Radical trust

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Radical trust is the confidence that any structured organization, such as a government, library, business, religion, [1] or museum, has in collaboration and empowerment within online communities. Specifically, it pertains to the use of blogs, wiki and online social networking platforms by organizations to cultivate relationships with an online community that then can provide feedback and direction for the organization's interest. The organization 'trusts' and uses that input in its management.

One of the first appearances of the notion of radical trust appears in an info graphic outlining the base principles of web 2.0 in Tim O'Reilly's weblog post "What is Web 2.0" . Radical Trust is listed as the guiding example of trusting the validity of consumer generated media.

This concept is considered to be an underlying assumption of Library 2.0. The adoption of radical trust by a library would require its management let go of some of its control over the library and building an organization without an end result in mind. (Harris, 2006). The direction a library would take would be based on input provided by people through online communities. These changes in the organization may merely be anecdotal in nature, making this method of organization management dramatically distinct from data-based or evidence based management.

In marketing, Collin Douma further describes the notion of radical trust in the article "Radical Trust" August 28, 2006 Marketing Magazine (Canada) as a key mindset required for marketers and advertisers to enter the social media marketing space. Conventional marketing dictates and maintains control of messages to cause the greatest persuasion in consumer decisions. Given the proliferation of peer-to-peer consumer reviews and other social media platforms that enable consumer generated media, marketing agencies can no longer control the skew of that information. Marketers who are creating and participating in online platforms to facilitate conversation are radically trusting the consumer to build the brand based on the experience that is most relevant to them.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Consumer</span> Users or consumers of products or services

A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or uses purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or business activities. The term most commonly refers to a person who purchases goods and services for personal use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marketing</span> Study and process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to customers

Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emphasize in advertising; operation of advertising campaigns; attendance at trade shows and public events; design of products and packaging attractive to buyers; defining the terms of sale, such as price, discounts, warranty, and return policy; product placement in media or with people believed to influence the buying habits of others; agreements with retailers, wholesale distributors, or resellers; and attempts to create awareness of, loyalty to, and positive feelings about a brand. Marketing is typically done by the seller, typically a retailer or manufacturer. Sometimes tasks are contracted to a dedicated marketing firm or advertising agency. More rarely, a trade association or government agency advertises on behalf of an entire industry or locality, often a specific type of food, food from a specific area, or a city or region as a tourism destination.

Viral marketing or viral advertising is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product mainly on various social media platforms. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way that a virus spreads from one person to another. It can be delivered by word of mouth, or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet and mobile networks.

Marketing Communications refers to the use of different marketing channels and tools in combination. Marketing communication channels focus on how businesses communicate a message to its desired market, or the market in general. It is also in charge of the internal communications of the organization. Marketing communication tools include advertising, personal selling, direct marketing, sponsorship, communication, public relations, social media, customer journey and promotion.

Reputation management, originally a public relations term, refers to the influencing, controlling, enhancing, or concealing of an individual's or group's reputation. The growth of the internet and social media led to growth of reputation management companies, with search results as a core part of a client's reputation. Online reputation management, sometimes abbreviated as ORM, focuses on the management of product and service search engine results. Ethical grey areas include mug shot removal sites, astroturfing customer review sites, censoring complaints, and using search engine optimization tactics to influence results. In other cases, the ethical lines are clear; some reputation management companies are closely connected to websites that publish unverified and libelous statements about people. Such unethical companies charge thousands of dollars to remove these posts – temporarily – from their websites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Web 2.0</span> World Wide Web sites that use technology beyond the static pages of earlier Web sites

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">User-generated content</span> Online content created by users

User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is any form of content, such as images, videos, text, and audio, that has been posted by users on online platforms such as social media, discussion forums and wikis. It is a product consumers create to disseminate information about online products or the firms that market them.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital marketing</span> Marketing of products or services using digital technologies or digital tools

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Online Public Relations refers to the use of the internet to communicate with both potential and current customers in the public realm. It functions as the web relationship influence among the cyber citizens and it aims to make desirable comments about an organization, its products and services, news viewed by its target audiences and lessen its undesirable comments to a large degree. Online public relations shows differences from traditional public relations. One of these is associated with its platforms. Compared with traditional public relations channels, the network systems used for online public relations vary from search to social platforms. In the era of digital marketing, the major online public relations tools for the public relations professionals and marketers such as content marketing, search engine optimization are the results of mixture of digital technologies and public relations. Those approaches have become the mainstream digital marketing machines and learning to take advantage of these marketing tools is an essential part of modern public relations strategies.

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Customer engagement is an interaction between an external consumer/customer and an organization through various online or offline channels. For example, Hollebeek, Srivastava and Chen's S-D logic-informed definition of customer engagement is "a customer’s motivationally driven, volitional investment of operant resources, and operand resources into brand interactions," which applies to online and offline engagement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Content marketing</span> Form of marketing focused on creating content for a targeted audience online

Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online. It is often used by businesses in order to achieve the following goals: attract attention and generate leads, expand their customer base, generate or increase online sales, increase brand awareness or credibility, and engage an online community of users. Content marketing attracts new customers by creating and sharing valuable free content. It helps companies create sustainable brand loyalty, provides valuable information to consumers, and creates a willingness to purchase products from the company in the future.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social media marketing</span> Use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for both practitioners and researchers. Most social media platforms have built-in data analytics tools, enabling companies to track the progress, success, and engagement of ad campaigns. Companies address a range of stakeholders through social media marketing, including current and potential customers, current and potential employees, journalists, bloggers, and the general public. On a strategic level, social media marketing includes the management of a marketing campaign, governance, setting the scope and the establishment of a firm's desired social media "culture" and "tone."

Virtual engagement is a metric to determine the level of affinity between a company and its customers. In today's internet economy, few things matter as much to marketers as the customer's sentiment towards the brand or the product of a given corporation. Marketing professionals are engaging prospects and moving them along the customer engagement cycle to convert them into customers and finally brand advocates.

Collaborative consumption is the set of those resource circulation systems in which consumers both "obtain" and "provide", temporarily or permanently, valuable resources or services through direct interaction with other consumers or through a mediator. It is sometimes paired with the concept of the "sharing economy". Collaborative consumption is not new; it has always existed.

Word-of-mouth marketing differs from naturally occurring word of mouth, in that it is actively influenced or encouraged by organizations. While it is difficult to truly control WOM, research has shown that there are three generic avenues to 'manage' WOM for the purpose of WOMM:

The fields of marketing and artificial intelligence converge in systems which assist in areas such as market forecasting, and automation of processes and decision making, along with increased efficiency of tasks which would usually be performed by humans. The science behind these systems can be explained through neural networks and expert systems, computer programs that process input and provide valuable output for marketers.

Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online and automate repetitive tasks.

References

  1. Schertz, Mary. Living by the Word. The Christian Century. Chicago: Sep 4, 2007. Vol. 124, (18) pg. 18-19.