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

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

by Chris Brogan, Julien Smith
Released August 2009
Publisher(s): Wiley
ISBN: 9780470743089

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Book 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.

Table of contents

  1. Copyright
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Introduction: Hey, I Know You. Have We Met?
    1. What the Book Is About
    2. What You Can Expect
    3. Why This Book Is about Business and Not Technology
    4. Who We Are
  4. 1. Trust, Social Capital, and Media
    1. 1.1. The Connected Guy
    2. 1.2. Stanley Kubrick
    3. 1.3. Why Is This Important?
    4. 1.4. What Is the Truth, Anyway?
    5. 1.5. How Humans Shape the Web
    6. 1.6. Transparency
    7. 1.7. How Trust Is Modified by Media
    8. 1.8. Why Trust Agents, and Why Now?
    9. 1.9. The Matrix Thing
    10. 1.10. Media and What They Do
    11. 1.11. Why Trust Agents?
    12. 1.12. The Basics: Social Capital
    13. 1.13. Putting It on Paper
    14. 1.14. The Six Characteristics of Trust Agents
    15. 1.15. What Comes Next
  5. 2. Make Your Own Game
    1. 2.1. Poster Child?
    2. 2.2. Set Your Own Rules
    3. 2.3. Gatejumping: An Example
    4. 2.4. What Gatejumping Has to Do with Trust
    5. 2.5. Seeing Your Own Way
    6. 2.6. The Three Methods of Games
      1. 2.6.1. Step 1. Playing
      2. 2.6.2. Step 2. Hacking
    7. 2.7. Selling the Same Thing as Everyone Else—Differently!
    8. 2.8. Games with Blogging
      1. 2.8.1. Step 3. Programming: Your Game Will Need Rules, but You Create Them
    9. 2.9. Make Sure Your Connectors Still Work
    10. 2.10. Reinventing Wine
    11. 2.11. The Importance of Moving First
    12. 2.12. The Tic-Tac-Toe Corollary, or Now What?
  6. 3. One of Us
    1. 3.1. Who Is This Geek, and Why Is He Famous?
    2. 3.2. The Importance of Being Human
    3. 3.3. The Trust Test
    4. 3.4. Trusting Strangers
    5. 3.5. (Most) Buzz Is Suspect
    6. 3.6. Social Benefit Occurs as a By-Product of Being a Good Citizen
    7. 3.7. How Public Discourse Magnifies Social Capital
    8. 3.8. Half-Strangers and the Rise of "Friends"
    9. 3.9. The Business Value of Friends (and How Not to Be Scummy)
    10. 3.10. Mass Microevangelism
    11. 3.11. The New Community
    12. 3.12. A Sense of Belonging
    13. 3.13. Friends as Gatekeepers
    14. 3.14. The Power of Taking the First Action
    15. 3.15. How to Screw Up (and How to Fix It)
    16. 3.16. How Not to Be One of Us (about Elitism)
    17. 3.17. Raising Up versus Sucking Up
    18. 3.18. The Currency of Comments
    19. 3.19. You Must Earn Your Place in Communities
    20. 3.20. Businesses That Understand How "One of Us" Works
      1. 3.20.1. Frank Eliason: Comcast Cares
      2. 3.20.2. Lionel Menchaca: Dell.com
      3. 3.20.3. Daniela Barbosa: Synaptica (a Dow Jones Company)
    21. 3.21. Trust Agents Are Not Infiltrators
    22. 3.22. A Final Lesson: Don't Be "That Guy"
  7. 4. Archimedes Effect
    1. 4.1. The Archimedes Effect
    2. 4.2. A Basic View of Leverage
    3. 4.3. An Introduction to Arbitrage
    4. 4.4. A Young Man's Primer
    5. 4.5. The Path of Least Resistance
    6. 4.6. Owning the Largest Game in the World
    7. 4.7. Existing Infrastructure
    8. 4.8. How a Trust Agent Uses Time
    9. 4.9. Leveraging Relationships
    10. 4.10. Standing Out by Standing Tall
    11. 4.11. Protecting Your Community as a Leverage Point
    12. 4.12. How a Trust Agent Leverages Social Media
    13. 4.13. Fish Where the Fish Are
    14. 4.14. About Recommendation
    15. 4.15. Things to Stop and Things to Start
      1. 4.15.1. Stop Trying to Find Readers for Your Blog
      2. 4.15.2. Start Enabling Your Existing Readers to Talk about You
      3. 4.15.3. Stop Doing Your Own Books and Research
      4. 4.15.4. Start Looking for a Personal Research Assistant and Aggregators
      5. 4.15.5. Stop Spending Money and Time Building Your Web Site
