Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation and Earn Trust

A Conversation with Chris Brogan

Chris Brogan

Chris Brogan helps large and mid-sized businesses understand how to use social media tools like blogging, social networks, community platforms, and more to build business value for marketers, sales organizations, and how these tool foster internal collaboration for a competitive advantage. Chris runs the New Marketing Summit events with CrossTech Media. He is also the cofounder of the PodCamp new media conference series. Welcome to a Online Savvy channel podcast on Total Picture Radio. This is Peter Clayton reporting. I first met Chris at PodCamp Boston last year.

Brogan is the co-author, with Julien Smith of the New York Times' best seller - Trust Agents Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation and Earn Trust, published by Wiley. Trust Agent is #1 in a number of Amazon.com categories. I encourage our listeners to check out the reviews of Trust Agent on Amazon.com.

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Questions:

Tell us about your Inbound Marketing Summit.
Gillette Stadium?
Who is this conference designed for?
Shifting gears to your blog...
A recent post on chrisbrogan.com -- Michelle, Cadillac CTS, and an analogy to finding a job. "It’s great that you know how to do all kinds of things. It’s wonderful that you’ve got all kinds of experience. If people don’t know you, if your name doesn’t readily come to mind, it doesn’t matter a lick."
At the end of 2008, Chris wrote a free ebook to help you understand how to use the social web to find work. If you or a friend needs work right now, please give it a read. It might help.
Can you share some of your advice for using Linkedin? (Most profiles seem to be written by robots from the school of resume writing).
What additional advice would you give someone looking of a job today?
A friend of yours at Linkedin gave away 50 copies of your book - which I thought was fantastic because the idea embraced the concept of Trust Agents. Can you give us the back-story?
How do you define a Trust Agent?
This is a frequent rant of mine. Why do you think large companies still think they can somehow "control the message"?
A great line from your book. "Nobody minds buying, but everybody hates being sold to." I'd add to that - especially on Twitter.
I want to circle back... from the perspective of career management, what are the most important tools, websites, strategies everyone needs to be mindful of?

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.

Chris Brogan Biography
Chris Brogan likes to be helpful. He believes business has a great opportunity in front of it by making good use of technologies like social media and mobile services, if only they learn to re-humanize their relationships with their customers. Not a marketer, not a journalist, Chris strives to demonstrate how we can all build new connections and bring about new opportunities through media making and social networking.

Chris travels all over the US and internationally to speak and work with companies on these very topics. When he's not in an airplane or a coffee shop, a hotel or a convention center, Chris lives in a factory building in Northern Massachusetts with his wife Katrina, his daughter and son, and two cats that somehow showed up there over the last several months.

Chris is president of New Marketing Labs, LLC, a social media marketing agency and educational company based in Massachusetts.

Chris Brogan is cofounder of PodCamp, a popular new media conference series focused on the use of social media to build business and personal relationships. He is a widely read blogger on the subject of social media. Find him at chrisbrogan.com and on Twitter at twitter.com/chrisbrogan.

Julien Smith Biography

Julien Smith is a veteran trend analyst who has run Web communities for over ten years. He helps companies prepare for and profit from disruptive changes in their industries, and has appeared on news programs to represent companies and nonprofits in Canada and the U.S. Find him at juliensmith.com and on Twitter at twitter.com/julien

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