Digital Trust: Social Media Strategies to Increase Trust and Engage Customers

Description

A guide to how e-SMEs can successfully engage within social media communities to positively influence their brand trust and reputation. Consumer trust is more important than ever, as digital platforms and social media have redefined the relationship between businesses and consumers. In this new and disruptive commercial environment, consumers have developed an expectancy of direct, transparent communication through social media. The traditional means of building and maintaining trust have been rendered obsolete by the chaotic, competitive magnitude of multiple online platforms. With a unique combination of academic rigour and practical guidance, Digital Trust is the definitive guide to effectively using social media to build an authentic, trustful connection with your consumer base. Drawing on his extensive experience in marketing and communications, Barry Connolly demonstrates how to harness the commercial opportunities provided by social media, while also showing how you can avoid its most common mistakes and pitfalls. With original research and illuminating case studies, Digital Trust provides adaptable and accessible social media strategies that will strengthen and expand your consumer base.

Barry Connolly is a marketing and communications expert with over 16 years of experience working in digital marketing, PR and communications in a variety of industries and sectors. He recently completed his PhD in Digital Marketing and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social networks have become one of the main touch-points through which consumers engage with brands. Yet, businesses often underestimate the significance of these platforms, not recognising them as major assets that should be protected and developed. In Digital Trust, Barry Connolly uses frameworks and case studies to demonstrate how businesses can improve their branding strategies by harnessing the full potential of social media to develop digital trust. -- Dave Chaffey, Co-Founder and Content Director, Smart Insights There may not be a more important topic in business these days than trust. In this carefully constructed and thoughtfully explicated examination, Barry Connolly offers academically sound and managerially practical tools to help firms build and leverage their perceptions of trust. -- Kevin Lane Keller, Professor of Marketing, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Trust is the outcome of what an organization says and what it does. In Digital Trust, Barry Connolly explores how an organization can use digital platforms to communicate, engage and build trust with both stakeholders and consumers. -- Stephen Waddington, Managing Director, Metia and Visiting Professor at Newcastle University Barry Connolly has produced a book that reminds marketers of the central role of trust in the relationship between consumers and brands. At a time when consumer data is being used in ever more complex ways in the digital and social media spaces, the need for businesses to behave in ways that develop and reinforce trust has never been greater. This book delivers a timely and useful guide to why and how this should be achieved. -- Matthew Housden, Principal Lecturer in Marketing, Greenwich University