What if Trust is the Strategy?
[00:00:03.620] - Liv Myers
All right. Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining us for this month's webinar. I am joined today by Beth Trejo, the CEO and founder of ChatterKick and Allison Gates, the content manager at ChatterKick. And we have a really great discussion today about talking about your social strategy in particular. But what if trust and trying to build trust with your audience is the actual strategy? And so while we're giving people a little bit of time to get in here. I will ask you to go ahead and comment if you're here with where you're coming from, because we just love to see how far-reaching we are with everybody. So comment with your name and where you're coming from. Also, just a few housekeeping things. If you have questions that pop up throughout it, please throw it into the comment section. We will have time for a Q&A after. But also I want to address the questions that you might have in real-time. So if you have any, feel free to throw them in, and we'll try to be looking for those in and ask them in real-time as well. So I'm actually going to kick it over to Beth and Allison to introduce themselves a little bit in this topic, and I will let you guys take it away.
[00:01:13.300] - Beth Trejo
Awesome. Well, I'm going to let Allison go first. Allison, you introduce yourself first, then I'll take it from there.
[00:01:19.520] - Allison Gates
Okay. So I'm Allison Gates. I'm the creative manager at Chattercake. I have been with the company for a really long Over 10, 12 years. I don't know. It's been a while. So within that time, we've got to grow a lot within Chattercake and see just how social media has changed in that time. And I think it's been really cool to see and really fun to be a part of all of these different times in social. And so, yeah, excited to chat today.
[00:01:57.800] - Beth Trejo
Awesome. Thanks, Allison. Allison was my second employee, so she's been with ChatterKick this whole ride, and has been instrumental in shaping the way that we are today. So we're excited to have these conversations. Myself, just a little background, if we don't already know each other. I actually started Shatter Kick because I saw relationships and business deals getting formed in real life through the chamber of commerce. And I was like, Well, let's do this. Let's move these over to a digital platform, which social media was the perfect tool for that. And so that's how Shatter Kick started. Since then, we've added more tools to our toolbox, and we've expanded into other offerings. But ultimately, social and the relationship and connections that are formed between humans on digital platforms is why we are still around today. And we're going to talk a little bit about trust. And I think trust is something that is a hard thing to define, but it's obvious to what it really is. I think everybody knows what it means, what it feels like. But how does that show up in your digital marketing? How does that show up in the world that we live in today?
[00:03:10.160] - Beth Trejo
Those are some things that we're going to talk about, because I do think that we've seen this evolution of social media, where you saw this rise of newness. Everybody was excited. We saw Facebook come out, and then we saw YouTube, and Instagram, and all these tools. And it was this novelty that people were like, we can connect with our friends and family that we don't typically see. I know what all my college friends are doing that I don't always get to interact with. And so there was this really exciting moment of social that did play a big part in our culture. And then as that has evolved from the downsides and some of the problems that social media has, and then we see more opportunity come in and new platforms. So come into the scene and into our lives. And I think it's been interesting, that's for sure, watching that roller coaster of social happen. And I think I will acknowledge the good and the bad that social has created for so many. But what we're seeing today is a couple of things that I think are really monumental in some regards. One is just the fact that social is so intertwined in the things that we do as a culture.
[00:04:32.560] - Beth Trejo
I think that it was always something that young kids had in the beginning, and now it really has impacted every generation in many regards. And then as it relates to business, we've seen this massive influx of AI, AI written content, and even now it's the visual content, the videos. And I think the reason that trust I really believe is going to be the future. And the method of building relationships and gaining attention is because we don't trust all of this stuff. There's a lot of volume out there, both in terms of content, and then there's also a lot of volume in terms of just noise. And so today, we're going to help you break some of this down and understand tactically what trust could look like if it was the core of your strategy and how you can leverage that to build awesome communities online. So the first thing that we're just going to address here is just the myth of overnight success. I was talking to a business owner the other day, and she owns her own business. And she was saying, I know what I need to do. I know that these things are important, but I don't like these platforms.
[00:06:00.620] - Beth Trejo
I don't believe that Facebook should do X, Y, and Z. And well, then I was at a conference, and somebody told me that I need to be doing this funnel thing where you have these touch points. And she just was overwhelmed, quite frankly. There's too many options. She didn't know which ones were the right ones. She obviously has limits and budget constraints because we all do. And she just asked me, what should I do? And I told her that I have seen so many different tactics used in marketing. And the real answer is there is no perfect solution. There is a perceived notion of this overnight success. If you build this marketing funnel, You will get these leads, and you will make six figures in six months, and all of these advertisements that are out there, these myths that are out there, that in reality, it doesn't usually work like that. Maybe you might get a couple of outliers, but real marketing comes down to consistency. It comes down to messaging. Do enough people know about your business? Do you have something that someone wants to sell? And then can you get momentum on that and iterate?
