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A Forum Summary by Dianne Crampton
TIGERS Success Series

Making trust a key component of your digital tools can assist in attracting and keeping customers and expanding your business presence.

With some common sense strategies, conveying trustworthiness is possible when building a virtual presence.

The following ideas were discussed among members of three social network groups whose professional expertise and development focus involved e-marketing, business development and speaking/training interests.

Dianne Crampton of TIGERS Success Series initiated the discussion and asked the question “In virtual settings, what conditions are necessary for developing trust?” Group members presented many diverse opinions but collectively shared the common theme that in order to build trust, quality communication is necessary.

In the collective view, trust and good communication go hand-in-hand.

For purposes of this summary, the connection between communication and trust is broken down into two areas – web presence and how people communicate.

Web presence was defined by two extremes -- web presence that promotes confidence and trust, resulting in customer conversion from website visits or websites that appear untrustworthy.

A web site that builds trust contains the following criteria -- rich and credible content, professional web design and good navigation.

Once the framework is built, search engine optimization will drive viewers to the website and the trustworthiness of the website content and appearance will convert visits to sales.

In contrast, a site appearing untrustworthy might have one page with large text, no navigation, and product focused sales content that reads like an “infomercial” or a get rich quick scheme. The same search engine optimization process will drive viewers to the website, but the appearance and content of the website will cause viewers to leave the site and browse elsewhere.

Other web presence communication criteria that build trust apply equally to web sites and social networking member profiles. These standards include testimonials, recommendations, professional credentials, and pictures that invoke human connections. These tools build credibility which in turn builds an increased willingness to trust.

In addition, trust is enhanced if website visitors are able to interact in virtual applications. Examples include subscribing to news services, downloading information, asking questions, receiving answers, providing input, viewing video clips, listening to recorded information, receiving thank you notes and other digitally-facilitated relationship-building activities. .

However, these same digital tools can also be used by untrustworthy organizations. For this reason, recommendations and testimonials presented by a neutral third party are becoming increasingly important.

For example, in hub-community websites such as e-bay, classifieds, stumbleupon and directories, the ability to comment on a member’s performance is an incentive to provide excellent service. Therefore, positive comments serve as recommendations and also build trust.

Sound strategies for building trust in your web presence must certainly include a number of high quality communications tools.

A second factor that builds trust from virtual applications, from a psychological perspective, is how people communicate.

Nonverbal communication -- the most instantaneous gauge for assessing truth, authenticity, and sincerity in face to face communications is missing in virtual applications. Therefore, it is difficult to know when someone is joking, angry, ambivalent, lying, curious, interested, upset, happy and one of many other human conditions.

For this reason, it is easy to misunderstand posted communication. How a person adds emotional signals to written communications can build understanding, which builds trust.

For example, the word “great” can be interpreted in different ways depending on the mood of the person sending the message. Adding the emotional signal, b/g, has one meaning and adding the emotional signal, )-: , means something else.

In addition to adding emotional signals, following implied and stated communication rules also builds trust. And, this is where trust building can get tricky for multi-ethnic and gender communications.

The rule of thumb is to build relationship before getting down to business because the majority of the world’s population is wired that way.

In a business protocol book written in the early 90’s by Ed Hall entitled, “How To Do Business in Japan Without Losing Your Face”, Hall explained that most of the Orient, Mideast, Eastern Europe, Native cultures and most women prefer to conduct business with people who build trust before deciding to do business with one another. They start by building relationship. They talk, socialize and build understanding and common ground by exploring similarities and differences. Although, Hall’s comments relate to face to face communications, it also holds true in virtual applications and on virtual teams.

Therefore, Type A directive and driven personalities who communicate through their bottom line personality style often appear impatient, curt, and pushy in written communications and this can detract from trust building.

Likewise, without building permission to present a product or service into written conversations, pushing product into a discussion tends to erode trust. People don’t like to be sold. And, a person who blathers on and on without getting to the point can also appear unfocused. This is true in virtual team communications, blog communications and in forums.

From a virtual team building and a virtual web training perspective, both written and web presence communication are necessary in order to build trust.

For example in virtual teams, two-way communication is also important for psychological satisfaction and involvement. Therefore, building opportunities for team members to exchange information through phone conferencing is important. Likewise, recording and posting the team’s decisions involving the following ground rules and team process is also important:

* The time line for returning communications (within 24 hours),
* Identifying conditions that would cause team breakdown and avoiding those,
* Tracking and posting team progress,
* Tracking and posting team follow through,
* Tracking and posting solved problems,
* Ensuring that communications are complete,
* Checking for clarification,
* Communicating understanding,
* Communicating from the framework of curiosity rather than judgment, and
* Chatting and tweeting

These team maintenance activities build relationships, team commitment, team involvement, safety and empathy, all of which facilitate collaboration and trust building. And, the sooner a team discusses the perameters of good communication and what detracts from it, the sooner trust begins to form because team members know that is necessary to succeed. The key is monitoring team commitments and standards and following up should breakdowns occur.

From a web training perspective, the quality of a trainer’s credentials, power point presentation, content, virtual training technology competence, and public speaking skills builds trust. And the more two way communication and participant involvement is built into the design, the higher the psychological satisfaction and trust level of people participating in the event.

Finally, building trust in virtual applications is much like face to face communications, with nonverbal and symbolic communication hurdles to overcome. Credibility, adding to value, contributing rather than taking, building relationships and paying attention to presentation and web presence all contribute to trust building in virtual applications.

Many thanks to the following people who shared their ideas and expertise, and who participated in a team approach to an important business to business topic:

Dan Banici, Owner Option Quest, LLC
Certified Exit and Scalability Solutions Provider

Dianne Crampton, TIGERS Success Series
Team Building and Leadership Coaching.

Dean DeLisle, Co-Founder and CEO Forward Progress, Inc
Professional Training and Coaching

Nikita Devereaux, Adjunct Faculty Ty Boyd Executive Learning Systems
Virtual Assistant, Lean Office Specialist & Productivity Consultant

Pete Hollier SEO / SEM Consultant
Marketing and Advertising

Heidi Maston, President Alliance for Distance Education in California
Academic Researcher

Jan Vermeiren, Owner Networking Coach
Speaker, Founder of Networking Coach, Author of Let's Connect

Jurgita Ziuraite, Supervisor RTT, Inc.
General Manager Document Processing.

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