media, it’s always the people willing to be different. Take a stand. Raise your voice. And be useful or entertaining to your followers. This is what works on social.
Justin Herring, YEAH! Local
The idea of transparency is a great way to build brand trust with customers on social media. It allows for consumers to be able to get an insider’s view on your company, which is both cool and exciting! Exclusive sneak peeks, demonstrations, and before and after videos can also lure in more people who feel special when they are included in something exclusive.
Show your customers you have nothing to hide and they’ll feel more comfortable giving their hard-earned money away for whatever it is you’re selling them. By offering customers a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on with your brand you show there is nothing to hide, build brand trust, and make them feel special too! Some great examples of this for social media would be photos or videos of a behind-the-scenes product launch or office tour.
If you show your followers you are real and transparent then your brand trust can increase quickly with social media.
Nestor Vazquez, SEO MEXICO
When people build trust in your brand via social media, they are more willing to purchase products and services from you. The more active your engagement is, the faster build-up of hard-earned, trackable reputation will happen. Through effective social engagement methods, many businesses have already experienced a positive change in their customers’ loyalty.
With marketing campaigns having a strong focus on creating conversations with the customers, many brands have taken to build up their social presence. Also, business owners need to build trust via social media as well because the level of brand trust directly impacts customer loyalty and that is essential in this day and age when more people are looking for value-for-money products and services.
There are numerous ways to build trust in your brand via social media but there are some that work better than others depending upon the type of business. Following are the top tips to build up brand trust, here is my favourite one.
#1 – Acknowledge all feedbacks, be genuine while doing so
Engaging with customers is a key building block for build trust. It’s not easy because it involves a lot of time, effort and commitment on your part but in the long run, it will pay off well for you.
Yos William, Infinite Ace
“Social media is a great platform to interact with your followers. And I think producing clickable and valuable content for them is a sure-fire way to gain trust. But do not stop there. Find ways to turn trust into loyalty.”
“For instance, reinforce your content with credible sources or influencers. Your audience cannot build relations to a faceless name either. So, foster transparency by featuring people in your company or happenings from the backstage.”
“It’s also crucial that you respond to feedback right away, good or bad. Asking thought-provoking questions is an excellent conversation starter as well. Plus, skip generic and appalling robotic replies whenever possible. Humanise your interactions instead.”
“Finally, keep your content and tone consistent. If people follow you for your quirky recipes, then stick to that lane. Posting something irrelevant will only make your audience lose interest. Focus on harnessing the trust you’ve created rather than build new ones.”
Kas Andz, Kas Andz Marketing Group
The first thing that brands must do to gain people’s trust on social media is to make it an objective to verify their official page or account. This way, you start on a path that leads you to the productive result of having the verification check or badge next to your business name.
First of all, the requirements for you to get verified include social media practices that should have the admins of the platform deem you worthy. By following the guidelines, you avoid being spammy, having incomplete information, posting misleading statements like fake news, etc., – things that lead people to mistrust you.
People trust a page or account with a properly representing DP and cover image, complete information, contact information, website, phone number, email address, and other facts of transparency. Remember that transparency, which is honesty, begets trust.
Secondly, that tiny “tick” beside your brand name seems simple, but it significantly increases brand trust. When you effectively become verified on social media, it tells audiences that you have the proper backing that the platform admin recognizes and that you are a legitimate entity they can do business with.
A side effect of badges is security – people become sure that they are indeed engaging with you when they interact with your posts and shares. They can confirm that the account you control is are not unofficial or fan-made, which they can’t transact business with.
So, when putting your business or brand on social media, your objective is to get verified and acquire the check of legitimacy.
Kartik Ahuja, GrowthScribe
According to ThinkWithGoogle, over 50% of the shoppers say that they always do research before buying to ensure they are making the best possible choice.
Being on social media gives you an edge here as it makes it easier for your visitors to find and connect with you.
Here are my top 2 hacks for any brand (even if you are in b2b space):
1. Consistent Posting –
The trick here is not sitting on creating content daily but, only sitting for 10 hours, once or twice a month and giving it undivided attention.
Block your calendar for a weekend of your choice or weekday (if that works better for you).
Create multiple pieces of content like photos, videos, captions, all in that sitting.
Once you are done, just use a scheduler like ContentStudio and schedule the posts in advance. Let the software do the posting.
2. Adding link to bio –
Once you are active on your profile, make sure you use the bio space most efficiently and add a link in bio.
When someone lands up on your profile, they should get a clear CTA.
This helps in directing your visitors to land up in the right place and restricting them from getting lost in the noise of social media.
James Lee, Monetized Future
As a solo marketer, I am my brand and I market that brand almost exclusively on Twitter. I’ve found that it’s the social media platform with the most loyal followers, but you have to build trust in order to reap the benefits of their engagement.
The people of “Marketing Twitter” can smell a phony a mile away.
The easiest way I’ve found to build trust on Twitter is to periodically show proof of my success. I don’t like to rub my income proof in my followers’ faces but it does help to occasionally share screenshots of the money I’m raking in through affiliate marketing.
The other type of proof I like to share is social proof. On Twitter, this is as easy as RTing a compliment another account gives you.
If someone tweets a glowing review of one of my courses I will always share that with my audience. This type of social proof goes a long way in building trust.
Garrett Nafzinger, Garrett Digital
I use social media to listen and provide value. Over the years, I’ve found building relationships and trust a more effective way to sell than high-pressure sales tactics. To get started, find people in your target market, listen to their problems or interests, then dig into the issues, maybe even offer to get on a 30-minute call to brainstorm or strategize.
Jeremiah Smith, SimpleTiger LLC
I love the approach Gary Vee recommends in Jab Jab Jab Right Hook where you provide free value at least three times before ever asking for something. Of course you can provide free value more than three times for each ask, and it’s probably better to do so, but the core concept is solid.
One of our favorite ways of using social media is for a light Account Based Marketing approach where you outreach to key people in your industry that may either buy from you or influence others to buy from you. Social is a great, fast way to get someone’s attention, and have a human connection with lots of value.
Kevin Dam, Kevin Dam
Social Media is a great way to boost your brand by building trust with your audience.
You should be authentic with your audience because people follow you for who you are and what you represent to them – some even say it’s a representation of what your audience wants to be or have. If you’re not being authentic and you suddenly change then your audience is going to feel cheated.
Knowing who you attract will help you create the right content that speaks to them and this will go a long way to building that connection and trust. It’s important to stay consistent with your messages since they’re following you to see specific content. Now when you’re sharing your experiences and stories I’d recommend you stay humble and confident – there’s a fine line between confidence and cockiness.
Be passionate about what you’re sharing and it’ll shine through especially when you’re on camera and my last tip is to build relationships. As much as you can build that 1-to-1 relationship with someone in your audience because it shows you’re approachable and someone they can aspire to even potentially meet one day.
Shaurya Jain, Attention Always
Social media is a great place to build trust with your target audience. Ensure you create content that engages your target clients to your brand. This content should be about their pain points and how you can help them solve those pains.
You can join forums and groups where your target market hangs out. Engage those target audiences by answering the questions they post on those sites. Be the thought leader they can look up for when searching for answers to their pains.
Post content consistently and always consider the right type of content your target audience wants to read. Join different social sites and create content that resonates with your target audience in those sites.
For example the target readers in Facebook are more casual and use informal language while the language used in LinkedIn is more formal.
You can promote your blog content and other content that will draw target readers to your website where they can learn more about your business and what you offer.
