Transparency is the New Credibility for your Business

"Transparency may be the most disruptive and far-reaching innovation to come out of social Media." -Paul Gillin

I grew up at the tail end of the Credibility-based-on-longevity era, where you would find companies touting the face that they had "been in business since _______." The assumption was that if they were in business that long, they must be good. Well, that era passed.

There was also the era of credibility based on company size. "You can trust us because we are big." The era of Trust us because all these experts trust us, or the variation, trust us because your neighbor trusts us.

IBM's leadership in the market was based on size.

How about the "we're a big deal because we have important buildings and stadiums with our name on them" era?

Or the "we're so successful that we can take out full-page WSJ ads that don't sell anything and have nothing but our name on them" or "TV commercials that do nothing but create warm fuzzies around our business name" eras?

Sarah McLachlan, ASPCA Commercial

Well as Bob Dylan's Song goes, The Times They Are A Changin'

In this Social media age where businesses large and small have the ability to get their message out there in so many different ways no longer holds just the carefully thought- through and crafted message published by the marketing department

In fact, if you want to ever see the true consumer reports on a company, just type in the company name followed by "sucks" in a Google search and you will find what everyone actually thinks about a company.

At some point, read this article by Jeff Jarvis that well illustrates just how much the image of a business is not the carefully crafted image of years ago, but is really found in the conversations going on with and around the company. 

Some companies, such as Dell at one point, unwisely chose to ignore what they considered insignificant chatter of people talking about them. They soon realized the error of their ways. 

They began to engage in transparent online discussions.

Any company who is of the misguided assumption that they are in control of their image needs to take a fresh look at the landscape.

You can try to fight this tidal wave or embrace the fact that people will be talking about you in public, permanent, searchable places and decide to engage as a equal in this conversation instead of attempting to discredit or squash it.

Admitting your weaknesses, failures, struggles, and missteps take the sting out of what others are saying about you. Opening up, not trying to hide,and being transparent is in many ways the new credibility factor. We used to have an illusion that our failings were secret now just a Google search away reveals what we might wish had never happened.

In personal social media use, many people worry about their privacy settings and who can see what about my activities online. They try to decrease the transparency of their social media activity because of what others may see or think. 

My personal policy is that I leave everything wide open. I have no privacy setting on anything I post online. I have decided to live my life, to some extent, as an open book.

Transparency is hot right now. if you look at the current crop of celebrity personalities who seem to be famous not for any particular thing that they did or skill that they have buy the have created a following through extreme transparency of their lives. I really never wanted to ever refer to Kim Kardashian but unfortunate she illustrates this point very well. No longer are the celebrities defined by the image curated by the studios, but on their Instagram accounts and Twitter feeds.

Transparency rules in the Blogesphere. My wife reads blogs put out there by other moms and many of her favorite people are the ones who post their many failings as mothers and wives. 

This authenticity gains these bloggers a type of credibility and following that no amount of beautifully written or private posts would ever do.

So how transparent are you? How authentic is your image? Are you only using social media as a loudspeaker with which to brag about your successes, or are you trying to give people a full authentic transparent look in the window of your life?

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Same question for your business and your brand. Are you able to poke fun at yourself? Are you taking yourself too seriously? Are you willing to open up and let people see who you really are? For more information about how to enhance your business, visit my page Who & Why or send me an email at sethgetz@gmail.com.