[00:07:17.850] - Beth Trejo
And what's working? Do more of it. What's not working? Do less of it. I think sometimes we try to overcomplicate things because marketing has gotten complicated. But the reality is, it It takes perseverance, it takes persistence, it takes curiosity, and a lot of hard work at times. And so I think it's just important that we acknowledge that before we get into, Okay, these are some things that you can actually do. Okay, so let's just think a little bit about this. How do you think that you can measure trust today? As a business owner or a leader, think about if If I said, I want to know what the ROI of having someone trust your brand is. That's a hard thing to answer, right? Because it could be a lot of different signals. It could be a lot of different things. And again, we know it's valuable, but it's not always clear and easy to measure because trust is really specific. It's your audience believing that you'll do what you say you're going to do. It could be as simple as, do you respond back to people when they message you online? Your DMs, your comments, your reviews, are you getting back to them?
[00:08:37.920] - Beth Trejo
Or do you just leave them hanging? That's a trust signal. It's measurable, and it's an easy thing that you can do to build those little tiny marbles that really do add up and create big brand loyalty and can honestly be a game changer in terms of repeat buying and revenue. The other thing that you want to about when it comes to trust is, what language are you using to describe your products and services? I think there's way too many jargon words in so many of our businesses, And exceptional customer service and integrated solutions. And we could just name so many of those that they just become untrustworthy. We don't We trust exceptional customer service because we expect it. We expect a response. We expect someone to answer the phone and call us back. We expect that you are going to do what you said you're going to do in business and the solutions that you're providing are actually going to work for the problem that your customers have. So a lot of this stuff that we're going to dive into is done in microdoses. It's really the little things. It's the language. It's the customer touch points and the follow-up.
[00:10:04.020] - Beth Trejo
It's who shows up on camera. Are you not putting any of your people in front of the camera? If I searched your business, could I see who worked there? That's when those trust flags alert, alert, alert. Is this real? Alert, alert, alert. This person hasn't posted on their social channels in five years. Are they still in business? Those little things take away from trust just as much as the good things help build it.
[00:10:33.340] - Liv Myers
I think, Beth, one thing that I wanted to touch on there was you talked about a lot of businesses that say that they have exceptional customer service. And I don't know any business that says that they have poor customer service. Nobody markets it. But the proof is really in the pudding, right? And what that looks like on social is actually replying back to people and commenting back to them. So you might have exceptional customer service on the phone in person, but does it translate digitally?
[00:11:07.780] - Beth Trejo
Yeah. And I think that that is one of the biggest gaps that I see when people are just trying to figure out the what should I do next? It's let's look at your real life experience with your customers, and does that map to what is actually visible online? I see this with websites all the time. Build buildings. You'll have a multimillion dollar brand new project with this beautiful architecture, infrastructure. The experience of walking into your building is a wow moment. The experience of interacting with your website is a hell moment in end times. And so businesses aren't matching that and mirroring that. And we live in this world of bounceiness. We want to bounce from social to real life, to phone calls, to text messages. The experience becomes so seamless that the companies that do it right win really, really quickly. And then the companies that have those major gaps are those that really struggle. And they struggle with what they think maybe is marketing, but in reality, it's integration of customer experience. It's bigger than just the tactics that you're doing. And I think as we look to 2026, one of the things that we believe is really a huge piece of the puzzle, because we're seeing the data, we're seeing the experts, is that it's no longer just going to be a Google search game.
[00:12:45.200] - Beth Trejo
We've noticed that for years now, probably two or three years, these platforms are also search engines. People are searching YouTube. That's been a thing for a long time. Youtube has been the second largest search engine for a while. But now, TikTok is. People are searching Meta, Facebook, Instagram. They're searching Reddit, Quora. And now, with these large language models like ChatGPT, this stuff All is mixed up. You are finding LinkedIn posts coming through ChatGPT. You're noticing that other platforms are sourcing... Google is sourcing other data points, like reviews. So it really is what we've always said it is, is that it's bigger than just one post on Facebook. It's bigger than just LinkedIn. You are literally gardening, and you're putting flowers here, and you're putting bushes there, and you're making this whole landscape be something that you can own, you can control, and you can build the narrative and what it looks like. And so how do you do this? Well, Well, first of all, start with the basics, the absolute basics of filling out your profiles completely, all profiles. And if you don't know where to look, just go on the tools and start searching your business name.
[00:14:12.460] - Beth Trejo
Search Chatter Kick on ChatGPT. Search Chatter Kick on Facebook. Search Chatter Kick on YouTube. What's coming up? And that's a good pulse check to be like, Okay, we got to work to do here, or we have some actual ownership on these platforms. So first of all, just start with filling out your profiles and searching for yourself. The second thing that you can do to win is consistency. It really is about posting more on a regular basis on consistent platforms, because those are going to get picked up by the indexes, by the robots that are combing the Internet as we know it. And you You get bonus points if you elevate your strategy from just the greeting card strategy, which is posting on every holiday, to actually including some of the words of things that you do and the words that your customers use. That will help get indexed in these large language models. It will help you start getting exposure or the opportunity to get exposure for some of your brands and channels. I have a lot of customers asking us this right now. Okay, great, Beth. We're posting consistently. We're posting content that I feel like is relevant to our audience.
