Is Trust the New Currency?

In May of 2013 I penned a piece for Fast Company where I asked the question "Is Content the New Currency?" Ever since that time, more and more pieces around content and content marketing have cropped up in the feeds of social networks like LinkedIn Pulse. Many of them have good pointers and smart authors behind the diatribes, but the majority are just plain off the mark. In fact, in two short years and due to the speed of business, I am reversing my thinking and now don't believe content is a currency at all. Content is simply one of many mediums to convey the real currency in which we all aspire to obtain: TRUST.

Let's face real facts as business owners or entrepreneurs: when we really get down and deep we realize that most customers and non-customers could care less about us. Or maybe they really do. It depends on the true currency of trust. If we're a brick-and-mortar store we're a convenience or maybe a life saver. If we're a fashion brand we like to think that we're the emotional glue of our customer's life, but they might just think you design a good pair of pants. If we're a technology company, we think people can't function without our services, but there's another service that's better that is being created in the cloud as I type this.

Yet we all want to be more than this to our customers. We want them to feel like they are part of our journey. We even follow the advice of people like Seth Godin and embellish the truth or make up stories to get them to like us. We think that will emotionally resonate and build more trust over time. In life we work years and several decades to build up trust with our family, our friends, our peers. However if we lied to them, they would disown us. My wife gives me flack when I don't message to her that I'll be late coming home from work. Her reason is one that applies to life and business: "Show me some respect in our relationship. My time is as valuable as yours and working as a team we can plan for better outcomes." She's right which is why I'm letting you know now Allison that I'll be late tonight due to publishing this piece on LinkedIn. xoxo

All kidding aside, companies still operate in this mindset where they tell the customer: "Hey just trust us, love us and cry with us or laugh with us. Oh, and hate that other company over there that's our competitor while you're at it." But that's really not enough. Would you tell your best friend, "Hey trust me?" No, you would continue to show it and try to prove it on a daily basis. You would admit to your flaws. You would ask for forgiveness when you screw up and want to share the accolades when you bask in glory.

None of this is easy. We all know how hard it is to build a relationship with one other person. Can you imagine doing that with 10, 100, 10,000 or 100 million people? This may be the reason relationship management models between companies and their customers have yet to really take off. They're hard work. When someone at an organization suggests, "Hey, let's use our dollars in this area, it will help build a long term alliance with customers," it's usually met with the resistance from upper management that such a plan isn't shiny or sparkly or too difficult for their three-year tenure. "We need another contest!" As if that will be the way to solve the issues customers have with a company's products? That's another distraction that doesn't get to the heart of the matter which is let's talk honestly and openly with each other and let's bake in feedback into our product development schemes, our service model or how we act in our stores.

This is the reason why content and storytelling models alone are beginning to fall flat. They're simply holdovers from the old era that haven't caught up with the messaging and communications of the present. For every push message you do on LinkedIn, how many SMS feedback sessions have you set up with your top five customers? Much of the digital marketing world is still unfortunately centered around one-directional narratives where the brand is acting like a frenemy. "Hey trust me! I got your back. Look at all this lip service to prove it to you! Good I got your money so scram until next time."

Those scenarios are usually relationships we wish to cast aside for true substance and connection in our lives. In 2009 I remember an executive laughing me out of a conference room because he said, "Social media? You mean we're going to use that to connect to our customers and listen to what they have to say? They don't even know how to use our products!"

"Well, we have to help them learn," was my reply. "Ultimately they'll feel we have their best interest in mind, and that is ultimately how we win over hearts and minds of new customers. Even if it highlights a competitor we'll build trust which builds long term sustainability. Sure we'll make mistakes but our honesty and transparency will help nurture these relationships."

A recent example of this was a discussion I had with a number of PPC advertisers at a digital marketing conference. On a strategic query I told them not just to use a Microsoft advertising solution but also solutions provided by Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I even told them how to do it. Why? Because strategically it would help them and help our business. Trust occurs by showcasing long view industry thinking as much as closing a sale.

What the executive in the conference room neglected to see was this long view. He didn't care to even want to acknowledge the essential part of what was needed to strengthen the customer relationship model. The word trust never even came up in the conversation. The theme of conversion to him was a content plan around a single-viewed theme that only would come across to customers as narcissistic on behalf of the brand.

"Let's do a deck on the top 10 reasons our product is the best," he said.

"I have a better idea, why don't we ask our customers what they like and dislike about the product instead?" was my response.

"Now why would we want to do that? We need to tell them only what's good about us."

Trust is built on listening, talking, listening again. It's also built on admitting where your weaknesses are as much as your strengths. Content can reflect this but the majority in our ecosystem doesn't. Most content is simply a replication of how TV ads, print ads and radio ads worked only now it exists in a digital environment.

The first companies that can turn down the volume on one-sided, narrative storytelling content and begin trading in the trust currency through social CRM response and listening programs will land on the other side of the digital transformation era in good shape. Those stuck yelling at everyone how it is and is going to be in their relationship, well, why don't you go create another deck to tell me how effective that will be?

Geoffrey Colon is a Communications Designer at Microsoft. For more of his left of center thinking, follow him on Twitter @djgeoffe or learn more about the product at Microsoft he works on here. Check out his book
Disruptive Marketing: What Growth Hackers, Data Punks, and Other Hybrid Thinkers Can Teach Us About Navigating the New Normal out on AMACOM Books.