I have long been an absolutely huge fan of Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks. He has a short writeup in Business 2.0 titled, “Dare to be a Social Entrepreneur.”
In the article, he details how the most important characteristic of building a world-class brand is trust. Trust with your people and trust with your customers. You can create a magnificent atmosphere for your customers all you want, but if it is not communicated through your people, then it is lost.
Those words ring true both in traditional business and online. When you get right down to it, at the simplest level, that is what it’s all about. Your readers and your customers want to trust you and know that you will have their best interests at heart.
How can a business such as Starbucks create trust with it’s employees? By offering health care to everyone, including part time employees. By letting them share in the company’s successes in the form of stock options. It is not so much an expense as it is an investment in the company’s future.
Really, we do the same thing when building our own sites. Blogging is a very powerful medium because people can comment on whatever they like. That’s as long as you build their trust through your about page, or layout, or the content itself. That empowerment is crucial to everything from user generated content to website interaction.
As Schultz puts it, “Think of investments in your company as a metaphor for building a 100-story tower: You need to first lay a solid foundation to support future growth.”
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