- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (Aug 7 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0470743085
- ISBN-13: 978-0470743089
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16 x 2.7 cm
- Shipping Weight: 476 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #87,321 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
How to tap the power of social software and networks to build your business
In Trust Agents, two social media veterans show you how to tap into the power of social networks to build your brand's influence, reputation, and, of course, profits. Today's online influencers are web natives who trade in trust, reputation, and relationships, using social media to accrue the influence that builds up or brings down businesses online.
The book shows how people use online social tools to build networks of influence and how you can use those networks to positively impact your business. Because trust is key to building online reputations, those who traffic in it are "trust agents," the key people your business needs on its side.
- Delivers actionable steps and case studies that show how social media can positively impact your business
- Written by authors with over ten years of online media experience
- Shows you how to build and wield influence online to benefit your brand
- Combines high-level theory with practical step-by-step guidance
If you want your business to succeed, don't sit on the sidelines. Instead, use the Web to build trust with your consumers using Trust Agents.
From the Inside Flap
There's no question that the Internet has changed the way we do business—especially when it comes to marketing. Consumer environments are short on trust and populated by consumers who are cynical, savvy, and informed. Though it's easier than ever to reach your customers, it's less likely that they'll listen. Today, the most valuable online currency isn't the dollar, but trust itself.
At the same time, social networks and personal connections have far more influence on consumers than your marketing messages ever will—unless your business knows how to harness them. In Trust Agents, two social media veterans show you how to tap into the power of these networks to build your brand's influence, reputation, and profits.
Trust agents aren't necessarily marketers or salespeople; they're the digitally savvy people who use the Web to humanize businesses using transparency, honesty, and genuine relationships. As a result, they wield enough online influence to build up or bring down a business's reputation. This book will show you how to build profitable relationships with trust agents, or become one yourself.
In an online world defined by its transparency, becoming a trust agent is no easy task, but once you've established your reputation, you can build influence, share it, and reap the benefits of it for your business. When you've learned a trust agent's secrets, your words can carry more power and more weight than any PR firm or big corporate marketing department.
Learn to use the power of the Web and social networks for your business now. Trust Agents gives you all the tools and strategies you need to do it the right way—honestly, effectively, and profitably.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
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Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Areas to Focus on for Having Positive Online Influence,
By Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 110,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (#1 HALL OF FAME)
This review is from: Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust (Hardcover)
"Let him not trust in futile things, deceiving himself, For futility will be his reward." -- Job 15:31 The online world spins out ever-increasing amounts of videos, images, words, and Web sites. There may be needles in the middle of all those haystacks, they are getting harder to find. Chris Brogan and Julien Smith look at this circumstance from the perspective of someone trying to create or improve a business and pose the useful question: How can you become and remain the person who is trusted most in your area of expertise? From there, you follow an exciting journey through lots of good stories and little tips that clarify how you can operate more effectively in the online world. Here are my paraphrases of some of the key principles: 1. Use continuing business model innovation to create ways to develop and share useful information in ways that delight people with their novelty, freshness, and value. 2. Be viewed as someone who is just like the audience, not someone with a hidden agenda, a lot of arrogance, or a phony. 3. Energize online communities by providing them with choices they like from a point of authenticity. 4. Build genuine, positive relationships by seeking to provide value for everyone you interact with. 5. Be considerate. 6. Assemble large numbers of people to work toward a common purpose while meeting their needs. I was impressed that the authors appreciate that the way to do these things will continually change, but the principles will probably remain the same. It's a useful book from that perspective. Most people who write about the online world assume it will always be like it is today . . . and optimize on things that don't last. My only disappointment is that they didn't address more about what those who write book reviews on Amazon.com should be doing to be more helpful to more people. There are millions of us who would like to know. Be trustworthy!
