trust Archives - Spinnaker Marketing

More than two-thirds of mothers consider blogs to be a reliable resource for parenting information

Anxious mothers show a tendency to go online in search of answers to an endless litany of questions about raising and caring for their kids. And mothers who looked to the web for parenting advice considered blogs to be the most trustworthy social media platform, according to a July 2012 survey of US online mothers by blog company BlogHer.

More than two-thirds of respondents said they trusted the information and advice gleaned from blogs. Interestingly, faith in blog posts spiked among mothers ages 28 to 45, at 72%, and was a bit lower among both younger and older moms. After blogs, Facebook was the next most trusted social media network at 64%, followed by YouTube at 36%.
Social Media that US Mom Internet Users Trust for Parenting Advice, by Age, July 2012 (% of respondents)

Mothers are not just reading advice online, they’re also taking it. That can mean that a child-specific product or service endorsed on a blog can soon be in a mother’s shopping cart. The most common purchase made as a result of a recommendation on a mom blog was that of a book, at 63%. But BlogHer also found that 56% of moms had made a food purchase based on a blog testimonial, while 48% had bought a baby product.

Gaining consumer trust is an important issue for marketers seeking to ensure that they’re not scaring prospective customers away. In fact, a March to June survey of US adults conducted by About.com found that 84% of respondents felt that brands needed to prove themselves trustworthy before they would interact with them or other information sources. Moreover, the study found that there were 10 primary trust “elements,” or cues, that brands must establish in order to engender trust, including accuracy, expertise and transparency.

In a social media context, customers wanted to see that brands had a significant number of positive reviews, and that they didn’t go out of their way to hide the negative ones. The survey found that 41% of respondents said the ability to see reviews on social networks added to their feeling of trust in a brand. Reviews played a bigger role in cultivating trust than seeing that friends had “liked” or recommended a brand, or that the brand had accumulated a large tally of “likes.”

Video was found to improve trust the most when it served as a complement to other types of content. This ties back in to consumers’ hunger for useful information. Brands can build trust with potential customers by demonstrating expertise through quality owned content that is also devoid of a hard sales message.