We speak a lot about the Edelman Trust Index to our community, and always get a kick out of pointing out to our CEO colleagues that they are the LEAST trusted soruce of information about their company (source: Edelman Trust Index, March 2009)
So, we were even more interested to see the latest results from the Edelman Trust Index, that has found that trust in peers surprisingly dropped dramatically from 47% to 27%, and what this might mean to business and individuals?
Steve Rubel (who works for Edeleman) shares our sentiments when he expressed the opportunity for PR Firms in his post “Trust in Friends in Decline, Trust in Experts Rises – social media and PR still wins”
When speaking about Tom Foremski’s (ZDNet) comments that ‘these results were bad news for PR agencies’, Steve wrote;
While he’s right that social media has been a big business driver, I respectfully disagree with Tom that this is bad news for the PR agencies. It won’t make the PR industry’s case for social media budgets any less compelling. In fact, it’s awesome news. Here’s why…
Steve then went on to write about the emergence of experts, and how PR firms have been building the ‘brand’ for individuals for decades, and the PR firm was all about building the personal brand of thought leaders and experts.
Whether or not we agree with this is not the point.
The point is that the rise of the ‘curator’ is imminent. We have spoken at length about digital curation in our thoughts on the Apple iPad and our Digital Curation report – and how important this will become for influencers, and for those who need to be heard above the ‘noise’
More than ever, readers are seeking out expertise, and the need to curate the firehose of digital information and establish your expertise in a relevant field will be vital to attract these readers.
As we work to develop a product that helps ‘experts’ curate and provide a richer vein of information, we welcome these reports…as we have always attested to; reach is great, but response is greater…it seems people now respond to experts more than their friends?
What are you expert at?