[00:15:37.300] - Beth Trejo
I'm still not showing up in these large language models. If I ChatGPT myself, I can't find my business or my brand. And I think that those type of mindsets are chasing something that will never be caught. What you want to do is you want to minimize your risk and exposure of never getting found and maximize your opportunity to get found. Because how these systems work is a very technical world, and the ability to influence and control it at this moment is really hard, and there's still a lot of unknowns. So again, minimize the risk that you'll never be found. Maximize the opportunity that you could be sourced and found. And a lot of this has to with trust signals. That means a lot of different platforms pointing back to your website, videos, podcast. Anything that mentions your brand or your business, you want to make sure that your name is in it or what you do, how you do it for your customers. There's some indication that all is in the same world. Things that would really hurt you is just not having a presence, not having all your keywords set up, not By having the basic type of website that can be found on the internet, some of these tactics and tools are really old-school SEO strategies, right?
[00:17:09.620] - Beth Trejo
Make sure that the robots know what you're doing, and you have to tell them what you're doing. Those are some ways. Here's some examples of just opportunities to get found in some of these. One of our clients sells vehicles, and you can see here that there are different Different models are coming up, different makes are coming up. And the shopping patterns for B2B buyers and B2C buyers are completely merging, and we're just asking these tools to figure this out for us. The other huge trend is the fact that now they have browsers, so you may not even interact with Google at all anymore. This was just released last week. There's just a lot of things changing in this landscape. So it's really important just to see how people are using these tools and understand the tools themselves so that you have the biggest chance to, again, build those trust signals, show up in a lot of different places so that it can be like, okay, yes, yes, yes, yes. This is Beth. This is Shatter Kick. They connect. That's the mindset you want to think about.
[00:18:26.960] - Liv Myers
I also think, Beth, what I'm hearing is, Okay, I need to post consistently and with a bunch of keywords. But there is an important balance there that you actually have to strike, right? You do actually still want to post what your audience likes because the platforms are not necessarily... They are looking at the content, but they're also looking at, do people like your content?
[00:18:50.180] - Beth Trejo
Yes. One thing to build trust is just get engagement, right? That's not only going to feed the algorithms because they love that, but it's going to give that like, Everybody's doing it, or this is a big deal. I'm sure that many of you can relate to the fact of you'll see something in your Facebook feed and you'll be like, Oh my gosh, there's hundreds of people. What are they saying? Who's liking this? Are my friends commenting on this. It can be as simple as somebody's family scenario, or it could be something in business, a new restaurant opening, or maybe it's a crisis that people are just nosy and they want to know more about. It's the volume of people and noise and voices really make a difference on both the algorithm side, but also the trust side.
[00:19:38.940] - Liv Myers
I also think that just thinking about how people use the search engines and ChatGPT, too, You had, Okay, now identify the places that I could purchase this vehicle on there. But they're probably not just going to stop there. They're either going to go to the sites to verify that, Okay, this person is close to me. I like this dealership, or they might continue with their query on ChatGPT and say, Now, list out the pros and cons of each and which one you would recommend I go to. And so it is, again, trying to be able to control that narrative a little bit so that whenever someone does make a recommendation, you show up in the way that you want to be seen.
[00:20:21.400] - Allison Gates
Actually, when you were talking about that, searching for products or brands within ChatGPT and getting those recommendations, I just saw Just this week, I think that they're integrating payment systems into... So basically, it's skipping all these steps that you would usually have if you're googling best birthday present for my best friend who lives in Colorado. And then instead, I could put it in a ChatGPT, and then it would populate all of these things and be like, Do you want to buy? And I could just skip all of the steps, making it probably dangerously easy to shop, but just making that so seamless, and brands need to make sure that they're showing up there. And of those, search results when people are searching, and that is changing.
[00:21:16.840] - Beth Trejo
Yeah. And I think the question that a lot of people are asking today is, well, should I not use it? How do you use AI? What can I use it for? How far can I push It's the boundaries that our customers still will trust us. And I don't think there's a clear-cut answer for that, just like there's not a clear-cut way to do business. But I will tell you what I have found to be the most effective, both in process operations as well as just results that we see with lots of different customers of all types across the country. The first is, just what this is, AI should save you time, but don't let it erode all of the things you've built over the years. Don't let it... One thing, one post, can just really take that ick feeling from your brand, and it can really give that, and you don't want that. I've seen brands, and there's been multiple instances of this, that they used AI for their visuals, a picture of somebody. And they got a lot of horrible feedback on that. And it just took a brand that was very connected and sentiment.
