How much do your clients and prospects trust you? How much should your clients and prospects trust you?Testimonials are necessary but not very convincing. Have you ever seen a bad one?
Trust can't be measured empirically but there are attempts to do just this. Enter TrustCloud. You get a score between 1 and 1000, where higher means better.
No scoring system will be perfect even if one puts you at the top. There is still merit in the quest. It’s interesting to see what gets rewarded.
You're A Believer
You may skeptical about algorithms but they already make predictions for you. Google predicts your search query as you type and gives results tailored for you. Amazon predicts what you may also want to buy. Netflix predicts what you want to watch (your personalized Top 10) and how much you'll like a movie (actual rating vs your projected rating).The results keep improving.
Factors
TrustCloud looks at your activity on networks like Facebook, Google+, Klout, LinkedIn and Twitter. If you’re not active online, your score will suffer. That’s reasonable since it’s difficult to trust people who aren’t visible. What are they hiding? Why are they hiding?TrustCloud gives you credit for participating in social media for years (Longtimer), networking (Connector) and having many people read your posts (Influencer). Your network can recognize you for virtues like accountability, compassion, generosity, punctuality and reliability.
Marketing Tips
TrustCloud is fairly new. You might as well sign up and see your grade. You'll also see ways to improve your score. You may have competitors who work in megacorps that restrict use of social media. That will hurt their scores and give you an edge.Once you're comfortable with your score, start showing it. This achieves two goals
- transparency
- raises expectations (clients expect from others)
I'm currently 745/1000, which is considered Good but feels a tad embarrassing. I'd like at least 800 (Very Good). However, I wanted to make you aware of TrustCloud now. Changing Behavior
Knowing you're being measured may spur you to improve your score. Even if you don't care how you compare, your clients and prospects might. Even if they’re indifferent today, tomorrow they may want to know.There's nothing stopping you from engaging in virtuous behavior online. Now you get rewarded too.
Other Measures
You may already be familiar with measures of influence like Klout or PeerIndex. They are worth using too.Links
- TrustCloud website
- TrustCloud rates how people do business online (Wall Street Journal, June 2012)
- The ROI on social media, reputation and a hungry rabbit
- Signs of the wrong social media expert
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