Good Morning, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.
This morning I’ve written a review of Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. I’ve been wanting to read this for a while, and I wasn’t disappointed, these guys are right on my wavelength!
Why did I love it?
It is all about the building of relationships with people through helping them. In some ways it is similar to Enchantment and The Thank You Economy – it’s all about helping others and through doing that you become trusted, known and ultimately successful.
The book has lots of practical examples as well as homework at the end – this follows my school of thought perfectly, you need to practice what you learn otherwise it just doesn’t go in!
These are my favourite parts from the book (all direct quotes):
- Companies can no longer hide behind a veneer of a shiny branding campaign, because customers are one Google search away from the truth.
- social capital is different from other kinds of capital. When people come together and share a meal, they not only end up fed, they also become tighter as a group. The mere act of gathering means that they will exchange things
- The six characteristics of trust agents
- Make your own game
- One of us
- The Archimedes effect
- Agent zero
- human artist
- build an army
- with everything you decide to do, “it’s so crazy that it might just work”. Understand that failure is an inevitable part of the game, but that the chance of success is much greater the more often you role hte dice. You shouldn’t fear it; you should embrace it.
- When you treat people well, they treat you well back
- The wider your network, the easier it is to get things done
- The more personal the relationship, the more straightforward you can be
- If you mess up, remember the three A’s: acknowledge, apologize, act.
- Remember that this new online world is about relationships, not campaigns
- Trust agents care about the people in the equation. They work to grow relationships that eventually influence people’s experience with an organisation. Also trust agents aren’t direct evangelists, meaning that they don’t incessantly promote their own company or product.
- word of mouth is still more natural and powerful than any Frankenstein viral marketing people hack together
- The better strategy for a trust agent is to develop relationships with up-and-coming individuals in a space
- The Archimedes Effect is about leverage: putting in a certain amount of effort and getting a greater result than our normal human effort would give
- Leveraging technology, information, or anything else will increase the value of what you do many times over
- Those who leverage work that other people have done (after all, Google was built by people) are able to profit mostly because they’re not busy reinventing the wheel
- The real secret of the most successful people on the web is that they are always trying new things.
- It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you
- The key to developing a solid network is first to build a presence online, then meet in person, and then sustain the relationship with several more online touches over time
- No matter where they go, trust agents have a desire to connect good people together. We refer to this as being Agent Zero: being in the center of a network and being able to spread ideas.
- As you now know, if you have no Google results, in a sense you don’t exist
- the web is like your Hollywood agent: It speaks for you whenever you’re not around to comment
- Attention is and will continue to be our scarcest resource. We believe that trust and the humanizing of business is where the action is
I agree with everything in this book, however my only frustration after reading this, is HOW LONG DOES THIS TAKE? I know that there is no answer to this question as it depends on the individual, but for someone with little patience that is the only problem I have with the book!
Do you think you are a trust agent? or are you working towards it? If you think I am sign up to my enewsletter to get free resources and be the first in the know in the world of Social Rabbit!