[00:22:36.640] - Beth Trejo
They felt like, oh, you know what? This brand gets me. I'm a loyal customer. And it was like, that's not you. It's like someone showing up that isn't real. And so it's amazing how fast that that can actually move, and you don't want that to happen. So I've said this multiple times, but keep the humans on the sides. Put AI in the middle. Give it some protection. So start with the humans, put AI in the middle, and then end with the humans for review in all things, visual and copy. And then I also think, hold tight the things that AI really has a hard time replacing, which is showing up as yourself, being real, not always being perfect, being a little bit messy. Every business is a little bit messy. Show the messiness. From a We're not perfect. We understand our customers aren't perfect. I think that brands that lean into some of that vulnerability are going to be some of those that have the best connections with their customers and really are going to be able to build trust. I also think watch content volumes. Better over more is huge. And I think that sometimes when brands just go too heavy on the content volume, it does hurt trust.
[00:24:00.000] - Beth Trejo
Because it's like, oh, my gosh, stop. It's too much. Too many text messages, too many emails, right? Quality matters in all types of categories, even some of those that tend to have a high volume of publishing. That's one of my favorite videos.
[00:24:28.660] - Liv Myers
You made this, I I think with Sorah, right? Like right as it came out, right?
[00:24:33.720] - Beth Trejo
Yes, that is a video of me and Sorra. But I think if you look at that video, it was me driving. And it's like seconds, like multiple seconds. I'm just not looking at the road. If you use this for a car commercial, your audience would call you out on that. You see comments and comments and comments being like, Hey, watch the road. Watch the road. And And I think that this is just a perfect example. These are visuals, and definitely, you can't catch it all, but these are pretty obvious. People are going to catch them.
[00:25:13.740] - Liv Myers
Yeah.
[00:25:14.070] - Allison Gates
On the left, the kid sitting on another child's lap in the car, they both have seatbelts somehow. They look like they're in the front seat. There's just so many things that are easily called out on on that one.
[00:25:31.880] - Beth Trejo
Yeah. And I think the one here on the side that says made for busy moms, this is where you start to see like, okay, maybe this stuff would work. I think that AI-generated images are very equivalent to stock photos, right? And so I think that there are times when they make sense. But I will tell you, one of the biggest things we saw early on in the social media days is the one strategy we use to get better engagement was to just cut out all stock photos, and their engagement peaked. And it's not that different than what we are seeing today with these AI generated images. People will start recognizing them, or they don't trust anything. And so there's definitely that gap that you want to fill as it relates to how can you build trust in relationships?
[00:26:23.440] - Liv Myers
I also think that you should have a hard and fast rule. I'm a big proponent of this, hard and fast rule that you aren't I'm just going to AI generate an image of someone claiming to be your employee, because if someone actually goes to try to validate or find Mike from wherever, And then they find out that he's not a real person. That's an instant, I don't love that feeling. So I would always encourage people to use real photos of your employees. And one thing that drives our creative team a little bonkers is that a poor quality photo or like, lower quality photo that is authentic will outperform any beautifully designed thing that our creative team makes any day of the week. So if you are like, well, I just don't have professional photographer to be able to come in and do it, your phone can take amazing photos, and most of the time it will outperform anything that a creative team could actually make.
[00:27:23.980] - Allison Gates
Well, I've heard you say several times when talking about consistency and staying consistent that done is better than perfect. And that is so true. All right. Well, talking about awareness. So I know awareness, when brands think of that, they think it's this fluffy top of the funnel vanity metric. It's almost something that you focus on after more measurable stuff. But actually, awareness is a leading indicator, and it predicts everything downstream from your search lift, referral quality, branded queries, and even your close rate. So when awareness is working, you can start to see those early signs pile up, like Beth is talking about the marbles piling up. You'll notice more people are searching your name. There's fewer cold leads. You You'll get a general sense that your market knows who you are and your audience knows who you are, even if they haven't filled out a form. And it's like when you already invest in someone that's already in your funnel or you wait till once they're in your funnel, then you're fighting this uphill battle. You're basically asking them to convince people of who you are while you're also trying to sell to them, and it becomes super expensive and really daunting.
[00:29:03.080] - Allison Gates
You don't see the results you want, and so then you keep trying to do something different or do the same thing. But really, it's all about awareness. So you want to feed that system early and often, and then it starts to compound in every post, every impression, every comment. I love Beth's landscape analogy. All of those things plant a seed that grow into your beautiful brand recognition flower. And it's really the best way to help your future self.
