What does the decline of peer trust mean for social marketing?
Just 25% of consumers say they trust their friends to give them good information about a company, according to a survey by Edelman, compared with 45% in 2008. The same survey shows consumers are more likely to trust CEOs, academics, government officials, industry analysts and nongovernmental organizations than they were a year ago — with all of those sources being cited as more trustworthy than peers.
Social marketing is build on the idea that people trust their friends more than they trust official voices — does this survey mean we no longer care what our peers have to say?
Edelman CEO Richard Edelman says consumers are spooked by the recession and that’s made them less trusting. Edelman says consumers need to hear something from up to five different sources before they believe it. I think the answer may have more to do with quality than quantity.
I’m “friends” with an ex-girlfriend’s best friend’s little sister on Facebook. She’s part of my social circle on paper — but her opinion about a new movie would mean absolutely nothing to me. The problem isn’t just that I’m skeptical of her judgment. It’s that she has no idea what kind of movies I like. My college roommate, however, has excellent taste in films and he knows which ones will appeal to me. If he tells me to watch something, chances are that’s usually good enough for me — whereas getting 20 recommendations from people I hardly know won’t pique my interest in the slightest.
Social networking has changed who we think of as peers. We’re inundated with recommendations and unsolicited advice from friends of friends of friends. Of course we’re more skeptical. But it’s not like my old roommate stopped being trustworthy just because I developed a lot of other meaningless ties.
The trouble is that just because I trust someone to recommend a movie to me, doesn’t necessarily mean I’d eat at new restaurant on their say so — or buy a television or support a cause or anything else. And here’s the kicker: my old movie buddy and I talk mostly via instant message. As far as Facebook knows, he isn’t any more important to me than any of my other friends. My social graph is filled with little contradictions like this. Chances are, your social network is just as confusing on paper.
The challenge is clear: We have a long way to go in understanding how relationships are formed, what they’re based on and how influence spreads. For now, we only know that consumers are becoming more discerning. If you want to get your message out, you need to stop thinking about building buzz — that dull, droning roar that consumers are training themselves to ignore. What you need instead is the ability to whisper in someone’s ear.
Does this study spell trouble for social marketing as we know it? Are you more skeptical of peer recommendations than you used to be? How can organizations best target the key influencers in a consumer’s life?
Image credit, AtnoYdur, via iStock
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Tags: peer recommendations, trust, Word of Mouth
Categories: Editor's Take, Research
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Posted by Social marketing onder druk? (trust rapport) « Is het nu generatie X, Y of Einstein? on February 8th, 2010 at 10:39 am
[...] zelf zou liggen aan de crisis, die er voor zou gezorgd hebben dat mensen meer op hun hoede zijn. (check hier) Zelf zie ik misschien een link met defriending, misschien is vriend uitgehold door de vele [...]
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Social comments and analytics for this post…
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Posted by Are you more skeptical of peer recommendations than you used to be? « I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it. ~Pablo Picasso on February 8th, 2010 at 11:12 am
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Posted by susanjensensmith on February 8th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
It's a natural evolution of the nature of the beast, IMO. Skepticism has been earned by some questionable marketers and it's time now for the good to outperform the bad. It's all relative. As for me? I plan to continue to play it clean, open and honest. Am I too naive here? lol
Posted by Stan DeVaughn on February 8th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Not the case in B2B. We just finished a survey with CIO Magazine and heard from nearly 300 buyers of I.T. products. They talk amongst themselves and practically all rely on insights from peers. http://cioec.com/s/eied97.
Posted by timkern on February 8th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Trust dropped from 45% to 25%? That's a drop of 44%, in a year!
Methinks it's the definition of “friends” we need to examine; and of course the amount of spam that rides on freeware and is injected through social media plays another major part.
Posted by Paul Chaney on February 8th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Now that marketers are gaming Twitter and Facebook et al to spam meaningless, non-relevant messages, I can see why trust level in peers has gone down. Stands to reason no doubt. But, yes, the ability to “whisper in someone's ear” is key. Well put Jesse.
Posted by leeodden on February 8th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
I agree with @Stan, it depends on the industry. At the same time, with the sheer volume of social content, whether in the form of casual recommendations or something more formal like review sites, it continues to become difficult to distinguish “noise” from “signal”. Sorry for the cliche.
As traditional search engines have helped distinguish what's important and useful amongst the billions of public documents and media online, I think social search will continue to evolve as an important method of filtering credible, influential and useful social recommendations. Marketers can influence that kind of discovery via Social SEO.
Posted by Corey Connors on February 8th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
I completely agree with this analysis of the Edelman study – it's all in how you look at it. Instead of the “we trust our friends less” theme, we should focus on a “our filter for firends has gotten wider” theme. The study would also likely show that since becoming social media users, we now claim more “friends” – ones that we never would've claimed prior to social media. I still have the same level of trust in the same close friends I've always had, but now there are people labeled “friends” who don't, due to that label, earn more trust than before.
