What are you doing to establish trust in your personal or company brand today? Trust is a core component of a successful social media strategy. Without it, your promotional efforts may fall flat and your message often goes unheard or unread.

How do you establish trust online? One way is to help other colleagues in their endeavors online as well.

Unfortunately, trust is not established overnight. It’s going to take time, development and sound execution in order to be successful. That said, there are little things the online marketer can start doing today to get the ball rolling.

Here are 20 ways you can help a colleague online today. Most of these ideas can be completed without expending a tremendous amount of effort. Doing things like this on a daily basis is a simple way you or your company can start building trust online.

1. Write a colleague a LinkedIn recommendation
   
   
2. Read a good blog post and provide an insightful comment
   
   
3. Share a blog post or article that you have read and find valuable on Twitter
   
   
4. Retweet another person’s discovery as well.
   
   
5. Complement a colleague on their accomplishments (Buy them a cup of coffee too )
   
   
6. Answer a question online that relates to your specific skill sets (thanks Casey Yandle!)
   
   
7. Or – check out Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers or similar site to find others outside of your network that may need assistance
   
   
8. Contribute to an industry forum or group
   
   
9. Comment on someone’s status update on Facebook
   
   
10. Or – mention someone’s accomplishments via a Facebook status update using the @feature (Just don’t send them a “Mafia Wars” invitation )
    
    
11. Participate in a Facebook group discussion of interest
    
    
12. Introduce colleagues that may be benefit from each others business ideas
    
    
13. Review a friend on StumbleUpon
    
    
14. Write a review on Yelp, CitySquares or other local directory of interest
    
    
15. Rate a good video on YouTube
    
    
16. Write a blog post providing a tactic or strategy your readers will value
    
    
17. Review someone’s blog post for anything from grammatical errors to concept execution (hat tip to Brian Wallace)
    
    
18. Help promote a social media news submission you find of value
    
    
19. Make yourself more accessible, via IM as an example (thank you Greg Finn!)
    
    
20. Ask someone how you can help them today

All of the positive, little ways we interact with others online provide tremendous, long-term value, even if there is not an immediate financial return.

Over time, these little interactions establish the trust necessary to help someone achieve larger goals, in SEO, social media or life in general. What types of interactions have you been a part of that have helped establish trust online? We’d love to hear your ideas, suggestions, and thoughts via comments below.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 8:42 am and is filed under Brand Management, Social Media Strategies. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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