[00:29:46.120] - Beth Trejo
Yeah. And if you are in industries, some industries and type of businesses like B2B, professional services, finance, there's a lot of different categories where trust matters more so than maybe if you're buying toothpaste, right? Although I do think a lot of those consumer-based brands have leaned more into building trust with their customers. But when you're in those categories, like the finance, large ticket items, B2B, trust is really, really critical. And a lot of that is because they want to buy buy from somebody that they know, they want to have conversations, maybe it's a complicated process that you're trying to sell them. So one of the things that social media does really influence is just that validity and the social proof. If I am selling a big manufacturing project, I'm probably not going to get leads directly from my social efforts. But what I can expect them to do is to add some credibility and proof so that when maybe I get a referral from a trade show, that refer then goes and looks me up and tries to research on their own that I look like what they thought they were buying. It also can really play a role at the end of a sales process that I'm making the right decision play.
[00:31:25.100] - Beth Trejo
And all of those really fit into that category of establishing that social proof. One way you can do that as well is, especially if you get a high volume of comments. We work with a lot of companies in the multi-site location franchise model where your franchise So your franchise is your local business, but also it scales across multiple locations. Developing a brand persona, even if it's not an actual person, but it's the ethos of what your brand is, how They show up in the digital and in the real landscape. You're helping using this for training, you're helping using this for marketing. And you are editing anything that your consumers are interacting with or they're not liking. Maybe they're becoming a little bit younger, so now you have to adjust your language. Having those brand personas really do make a difference, and they can help scale businesses, especially as you grow and you bring partners in or you You develop different lines of business. They really do make a difference in bringing everything together.
[00:32:39.120] - Liv Myers
I think, Beth, can you also talk a little bit about how that might be different from if you have a brand guy guide, and you've got the style and tone laid out within those brand guides? Where's the benefit of having this brand persona?
[00:32:55.060] - Beth Trejo
Yeah, I'll give you an example. So most of the time brand guidelines live in a marketing ecosystem. It's a very closed ecosystem because not everybody is developing content on behalf of the brand. Where these personas can really cross categories is through your other departments. Primarily customer service, honestly, is where I think there's a lot of opportunities. An example that I have is I got one of those fitness rings, and I really like it, but I've been having problems with the connection on it. And so I've I've been pretty frustrated because I've had this issue multiple times. It's an expensive device. And so I'm trying to use the help on the app. And then that was such a fragmented experience. The tone of voice that I was getting from that felt very formal. It felt like I went to another country, and maybe that's what they're doing. But regardless, we have tools now. We can make it seem like we're all in the same spot, and they're connecting with me in the that the brand shows up. Because their brand shows up very lifestyle, very high tech, and I'm getting responses that are like, Dear sir, madame.
[00:34:11.940] - Beth Trejo
It just felt so off. And And I emailed them, and I got a whole different type of vibe because they sent me to a different customer service support. And then even within those tickets, I'm getting, oh, my gosh, Beth, we understand you're so frustrated. Totally get it to, dear concerned customer. I was like, what is going on? Who is interacting with me here? Is this multiple people? Is it one person? And again, I see this operationally. This is easy to fix. They just need to have some level of tone and voice consistency across their different tools. But this happens all the time in business. I was on the end of that customer example.
[00:35:04.240] - Allison Gates
So did you get your issue fixed?
[00:35:06.860] - Beth Trejo
Bare. They're sending me another one. But it's one of those things that I think sometimes it's helpful to be on the end of You have a bad customer experience because you realize how much it matters. It really does. Our emotions as humans drive so much of our decision making when buying things. And it is not just in consumer products. It is in all product categories. Switching banks, finding financial advisors, deciding what new vehicle to purchase. It is so driven by our feelings instead of probably our pocketbooks even at times, right? So I think it's interesting to be in a lived experience every now and again, even though it's miserable. So And I think, Allison, you can probably speak to this more, but creating actual community around this stuff is also critical. And again, talking about trust. So when I was having those products or those problems with my ring, I wasn't getting what I needed from their support. They didn't tell me why I keep having this product. So what do I do? Go online, find Reddit thread, find Facebook groups. Am I crazy or is it the product? And so I think those are things that really matter as it relates to not just the things that you own, but maybe your community can help support.
[00:36:40.360] - Allison Gates
Yeah, for sure. Well, so actually, I'm an On the next slide, I'll be talking a little bit about establishing some SOPs for that. But before we go to that, building that community online is definitely a huge step and really important And it's one of those things that holds steady when algorithms are volatile, when audiences are skeptical, like you're saying, with AI images or information or what to trust. A lot of times, they'll turn into a trusted community to get that information, like you said, through Reddit threads or wherever, wherever the community is built and has that information. So When your audience feels seen, they'll start to show up for you. So we've seen that for some of our clients where maybe some of the past customers or current customers, cheerleaders on the side, will jump in on comments and answer comments or say, Oh, they're great. I love them because of this, or ask them about this. And that's really exciting to see on our end. And it's that social proof that you You can't manufacture that. It's something that's built upon. So having that trusted voice, it goes beyond just the marketing department. It's the people who are shouting from the rooftops that they actually love and use your products is humongous.