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wealth of real-world information and practical advice needed to maximize human connectivity and interaction,
By
This review is from: Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust (Hardcover)
As Chris Brogan and Julien Smith explain, "The idea for this book came out of our individual successes in achieving goals using the Web to work with people and out of our fascination with non-currency-based economies. We've taken what we've learned from our years as `digital natives' (people who have grown up inhabiting the various online haunts of the moment, combined with our understanding of games, people, and business as a whole, and followed it all up with information and ideas to help you better understand the mindset required to match these actions to your business needs." There seem to be at least two primary objectives that their book is intended to achieve: 1. To help their readers become "trust agents." That is, "power users of the new tools of the Web, educated more by way of their own experiences and experiments than from the core of their professional experiences, [and who] speak online technology fluently." 2. To help their readers think more strategically, to understand certain principles much better, and to master the aforementioned "new tools" to build influence, share influence, "and benefit from the other currencies that such exchanges of trust" deliver to them. I appreciate Brogan and Smith's skillful use of reader-friendly devices such as "ACTION" sections throughout the narrative that serve two separate but related purposes: they emphasize key points and suggest how to apply them. For example: "Build a Listening Station" (Pages 11-12) "Start Figuring Out the Rules...Everywhere!" (Pages 45-46) "Starter Kit fir Hacking Work" (Pages 61-62) "How to Make Friends" (Pages 88-89) "The Business Card Game" (Pages 161-162) "Get LinkedIn" (Pages 177-178) Brogan and Smith repeatedly stress the importance of being worthy of others' trust and respect, of building healthy, honest relationships. In Chapter 1, they identify the six characteristics of trust agents (e.g. "The Archimedes Effect" which involves effective leverage) and then devote a separate chapter to each of the six. Those in need of information and counsel to help them increase the scope and depth of trust in a workplace should seriously consider this book.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (101 customer reviews) 83 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Prepare for more social media buzz words...,
By Big Daddy "Big Daddy" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust (Hardcover)
I was looking forward to reading this book as I work in social media and highly respect the authors. I'm always weary of reviews of social media books because, let's face it, in general the authors know more about reviews/ratings and how to manipulate them more than authors of other books. Anyway, I was very disappointed in Trust Agents. I felt that it was similar to other social media books in that the authors are trying to create catch phrases or buzz words (e.g. "trust agents") being that this is a new industry and creating a buzz phrase is a great marketing tactic. Despite the book's description, this is more of a theoretical book and does not offer practical advice that can be used at the tactical level.
It might not be a bad book if you're new to social media, but if you're experienced you're basically going to hear the same old stuff with different jargon. Then again, if you're new to social media you're much better off reading Groundswell. You'll get plenty of interesting supporting data there rather than anecdotal evidence of why certain strategies work. 105 of 118 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Analysis of important but disturbing trends,
By Robert Kehoe "entrepreneur & business consultant" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust (Hardcover)
I've met Chris Brogan several times (who is impressive in person despite a penchant for thinking that foul language is cool), and I have a great admiration for Seth Godin, who enthusiastically praises and endorses this book. Trust Agents is well-written, and the authors certainly are leaders (i.e., trust agents) in social media. The problem is that the book reflects a disturbing philosophical shallowness within our society, as well as a mindless pursuit of celebrity. Hey, it's a good book, and worth reading, but there is nothing profound within the covers. Trust Agents glorifies the current trend toward acquiring great quantities of snippets of relationships, and assumes that the value of quantity over quality in our relationships is the appropriate focus. Yes, this acquisition probably is the most effective means for business success now, however it ignores a fundamental destruction of the true fabric of our humanity. I am surprised that Seth Godin praises this book so highly, since it has so little to do with relationship quality, excellence, and the pursuit of remarkability.
38 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
These guys go way beyond a business book. Superb!,
By James Rea - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust (Hardcover)
Chris Brogan and Julien Smith say they set out to write a business book. "Perhaps you've been noticing that the older approach to marketing, PR, advertising, business communication, and other activities on the web aren't pulling as well as they used to...Trust Agents is the answer to the question: `What do I do now?'" Eventually, it suggests that its message can be more broadly applied. "You will get the job you want without a resume. This book will teach you how....By the way, this works with talking to attractive members of the opposite sex, too." And finally, at the end, "Though we've written the book to be a business book about using the web, the skills of a trust agent relate to many offline possibilities." Disclosing this so late may have been intentional. Or, seeing how the narrative develops, perhaps it was something the authors realized only after the whole thing had been written. Regardless, they're absolutely correct.
People will believe what tends to conform to their own social circles and the people that they trust. Generally, we trust our friends. And on the web, those friends can be everywhere. The ones who set out to gain our trust are called "Trust Agents." "Trust agents use today's web tools to spread their influence, faster, wider, and deeper than a typical company's PR or marketing department might be capable of achieving, and with more interest in people, too. We need to become them and harness them...A Trust Agent builds networks almost reflexively by being helpful, by promoting the good work that others do, by sharing even their best stuff without hesitation, and by finding ways to deliver even more value on top of all that without asking for anything in return." Business needs to cultivate its Trust Agents, some of which will be under company control, most of which will not. Personally, so do we all. I recommend this book for everyone, both business and personal. |
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