Have you ever asked yourself why do prospect trust one digital brand and not the other? Have you ever wondered why folks seem to ‘feel’ your brand is trustworthy but couldn’t quite explain? Short answer? Well, it’s not that simple. In digital branding, we use combination of behavior and cognitive psychology, market research, creativity, User Experience, User Interface design and a few good strategies to help expedite the ‘trust building process’. Why should you care? Because by definition, the faster you can build digital trust, the faster your target prospect (whether recruit, prospect or partner) can truly evaluate what your substance! 

1. Leverage Your Client’s Reputation

Post the logos or names of your top clients in a prominent portion of your web site or digital storefront. Buyers are more likely to accelerate their purchase decision if they see that larger companies than theirs, or of the same size, have purchased your products or services. 

2. Use Recognizable Terminology 

Don’t invent new lines of business or product categories that are not widely accepted or pre-tested for your target audience. Uncommon terminology could cause buyers to overlook services being offered and skip to the next available choice with recognizable terms. 

3. Logic First, Display Second 

Creating a strong resonance through prominent branding is critical, but B2B buyers use logic to filter out advertising noise. Maintain a 60/40 balance between making bold statements on your homepage and arresting design visuals (60%) to gain trust. Craft the navigation and user experience to be both intuitive and easy to follow with clear content that directs the user where they want to go. 

4. Be Real. Avoid Skepticism 

Place your corporate HQ address on the front of the site. Every so often, users seek to validate your legitimacy and when they only see an email form or an email and a telephone number, they may assume something is fishy. 

5. Beef up industry expertise

Prominently display recognized industry association membership icons & logos to instantly convey your corporate citizenship in your community of expertise. 

6. Leadership Profiles 

The leadership page isn’t optional. It is one of the most frequently visited pages with B2B clients. Leadership profiles are a great opportunity to show off your managers, instantly relate credibility and build human trust. Profile shots should be consistent and professional to create a seamless, positive impression. 

7. Good SEO Equals More Recognition 

Create high-reputation backlinks to your web site. This SEO best practice will establish credibility within Google search algorithms so that your business is on the first search results page. Establishing backlinks to other credible sites such as large businesses, news sites, and trade publications vicariously lends credibility to your own site. 

About the Author: Mr. Gal Borenstein is a recognized expert and strategist in digital branding, marketing, social media, advertising, online reputation management and public relations matters. He is the founder and CEO of the Borenstein Group, a top digital marketing communications firm in the Washington DC metropolitan area that serves clients locally and globally. He is the author of new business leadership book, ACTIVATE! How to Power Up Your Brand to Dominate Your Market, Crush Your Competition & Win in the Digital Age, available in premiere bookstores and on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles and Apple’s iBooks. Gal has published his first business leadership book What Really Counts for CEOs in 2009. Since then, Borenstein has been featured as a guest commentator on CNN and Fox Business News on strategic marketing and branding issues, as well as, been one of the top digital content contributors to influential business leadership social media networks such as LinkedIn, PR Week’s The Hub, Advertising Age’s BtoB magazine, HR.Com, Smart CEO Magazine, DuctTapeMarketing.com and others. 

He can be reached byemail at gal@borensteingroup.com or @galborenstein on Twitter. 

Presently, I am leading a Touchstone Theatre initiative called Festival UnBound, Celebrating out 21st. Century Village, planned for October of 2019.  This is the most difficult thing with which I’ve ever ever been involved. 

Once we were two Bethlehems, and it was 100 years ago North and South realized the importance of working together and became “one” (and, we’re still working on it). Here’s an image of the two Bethlehems, in “the good ol’ days”, when “working together” may seem to us a remarkably less complex challenge, but back then it was as “crazy hard” as anything one could imagine. 

To create a Festival of original art envisioning the future of our community, we’ve got to get EVERYBODY working together, collaborating to imagine what kind of future we want for this city called “Bethlehem”–through dialogue and the creation of original art. 

The problem is, more and more, as we sit down and talk with folks, it becomes apparent that everything affects everything else.  Let’s say you’re homeless. One might be homeless because one is dysfunctionally dyslexic.  One might be dysfunctionally dyslexic because the educational system didn’t recognize it and teach good coping mechanisms.  The educational system may have failed you because you were living in a poor community and there weren’t funds for such things.  There weren’t funds for such things because the political system was too combative to achieve anything but band-aid solutions.  Combativeness got out of hand because of entrenched, old power structures and a media that feeds on sensationalism in order to sell information to the general public.  And… I could go on FOREVER!  Everything’s connected.  Still, there you are, homeless!   

Now, how does one make a work of art, many works of art, out of that that will help transform the community? 

It’s tempting to despair at our social dysfunctionality, but if we look at the bigger picture, it’s clear we’re making great progress! Here’s a fascinating article called: A History of Global Living Conditions in 5 Charts.  The conclusion of this article states succinctly: “The successful transformation of our living conditions (is) possible only because of collaboration. Such a transformation would be impossible for a single person to accomplish. It is our collective brains and our collaborative effort that are needed for such an improvement.” 

An NGO for the United Nations recently wrote: “If community is to further the progress of society in its own right – complementing the roles played by individuals and social institutions–a much more expansive conception of community life must be actively embraced. New patterns of action and interaction will have to be built, and new forms of relationship and association constructed. Experimentation, trial and error, and a robust process of learning about the nature of lasting cultural change will be vital – all of which require effort and no small amount of sacrifice… Movement in this direction will require qualitatively different approaches to decision-making than those adopted in the past.” 

Festival (un)Bound is one of those “qualitatively different approaches”, and that’s the task I find myself facing here in the middle of 2018. 

BIO: Bill received his B.A. in English Literature from Lehigh University and his M.F.A. in Acting/Directing from the Dallas Theatre Centre of Trinity University. He studied mime with Paul Curtis of The American Mime Theatre, co-founded the People’s Theatre Company in 1977 and later co-founded Touchstone Theatre in 1981 where he was Producing Director until 1990. 

While our troops are out defending our country, who is defending them from cyber attacks.  Meet Rob Carey, VP of Cybersecurity and Cloud Solutions for General Dynamics IT Defense Division.  Rob’s career has spanned military service in the US Navy as well as supporting the Department of Defense as a federal government employee and now a contractor.  He is responsible for developing and delivering cybersecurity, cloud and UC offerings to clients within the Department of Defense. Prior to this role, he worked for CSC and Vencore leading operational business units supporting the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community.

Rob’s mission is clear, his story is defend those who are defending us.   Join us in today’s discussion when Rob addresses two of the most important things our county, industry and corporate can do to ensure not only the safety of our troops but the safety of our entire country.

The team at #MasterYourStory would like to thank rob for stoping by to talk with us and for his service to the safety of our country.