
Establishing trust is vital to building successful long-term relationships with the modern consumer.
In fact, a huge 81% of consumers need to be sure they trust a brand before buying from them.
Community building can be a super-effective way for your brand to demonstrate these important trust signals and foster longer relationships with your customers.
In today’s post, we’re sharing 6 handy tips on how to build trust through community engagement.
Look to implement these tips as part of your own community engagement strategy for purposeful community building that drives your business towards its commercial goals.
Be authentic
Authenticity is key to earning customers’ trust.
90% of consumers agree that authenticity is important when deciding which brands they support. That’s up from 86% in 2017, too, meaning the importance of authenticity to the modern consumer is only increasing as time goes on.
One of the key drivers behind this shift is millennials – 64% of whom are ‘belief-driven’ buyers – becoming the largest consumer demographic.
This consumer group expects more transparency and authenticity from brands – they want to know who you are and what you stand for. They also want proof these aren’t just empty words.
A mammoth 92% of marketers believe the content they create resonates as authentic with their customers. However, a significant 51% of consumers disagree.
This is because marketers are more likely to believe their branded content is more authentic than user-generated content – 2.1x more likely, to be precise.
On the flip side, consumers are 2.4x more likely to believe user-generated content is more authentic than branded content.
The takeaway? Consumers trust other people far more than they trust brands.
So, to earn your customers’ trust through community engagement, let your community members do the hard work for you – highlighting real customers and telling real stories.
Be consistent
Consistency breeds reliability and credibility – both of which are key to building consumer trust.
On average, it takes 5 to 7 brand impressions for a consumer to even remember your brand, let alone become a trusting community member. So, pursuing community engagement every once in a while isn’t enough to drive the results you want to see.
Instead, to build trust and grow your community, engagement needs to become a fundamental part of your brand’s online activity.
Meaningful customer relationships need to be nurtured, requiring you to repeatedly demonstrate value to assure consumers that you’re a trusted authority within your space (more on this shortly).
Be sure to keep your community building consistent, both in terms of your messaging frequency and the content of this messaging.
Not only will this help you to project the right trust signals, but it will also provide you with a bank of extra engagement data you can use to better target your community building approach in future.
Be a value provider
Providing value is integral to your long-term community engagement. Why? The more value you provide, the more trusting your community becomes in your brand’s authority.
Creating and promoting high-value content and services wherever possible is the most effective way to achieve this.
Delve into all kinds of audience research, from polls and surveys to data deep-dives and trend analysis. Identify popular topics and common pain points – what solutions do your audience need? What types of content do they engage most actively with?
Look to satisfy these demands by providing relevant and genuine value in the content you produce and the engagement strategies you pursue.
Remember: you’re not the only brand in your space, so be sure you’re going above and beyond to provide the utmost value to your audience.
The aim is to be the best in your space – this is the most effective way to assert your authority and expertise, effortlessly building customer trust as a result.
Be a leader
From demonstrating thought leadership to being at the forefront of developments in your field, look to establish a sense of leadership in your community engagement strategy.
If you’re providing high-value, best-in-space content as part of your community engagement approach, your brand will be halfway to becoming a leader of your industry.
That’s because becoming a leader is all about strengthening your brand’s credibility, authority and, as a result, trustworthiness.
If you’re a B2B brand, this approach can be particularly useful in securing the trust of more community members – 83% of B2B buyers consider thought leadership to be a trust signal.
Once again, the key here is quality. 49% of B2B buyers said their opinion of a company had decreased after reading poor quality content, and 33% have removed a company from consideration based on its thought leadership output.
No matter whether yours is a B2B or B2C community, demonstrate why you’re the go-to option by going further than your competitors – offer unique insights, high-value solutions and fresh perspectives.
Be accountable
Always openly engage with your community, whatever the sentiment of the conversation.
No brand gets everything right 100% of the time – the occasional misstep is only natural.
Instead of trying to swerve negative feedback, comments and complaints, though, own up and demonstrate accountability – your community will think more of your brand as a result.
That’s because accountability promotes a culture of transparency and authenticity – two integral elements to building trust among consumers.
Being accountable can often be about more than owning up to your mistakes. To really earn the trust of consumers, you need to demonstrate action. Don’t just tell your community that their voice is being heard – show them.
Be responsive
Delivering great customer service is a tried and tested way to build consumer trust – almost 90% of customers report trusting a company whose service they rate as ‘very good’.
So, whenever a member of your community reaches out, be responsive – you want to look as accessible and attentive as possible. 90% of customers rate an ‘immediate’ (10 mins or less) response as important or very important when they have a customer service query.
This means it’s key to ensure you’re not just responsive in public areas (like the comments section) – you need to be just as responsive in private areas (like DMs), too.
After all, a customer’s trust is most effectively built through their own positive experiences, not those of others.
If you lack the resource and manpower to operate an instantaneously responsive service, consider auto-replies and chatbots – customers need assurance that their voice is being heard.
Trust and community engagement go hand in hand, meaning brands who gain their audience’s trust are able to grow their brand community more quickly. The trick is to assert your brand’s expertise with authenticity and transparency.
If you’d like a short demonstration of how to make the most of these tips on the Six Circles platform, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch.