Human 2.0

How can technology help us act more like real people?

According to Web 2.0 experts Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, trust agents are people who are able to “use today’s web tools to spread their influence faster, wider and deeper than a typical company’s PR or marking department might be capable of achieving, and with more genuine interest in people, too.” How do they do this? Here, Brogan and Smith, authors of Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, tell Profit readers how agents operate — and why every company should have one of its own.

Profit Online: Why should business leaders be thinking about trust?

Chris Brogan: Businesses have hurt their relationship with their consumers in a lot of different ways. We’ve had a lot of people getting shoddier merchandise or the worst customer service while all the advertisements say, “We really care about you.”

This doesn’t work now that we are now all the media. With tools like camera phones, we all have methods by which to have conversations in a very open way. We all have a voice. This can work to a company’s advantage if it’s doing business in a good way, but it can also be a disadvantage if, as a business leader, you’re cutting corners with things that matter to customers.

Right now, the chance to reconcile is upon us. Our customers are human, no matter what level or line of business they’re in. Content and communication that deals directly with people, is this way in which businesses are reclaiming their relationships.

Profit Online: You say being a trust agent is about bringing the human side to business, and stress the importance of listening and doing favors. Why are those skills critical right now?

Julien Smith: Consumers are so good at detecting when people are lying to us; we know very easily when people are telling the truth and when they’re not. For some reason, companies feel that they can speak to us in a different way than they speak to their own colleagues around the water cooler. And they shouldn't. Chris and I talk like human beings when we meet with clients. We’re trying to be honest, and we’re trying to be real with people, because otherwise it’s going to screw us over in the end.

CB: Using the web immediately removes a whole bunch of visual cues. We can’t judge body language; we can’t see your folded arms; we can’t see your eyes darting around as if to say that you’re a little uncomfortable. But we can glean a lot of elements of trust from how you talk, from how you conduct yourself, from how you handle answering bad questions.

We find that there are a lot of big businesses taking opportunities to have conversations when it suits them, but not when it doesn’t. This is not a call for the world to open up their business doors, and it’s not a call to tap every phone line to every executive: There are lots of times when private business is private business. Instead, we're saying, “Just be human and open with us as you’re doing business.”

Profit Online: Should businesses appoint someone to be their Web 2.0 presence?

JS: So few people develop themselves as trust agents, that if one person in a company does, that person becomes a representative for everyone that works there. All of a sudden that person is extremely responsible for the company’s image in certain circles. So you might as well choose somebody on purpose who can do the job right instead of some guy who randomly decides he’s going to start blogging. Choose somebody who can do it well, or groom someone for the job.

Profit Online: We interviewed Tim Ferriss when his book The 4-Hour Workweek came out. He argues that you shouldn’t check email more than twice a day because then you’re just wasting time. So, how much time should you be spending with Web 2.0 tools?

CB: The answer is as much as you see value, as much as you see returns. If your tribe is there, if the people who are complaining about you are there, then that’s where you go. If people are talking about you on blogs, then you spend time on blogs. If they’re on arcane forums, then be involved in the forum or the message group . Furthermore, remember that you’re really just trying to use the engagement as more than just, “Howdy do,” but less than a structured campaign. If you have enough trust agents talking specifically to people about what they’re specifically interested in, then that’s where the magic happens.

JS: If you’re going out there and you don’t know who you’re speaking to, that’s probably one of the biggest mistakes. You can’t say, “Okay, what am I getting as a return on this?” because you don’t even know who you’re talking to; you don’t know where they are in the sales funnel; you don’t know whether you’re going to be able to convert them easily; because you don’t even know who they are.

Profit Online: More than anything, what do you want executive s who read your book to learn?

CB: Learn to be a human artist. Business people may balk at this part of the book the most, and call it a soft skill, but for me it’s the most important: A human artist is the whole idea of how to master the tricks of being a human at a distance. This means getting back to talking like a person; it’s getting back to doing business in a human-shaped way, and it’s really about expressing yourself in very humanistic shapes on the web.

Profit Online: Is it more important for your trust agent to be authentic or nice?

JS: Do they have to be exclusive? On the web, as people find out about each other more and become more human and transparent, naturally their connections tighten. And being authentic first may help people be nicer to each other. When we understand each other better, we’re going to treat each other better as a result.