[00:38:23.200] - Beth Trejo
And I think any business can create community. If you are not a product and you're like, well, I don't have a lot of people using my product that will take pictures online. A community may look like your past employees that you stand up with. A community may look like your past customers, or maybe it's a group of interns that have always really cheered you on from the sidelines or your suppliers. So I want people to think about community, not just in the way that's like, we all like to use your product, which is an amazing thing. But what more do you connect people with? How do you all stand for the same thing? That sometimes is a really good place to think about community and how you can start building one if you don't already have one, or how you can start connecting others that maybe are like minded that you could lean on and support.
[00:39:19.840] - Allison Gates
Yeah. And I think this slide shows some good examples of what that trust building looks like as far as responding, actually, when someone asks questions, like having to say, Hey, that's a great question, or, Thanks for catching that, owning some of those moments instead of, I know There's a lot of the panic moments and urge to delete or hide or anything, but owning some of that. And then you can actually, if you're seeing some of those comments come up or issues or you're able to resolve something, Depending on what the comment or issue is, many people maybe have the same question or problem, and you could use that for creating content, compounding that trust and using it in a... Spinning it in a positive way.
[00:40:16.860] - Beth Trejo
Yeah, I think it's interesting but obvious that the perfect and most effective rating on Google is 4. 7 stars, or it's not a five star because people don't trust it. They don't trust that you've never made a mistake. And I do think that some of the most impactful reviews and comments online are those that are respectfully critical, but the owner addresses it and says, Oh, my gosh, this is so sorry. Give me a call. And then the person comes back on that same thread and said, This company is great. They took care of me, and that's what matters. And the amount of times we've seen that same pattern happen over and over again, it happens a lot, honestly. And I think those are the ones that actually win you business, because those are the ones that show you're human, and those are the ones that actually show that you can show up for your customers.
[00:41:18.680] - Allison Gates
You know what? That actually reminds me. I got too into talking about the comment thing. I forgot about SOPs and how important they are. Like, Because with your ring example, obviously, there was not a response process in place, and this is how we respond. So that's where systems could really help. And so if you have a simple operating procedure for your team of template and tone guidelines or escalation paths, depending on those comments, that's how you can manage hundreds of comments coming in or situations coming in and have it be the same exact experience for every person. Because I think you're right. No matter what, even if you're excited, you're emotional. You're coming in and saying, I'm super excited about this brand. Or if you're like, I'm really frustrated with this, you really lead with emotions. And brands that don't have procedures in place are really relying on some of those hero moves because maybe you can turn it around and be like, so and so gave me great customer service. But it's because without a procedure, it's because that person is a hero, rock star at what they do. Versus you're going to get this experience every time.
[00:42:48.700] - Allison Gates
So sorry, jumping back. I was just thinking about that as you were talking about that.
[00:42:55.680] - Liv Myers
I think that also ties into the UGC collection as well and having a process for collecting the UGC and what that looks like, asking people permission, making sure that you have permission to utilize those, and then how you're sharing them consistently so that If somebody is like, well, they made seven different posts with this one person, and then they only did this with mine, I doubt that people will pay that close of attention to it. But the more that you can systematize these things, the easier it is to continue to do them over and over again. And so it's the same with handling negative comments as it is with handling positive comments and connecting with your community in some way, shape, or form. Because I know I am not an engagement strategist at ChatterKick for a reason. And it's because whenever I go to cover moderation, I sit there and I overthink whatever my response is. And being able to pull from some of our asset libraries of, okay, if someone asked this question, this is what you say, is very helpful for me in that instance. And especially on busy teams, if you are putting out a bazillion fires all around you, but you know that this is important and you've dedicated time to it, you can just be a lot faster and more efficient if you have some of those responses built out or a standard operating procedure for handling them.
[00:44:19.260] - Beth Trejo
Yeah, I think that both of what you just mentioned is one of the other things that we're really seeing come to light, and that is the operations of marketing. Because I I think that AI excited people, and it still does excite people because it can speed up the things that we do to talk about our business, and it can take away some of the barriers. And although I think there's big gaps in that total system as it stands, I think what people are really saying when they say, Well, this will make me faster, is, It's taking me too long. This stuff is slow. It's clunky. I don't have systems. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to say it. And so that messiness of the operations in social media and in marketing is really... It's big right now. And so anything that your business can do to make it easier in terms of the standard operating procedures, asset libraries, templates, personas, those are the companies that are going to be able to go faster and scale, but also still to keep those trust signals because you're still having humans use them.
[00:45:35.160] - Liv Myers
I was going to ask, Beth, if you felt like whenever things do get messy like that, are you seeing people just be like, Well, AI will handle it all for me? And And thinking that that is the bandaid that will fix the inherent problem.