And let's be clear – people (even IT people) will always value insight from someone they know and trust, more than someone they don't. This is especially true for personal issues like travel, movies, dinner. But when the insight is technical/business in nature, people are more likely to trust someone they don't know, who seems credible due to other factors.
Posted by carbonware on February 8th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Part of all this is how they define friends. As stated in the story many people in our social networks are not really our friends, often we don't know many of them at all. Why would we trust them? Remove the 2nd or 3rd generation from the research and I bet the trust number would go back up.
Also as we become more mobile, move more, change jobs more often and change social groups more people we may identify as friends often have less time in play to develop trust as would be the case years ago. Even among families trust is down. We live in an amoral society at best, greed and selfishness is at all time highs, politicians and bosses, companies, and relatives are all proving less loyal, trustworthy and reliable as we become less moral and more “me” focused. It's really no wonder trust is also diminishing. As we trust our leaders less, our media, and our circle of acquaintances it is only natural that our general over-all trust level drops. It take a proven track record to grow trust.
Social Networks that measure and track authority, trustworthiness, and value can become our trust indicators. Some sites already provide this barometer to earn trust as well as authority. Getting these people to endorse a product or idea holds great value. Successful bloggers and new age media outlets have built their business on this authority trust model, just as many old school media, companies and politicians have lost the public trust because of dishonest behavior, acts of unethical behavior such as the lies we now call spin, or the immoral acts people think are private leaking and getting associated to the business, media, or political platform. A general return to an ethical and moral nation one where a person's word and promise mean something could bring back a future generation of trusting people.
Posted by ElizabethL on February 8th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Excellent post, I couldnt agree more- this is why marketing is changing drastically.
Posted by Marvin on February 8th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
The Internet is filled will so much tripe that it all becomes meaningless regardless of the source. It doesn't take much to diminish credibility. Social pressure created by so called buzz can in fact have a negative impact since we are all wary of anything which might reduce our ability to make an independent choice or reach our own conclusion.
Posted by Liz on February 8th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
I looked up the actual sample group on Edelman's site:
4,875 informed publics ages 25-64 in 22
countries on five continents
500 U.S. informed publics
(100 ages 25-34 and 400 ages 35-64)
There's no information on location beyond 500 being somewhere in the U.S. I'm not going to change my marketing strategy based on such a tiny sample size. Plus, I think that industry counts a great deal, and there's no information whatsoever on industry, peer vs. random acquaintance, etc. A teacher might trust another teacher on education-specific recommendations, for example, but not on what TV to buy.
Interesting bit of fluff, but certainly nothing to re-think your strategy by.
Posted by YourNetBiz Mentor on February 8th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
My social media strategy is not to make “friends” with people, but to establish myself as a leader and an expert in my niche. Thus, I am an authority of sorts to them, not a “friend”. With that in mind, my social media strategy works great for me and won't change any time soon.
Best,
Ana/YourNetBiz Mentor
Posted by Glenn on February 8th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
Social networks have become so broad for some users, the “friends” now include lots of extraneous faces and followers. Why do their opinions count? They really do not. Too much peer and network pressure to have lots of contacts and thus the influence result is watered down.
Posted by Esteban Kolsky on February 8th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Interesting post, but the study used biased questions and the responses were analyzed with a conclusion in mind. You actually pointed to this, as have many other comments, that the issue is who we call peers now. I have plenty of connections, very few peers — and among those, the opinions I trust are very limited. And I trust those opinions based on reputation (personally “calculated” over time).
Most of the issues of trusting peers would be diminished if we were to have a universal reputation model and engine that we could use and trust. The reputation online that is not being measured is what made the values from these opinions to be almost the same as guesses.
I would love to see reputation become the matter of this discussion, not the failure of social networks and the social business (albeit, they are related — just not as tight as people think).
Posted by tessacarroll on February 8th, 2010 at 8:32 pm
At first glance, it would appear that the Edelman survey is very much accurate. However, its not entirely accurate. Based on the samples themselves (Thanks, Liz for presenting them here), it's incredibly easy to discount the findings.
Sure, I don't know every single one of my Facebook friends or Twitter followers very personally, but I do still trust their opinions. If someone offers a tip on a new restaurant they've tried or movie they've seen, I'm going to take that into consideration when making decisions. Instead of thinking that you have to work harder to reach consumers, you might be reaching them unconsciously through random or miscellaneous connections.
