Overview of trust building blocks - which building blocks do you use to communicate trust?
In recent months, I have dealt with many questions on the subject of trust, most recently with an excursion into the trustworthiness of politicians. Now it is important to me to give an overview of the individual building blocks with whose help you can transport your trustworthiness as an entrepreneur, self-employed or freelancer. This is the essence of my intensive study of numerous literature on the subject of trust, interviews, conversations and the experience of over 20 years of consulting companies for their digital communication. This post also replaces and expands on an earlier post I published on trust building blocks. The individual elements of the Trust Building Blocks method should be an essential part of any Content Strategy and will be finally summarized here.
There are six main building blocks for managing trust in communication: customer focus, competence, results, integrity, aura and personality.
The Customer orientation is the absolute basis without which trust cannot be built. Anyone who talks past their target group and their needs cannot achieve trustworthiness.
The Competence is broken down into five elements: Expertise, process knowledge, experience, passion and capacity. In many industries, specialist knowledge is a prerequisite for doing business at all. Without knowledge and smooth application of the necessary processes, trust is also not possible. Or what would you think if your carpenter made a great piece of furniture but didn't have it ready by the deadline and accidentally charged 300 euros too much on the invoice? Experience is another essential component. If I were allowed to choose a doctor for a heart operation, he would certainly have performed the same operation at least 500 times before. Passion is very important. If you develop your product or service with complete dedication, you will ensure better results in the long term. Showing this is worth a lot. And ultimately, without the necessary capacity for implementation, I cannot entrust myself to a new service provider either.
Integrity means that actions correspond to the underlying motives. On the one hand, this is the overriding purpose of the company. What is the company actually there for? Is it exclusively about maximizing profits or about making the world a little bit better? In addition, there are the values. They can be divided into a number of basic values and individual values. Important basic values for conveying trustworthiness are humility, honesty, loyalty and being good to your employees. Individual values can be courage, empathy or openness, for example. In order to understand whether the company has integrity, I, as an outsider, first need information on the purpose and values, so that I can then compare these with the company's actions. If I then see transparently on the website, for example, how the company acts and what agenda it is pursuing, I can ideally recognize the integrity.
Compelling Results are another essential building block. What has the company already achieved? What references can be seen? And does the company also stand responsible for mistakes that can happen anywhere?
The Aura of the company includes a variety of components that leave an impression on the potential customer. These include: Proximity, Brand, Clarity, Decisiveness, Innovativeness, Future Expectation, Transparency, Collective and Consistency. Who doesn't know it: you call up a website and spontaneously have the feeling that it is a great company (unfortunately, it also works the other way around). There are always companies that manage to be successful with a creepy brand. But with increasing competition, this is becoming more and more difficult. And one thing is clear: good branding with a contemporary design certainly helps. What needs to be weighed here is the consistency factor. A new logo every year is certainly not advisable. The other factors complement the overall impression. This creates an aura that, in the best case, spontaneously generates trustworthiness.
Even in the non-personal contact with a company, the PersonalitiesWhether it's the boss, the company management, important contacts or the entire team. This effect is created via photos, films, texts, quotes, personal blogs or social media content. Authenticity is an important point here, so that the impression is not out of the ordinary when people get to know each other later.
These 6 main building blocks with their sub-items have different relevance for different industries. To reflect this, I put them together into trust building blocks. This makes them directly applicable.