[00:45:50.240] - Beth Trejo
Yeah, because marketing operations, specifically, is complicated. It goes across departments, because marketing is messaging, let's just use that word, and communication. And the way that it traditionally sat was in these silos or maybe next to sales. And what businesses are realizing is it needs to touch all different departments, internal and external. And so solving for that as a business is really hard operationally. It's intertwined, it's layered, it's checks and balances, quality control, all of that. So I think solving that That side of it is where it's too overwhelming. So then they just go to, well, I'll just make AI fix this. And I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. But AI is just going to be a tool that I use. And I think in some businesses, that probably works. But because our touch points are getting so varied. The trust signals, again, are getting heightened. I think that, again, the businesses that do this really well are reinventing where marketing sits and where customer experience sits within their businesses. And you probably know some of those business brands on a day to day basis, but you just didn't even realize that they make it easy for you.
[00:47:11.220] - Liv Myers
I do want to leave a little bit of time for Q&A. So if you have any questions, please throw them into the comment sections. I will, Beth, throw one at you here that we hear all the time from prospects or other clients that we're consulting with that Yeah, I get the point of UGC, but I put posts out there all the time asking people like, Hey, can you share this? And nobody ever shares an image with me or a video of them using the product or the tool. Do you have any advice for encouraging people without begging them or sourcing that without begging them for the content?
[00:47:56.240] - Beth Trejo
Yeah. So just for everybody, if you're not familiar, user-generated content content, UGC, can mean multiple things. Sometimes it is what Liv was mentioning. If I have my ring, for example, and I share pictures of my ring and talk about it, and now I'm connecting with the brand, I might be connecting with other people, and the brand is like, Hey, I love that picture. Can I share it? That would be one example of UGC. But the question and the problem that we get is, Well, no one's taking a picture of being our customer at Chatter Kick, right? Or If you sell something like financial services, that might be hard to find user-generated content. So another strategy for that is to use topic or community-led UGC. So let's say you're in the finance world and you're a financial advisor. Something that you might be able to tap into for a community is Excel users, or anybody that's using a particular macro or script that probably are using budgets, and they are in that category of users. Now, joining that conversation, the humor that goes around with Excel users and data nerds, It's an interesting community that bonds together.
[00:49:18.980] - Beth Trejo
And so finding content that is specifically generated for that audience and then asking them, Hey, I love this meme that you put or this joke. Can we use it on behalf of our community? We'll give you credit for it, and we're going to make it go further. And so that's another example of topic-based user-generated content that can be really impactful for businesses. Question. One was, how do you actually measure brand momentum via awareness before the leads start showing up? So that's a hard one because, again, different brands are going to have different propensity to impact people's lives. But I do think that you have to look at, are you reaching new people? That is one way to see if you're measuring brand, and do they care about you? Are they going to your website? Are they talking about you in different channels? Are you able to recruit people? Maybe you are trying to get momentum on behalf of your brand, but what you're saying is just not connecting to people. And so it's just like you're dwindling down in terms of visibility. And so you have to get that up in the beginning so that you have the opportunity to tell your story.
[00:50:46.460] - Beth Trejo
And when in doubt, use emotions. We're humans. We connect with things emotionally. Like Allison said, just somebody hanging out may not write a comment on a post because if you're just neutral, it's probably just neutral. You're going to get things when emotions go high, excited, or when emotions go low, fear, scarcity, anger, all of those things. That's when marketing And basically human psychology and buying start triggering decision making. And so if you get confused about marketing, just think of emotions. That's probably the one thing that will not change in the way that we buy is tapping into those emotions.
[00:51:35.380] - Liv Myers
Looks like we've got another one. So how can you actually tell if they have a trust problem or a visibility problem in doing brand awareness campaign? Not sure I'm seeing great results. What might be missing? And then piggybacking off of that, too, if your brand does have a trust problem, where do you start to fix that?
[00:51:56.740] - Beth Trejo
Yeah, I think, first of all, if you know Does my brand have a trust problem? First look at your name plus reviews or negative reviews. And I want you to look at both the employee side as well as the review side. And if there's nothing there that could be like, well, we need to start giving some external validation of our brand. Maybe that's industry reviews, maybe that's awards, case studies, somebody else telling the story about ourselves besides just our company. That's where I would start for like, how do I know if we have a trust problem? Well, is anybody else talking about you? Are you showing up with reviews? And the people that tend to have negative trust usually know it. And this is how I would tell. Lots of negative reviews on the employee or on the customer side. High bounce rate on your website traffic. They're just like, go in there like, no, thanks. No, thanks. You have no pictures of people anywhere. And there's some form of friction for the contact. You would probably know it as a consumer because you would be like, it's that feeling of, is this real? Is this legit?
[00:53:23.880] - Beth Trejo
Is this spam? Those things, those check marks, are things that your customer Customers are asking. So if you can't answer those by making sure that you have that audit in place, of like, yes, we have this. Yes, we have this. Yes, we have this. I think that that would probably be something I would be like, probably a trust problem.
