To Be Known, and to Be Liked online is tough enough.  To Be Trusted is the final challenge.  We are exploring three challenges of any website.  We have touched on what it means to Be Known and to Be Liked.  Here we consider Trust.

Trust comes down to two things: Character and Competence.  It builds over time.  How can a website help build the trust of clients and future customers?

Character:  How who you are is expressed by what you do.

Character is not expressed by knowing what you ought to do, what you should do, or what you intend to do.  Character is the expression of what you do.  No amount of excuses makes any difference whatsoever.

• How do you treat others?
• Do you tell the truth?
• Do you acknowledge mistakes?
• Are you modest in your accomplishments (yet genuinely accomplished)?

Your mother taught you how to project your character in person.  We need to talk about how to project character online – because character plus competence is the only way to build authentic trust.

On the web, it comes down to three things:

1. Transparency – You have nothing to hide.
2. Responsibility-taking­ – You do what you say you are going to do. 
3. Empathy – You care about the thoughts and feelings of others.

Transparency

Transparency is how organizations tell the truth. On your website just tell the world what you are about.

• Are you new in business?
• Are you a sole proprietor?
• Does your service take a little longer because you care about quality?

Tell the world.  Your customers are going to find out anyway.

In the Internet age, it is a Yelp world out there.  Yelp is a crowd-sourced business review website.  And it is not the only one.  Yelp had 61 million unique visits in the third quarter of 2011.  Bad business has no place to hide.

Think through what matters.  What do people want to know (or need to know) and then tell them in as simple and in as direct language as you can muster.  Transparency builds trust.

Responsibility-Taking

If you have made a mistake or failed to deliver, do not bury your head in the sand.  Get out in front of the Yelps and take responsibility.  The bottom line: We all make mistakes.  But we do not all take responsibility for the mistakes we make.

What if you have not made a serious mistake that demands a public confession?  Find ways to demonstrate your willingness to take responsibility.  Let the visitors on your website know that you know that you are not perfect, and that when you are not, you take responsibility for your actions.

It reflects your character.

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to appreciate the feelings of others.  Do you care about your customers?  Or are you just out to make a buck?

The visitors to your website want to know.

Speak to the world in a way that shows you understand and care about the challenge of daily living.  The “human interest story” demonstrates that you take interest in the human story.

Projecting character is the first step to building trust online.  Next time, we look at how your website projects competence – the second key to building trust.

To Be Known, and to Be Liked online is tough enough.  To Be Trusted is the final challenge.

Trust comes down to two things: Character and Competence.  And it builds over time.  How can a website help build the trust of clients and future customers?

First, define character as how who you are is expressed by what you do.  This involves any number of expressions, including but not limited to:

• How do you treat others?
• Do you tell the truth?
• Do you acknowledge the contributions of others?
• Are you genuinely accomplished, yet modest in your accomplishments?

To project character on a website really does require that you (and the people you work with) possess a quality of character worth projecting.  A person who lacks that quality of character probably also lacks the courage to project it.

On the web, it comes down to three things:

1. Transparency – You have nothing to hide.
2. Responsibility-taking­ – You do what you say you are going to do. 
3. Empathy – You care about the thoughts and feelings of others.

How do you project these qualities online?