Tessa Carroll
http://www.blogs.vbpoutsourcing.com
Posted by ElizabethL on February 8th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
This is an excellent post! As someone who works in the industry, I can attest that its definitely more difficult to sift through the “shtuff” until you get to the actual facts. Social media is never constant- but with this new wave of expert trust coming in, it's prime time for us to take advantage
Posted by byrnejay on February 8th, 2010 at 9:56 pm
I think this speaks much more to changing definitions of peers in the context of social media than suggests a significant shift in historical credibility and trust ladders. A recent reporrt by Zobyhttp://bit.ly/99OcHP found 40 percent are tweeting w/ strangers – but these “followers” are frequently categorized as online peers/friends. Julien Smith's book, “Trust Agents: Using the Web…” reveals – particularly for younger audiences – a redefinition of peer relationships emerging from social media usage (not necessarily good). It's hard to believe that trust with “people” we actually know and to whom we have traditional relationships which can be extended online is in decline while trust is up with stakeholder types who have historically had low credibility (e.g., CEOs). I suspect the Edelman research here may lead some to faulty conclusions and yet more mile-wide, millimeter deep analysis of the complexities of social media spaces.
Posted by MeanRachel on February 8th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
It means that social consumers now expect CEO's/industry leaders/professors/etc. to BECOME their peers, or to select/hire representatives from within their company to serve as that peer. Consumers then trust that information more than perhaps a company Twitter or blog account and put more weight in the opinion of that representative. You see this happening all over the country with CEO's becoming twitter celebrities (see: Tony Hsieh, Zappos), or social media managers/directors becoming the voice and face behind the company (see: Christi Day, Southwest Airlines).
In essence, they're “professional evangelists.” The good ones are so good that their audience accepts that they're getting paid to market something and enjoys the conversation.
Posted by JEBworks on February 8th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
As with most surveys, the results can be influenced by both the questions posed and the audience surveyed. The danger in today's instant opinion and feedback environment is that the headline is often not reflecting either and the context is only visible on reading further. My initial take on this, which I added when forwarding the original tweet is that it all depends on the definition of “friend”. Your post makes the same point very well. The headline read by skeptics will, of course, lead them to a different “instant” conclusion, I'm afraid.
Posted by MarvinWilson on February 8th, 2010 at 11:53 pm
After reading the comments from Tnilson, I'm not so sure I agree with the article. The link from Kevin added even more skepticism.
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/gl...
Posted by Shiv Singh on February 9th, 2010 at 2:11 am
I must admit I find the analysis a little misleading. Trust in a company and trust in products and services are conflated. They're two separate things. Also, the study shows that trust in other forms of communication reduced by roughly the same percentages so calling out friends influence with so much attention seems a stretch. My in depth analysis is here – http://www.goingsocialnow.com/
Posted by What does the decline of peer trust mean for social marketing? | SmartBlog On Social Media « Translator Power on February 9th, 2010 at 6:17 am
[...] marketing? | SmartBlog On Social Media February 9, 2010 — translatorpower via smartblogs.com Posted in Uncategorized. Leave a Comment [...]
Posted by inversearch on February 9th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Beyond Social Search http://inversearch.blogspot.com
Posted by almcfarland on February 9th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
The author has drawn the wrong conclusion. The data support that consumers trust everyone and everything less, not specifically their peers. While the statement is factually correct (the percentages are down) it lacks the context (which is clearly illustrated in the bar chart). Everyone seems to be pulling in their horns.
The logical conclusion to draw from the data is that all marketing should stop. Sure this is nuts, but so is saying that social media marketing is dead.
http://pivotpointsolutions.net/
Posted by sabreangel on February 9th, 2010 at 3:49 pm
I agree with @almcfarland and I noticed that as well. Trust is down across the board, not just within peer/social media contexts.
Also, don't you think social media marketing being so new means that trust is going to take time to build? People are generally resistant to change in the beginning and the general public may not trust this whole idea that companies are reaching them through social media means.
On top of this, I've read metrics that state that this past year was the highest growth for people joining social media. It is going to take time for people to get used to this atmosphere in relation to their friends and companies. I know that for my own uses of social media, even if I know a friend in “real life” I usually find out more about their tastes through the online medium. If I had just joined an online peer networking group (twitter, facebook, etc) it would take me time to get used to and trust the plethora of information you are usually inundated with on these sites…even from the people you “know.”
I think if you give it time, trust will go back up again.
Posted by Susan Kidwell on February 9th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
I believe the statment that “consumers need to hear something from up to five different sources” is a key to the article. With the economy and so many different channels it makes sense that to break thru the noise and to get a consumer to focus takes communication across multiple channels. And he said UP TO…
Posted by February 2010 Carnival Of Trust » Bret L. Simmons – Positive Organizational Behavior on February 9th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
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Posted by kristin on February 11th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
Jesse,
Congratulations! This post was selected to be part of February's Carnival of Trust, hosted this month by Bret L.Simmons.
The Carnival of Trust is a monthly showcase of the top blogposts dealing with the subject of trust in business, politics and society. Your post really delves into a question that I believe is on everyone's mind to some degree. Even though relationships are more close at hand through social media, what kinds of relationships are we truly building?
Congratulations again. To see the Carnival, please go to: http://www.bretlsimmons.com/2010-02/february-20...
Best!
Kristin
http://www.trustedadvisor.com/trustmatters
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