[00:53:49.640] - Liv Myers
So, yeah, I think that going through and having that checklist monthly, especially if you have a button on your website where people are supposed to be either signing up or contacting you, go in and verify that those things work at least weekly, if not more, if you don't have a web team that's already doing that for you, because we found some clients that that button has been not working. And we just happen to click it or you see it coming in on social, people will comment to you and say, Hey, this isn't working for me, and then you can go and address it. But for every person that does, there are at least 10 people that won't, and they'll just bounce off and leave it alone. So I think that that's a good call out on the website in particular.
[00:54:36.740] - Beth Trejo
Yeah. Go through your own customer experience. I always tell my Vistage members, I am a Vistage speaker, and I always say, Everybody needs to pretend If they're a customer and go through the funnel, call your phone number. Is anybody answering? Fill a form out on your website. Go to your own website and find a contact information. How long does it take for somebody to respond. The other thing that's fascinating is watch someone else do it. We're launching a new website, and I had my 15-year-old go through the website just because I wanted to watch in person, a person that I know interact with the digital tools. And it's interesting. You can use software to do this, too, but it's fun to have your kids do it. It's important that you realize all All the little steps matter.
[00:55:33.400] - Liv Myers
We've got another one. So do I need to focus on building trust online? If I already have trust in my community, we've been around for years.
[00:55:41.260] - Beth Trejo
A hundred %, because it's invisible online if you don't have anything out there. And I have seen so many brands get, I won't be as extreme to say, destroyed, but definitely interrupted by not having anything online. Online. One story I'll tell really quick because I know we're getting at time, but a friend had called me. They were a manufacturing company. We had talked about doing their website and doing some social stuff for them. And they were like, We don't need it. Our customers are B2B. Our customers aren't online. We know them. There's only a handful of them anyways in this industry. We're good. Well, this website is old, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I was like, Okay, whatever. We're We're friends. Not a big deal. And he called me back, probably, I don't know, six months later and said, I finally know what the ROI of having this presence was. He was telling me that they were hiring a salesperson, and it was a very technical salesperson because in those B2B companies, they are. And the person ended up going with one of their competitors, the salesperson, and they lost out on that candidate because the competitor in the salesperson's eyes was more innovative and forward thinking.
[00:57:13.360] - Beth Trejo
And this irritated my friend because he's like, We just spent millions of dollars on these robotic innovations. Our company is investing a ton in the future. But it was just all invisible. The story died at the dinner table. There wasn't a way to propel the message forward. And they lost out on not only the salesperson opportunity, but now they had another gap in time that they didn't have a salesperson. And now they had to start from scratch. And so it was a really hard lesson to be learned. And these type of examples we see all the time.
[00:57:56.520] - Liv Myers
I really think that your online presence is not I think people try to separate it so much from the personal presence, the physical presence. It's an extension of. It's not like something completely separate. It's all part of your broader ecosystem. And so I get this example a lot. Let's say somebody walks into your building, office, whatever it might be, and then they start up a conversation with you, or they're just browsing around. Let's that you own a jewelry store, and they're browsing around the jewelry store. If you don't have anything new for them to look at, if you don't have any, and they frequent it often, they might stop coming in because they don't realize that or that you have stuff, but it's still in the back. You're not showing it to them exactly. Or if they walk in and you just ignore them and you don't say anything to them either, they're probably going to walk out pretty quick and be like, Well, that person was rude. If they go online and they don't necessarily find you, it's not that they'll think that you're rude. They might just, like Beth said earlier, think, Are they still in business?
[00:59:08.520] - Liv Myers
Are they still working? Or are you controlling the narrative about yourself or letting other people control it for you, is probably the biggest thing that you could be missing out on there.
[00:59:19.960] - Beth Trejo
Yeah. I really think that that's the core is if you're not telling your story, who is who is? And what assumptions are they I'm making. I think that the stay in age in person is extremely important. Your real relationships matter. But if you ignore the digital side of things, you're missing out. And honestly, the biggest thing is you're creating a big risk for your business, because if it really didn't matter, then if your competitor bought up your URL and redirected to the website, would that bother you? Probably. So it probably does matter.
[01:00:01.320] - Liv Myers
All right. Well, thank you, Beth. Thank you, Allison, for joining us today. If you have any other questions for us about this or want to know, Okay, this was great. How do I implement this for 2026? What could this look like for my business? I know it is budget season, so people are looking at that right now. You can always reach out to us, chatterkick. Com. There is a handy button there. You can find best contact info directly, or mine or Allison's, if you have further questions for us, and we're always available on LinkedIn. So thank you, everyone, for joining us. Really appreciate it, and have a happy Halloween and a great weekend.
[01:00:35.290] - Beth Trejo
Bye, everybody. Thank you.
[01:00:36.550] - Allison Gates
Bye. Thanks.