      6. 4.15.6. Start Looking at Prefab Solutions Like WordPress and Drupal
      7. 4.15.7. Stop Telling Everyone about Your New Thing
      8. 4.15.8. Start Crowdsourcing
    16. 4.16. Summing Up the Stops and Starts
    17. 4.17. Using Leverage to Build Dad-O-Matic
    18. 4.18. Wait, It Sounds Like You're Saying ...
    19. 4.19. Finally, Why We Used Traditional Publishing
  8. 5. Agent Zero
    1. 5.1. It's Not Who You Know, It's Who Knows You
    2. 5.2. Agent Zero Connects the Web
    3. 5.3. Agent Zero at Work
    4. 5.4. Awareness
      1. 5.4.1. Becoming Visible
      2. 5.4.2. Your First Status Message
      3. 5.4.3. I Am the Path
      4. 5.4.4. Always Be There
      5. 5.4.5. Leaving a Trail
      6. 5.4.6. How Not to Seem Like an Old-Fashioned Networker
    5. 5.5. Attention
      1. 5.5.1. Channels and Subscription
      2. 5.5.2. How to Decide What's Worth It
      3. 5.5.3. Trying New Stuff
      4. 5.5.4. Anatomy of a Face-to-Face Meetup
    6. 5.6. Influence
      1. 5.6.1. One of the 150
      2. 5.6.2. Be the Priest; Build the Church
      3. 5.6.3. Name-Dropping 2.0
      4. 5.6.4. Be the Relationship before the Sale
      5. 5.6.5. Bring People into the Circle
      6. 5.6.6. Relationships at Scale
      7. 5.6.7. You Live or Die by Your Database
    7. 5.7. Reputation
      1. 5.7.1. The Web Speaks for You
      2. 5.7.2. Links as Currency
      3. 5.7.3. How Trust Agents Use LinkedIn
    8. 5.8. Authority
      1. 5.8.1. How We Use the Web for Authority
      2. 5.8.2. Two Types of Authority
      3. 5.8.3. Social Proof: The Coffee Shop Example
      4. 5.8.4. Social Proof: Online Examples
    9. 5.9. What's Next?
  9. 6. Human Artist
    1. 6.1. What if Etiquette Isn't a "Nice to Have" Skill?
    2. 6.2. A Micromanifesto from Us Digital Natives
    3. 6.3. The Basic Stuff
    4. 6.4. The Golden Rule Ports Nicely to the Web
    5. 6.5. Transparency and Anonymity as Feedback
    6. 6.6. Empathy as Feedback
    7. 6.7. Lurking versus Jumping In
    8. 6.8. The New Customer Service
    9. 6.9. Keeping Connected Across Distances
    10. 6.10. Talking about the Weather
    11. 6.11. One-Way Intimacy
    12. 6.12. How Human Artists Sell on the Web
    13. 6.13. Getting Strangers to Trust Us
    14. 6.14. One Simple Answer to Several Thousand Questions
    15. 6.15. First Impressions
    16. 6.16. Everyone Seems Like the Expert
    17. 6.17. Sharing versus Hoarding
    18. 6.18. From the Individual to the Group
  10. 7. Build an Army
    1. 7.1. You Can't Do It Alone
    2. 7.2. Your Generals: The Mastermind Group
    3. 7.3. An Army of Ronin and Why That Might Not Work
    4. 7.4. The Power of Asynchronous Aggregation
    5. 7.5. Mechanization: How the Web Works When You're Not There
    6. 7.6. How the Web Helps Create Democracy
    7. 7.7. The Ease of Spreading Information
    8. 7.8. Scale: The Importance of Café-Shaped Experiences
    9. 7.9. Bring Your Own Dial Tone: Small Powerful Networks
    10. 7.10. The Social Contract
    11. 7.11. Give Your Ideas Handles
  11. 8. The Trust Agent
    1. 8.1. Art, Business, the Web, and Humans
    2. 8.2. How This Relates to Your Career
    3. 8.3. Master Tomorrow's Radios
    4. 8.4. How Frames and Perspective Matter
    5. 8.5. "Yes, and ..." and How That Applies to a Trust Agent
    6. 8.6. How to Make Friends (and Why It Matters)
    7. 8.7. Start Small
    8. 8.8. The One Difference
    9. 8.9. Be Wary of Praise and Awards
    10. 8.10. Six Games You Could Have Made and Still Can
    11. 8.11. If You Were to Write the Next Chapter
    12. 8.12. How You Can Help
    13. 8.13. Three More Things You Can Do to Add Value
    14. 8.14. Ways People May Trash the Lessons in This Book
    15. 8.15. Where We're Going in the Next Few Years

Product information

  • Title: Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust
  • Author(s): Chris Brogan, Julien Smith
  • Release date: August 2009
  • Publisher(s): Wiley
  • ISBN: 9780470743089