The C-Suite Digital Handbook

DailyBytes: #Trust Summit – HubSpotRecap-SocialSearch

Today’s Daily Bytes starts off with some highlights from Friday morning’s Trust Summit at the Harvard Club in New York City.  It also includes the collaborated thoughts from Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group on the developments in social search this week.  Finally, as it is the end of the week, there is an overview of HubSpot’s Top 5 Inbound Marketing Stories of the Week.

The Trust Summit

On Friday morning at the Harvard Club in New York City, thought leaders on trust in business came together in a panel discussion attended by 300 people.  The panel moderated ably by Robin Fray Carey, Co-Founder of Social Media Today, included the newer and more mature voices on the subject of “trust”.

Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, co-authors of the newly published Trust Agents represented the new voices while Charles Green and David Maister, co-authors with Robert M. Galford of The Trusted Advisor represented the more mature voices. 

Together they were a symphony.  And while they represented different generations, they brought everyone back to the values of what it means to be human beings engaged in business – it is delivering products and services of value to our customers.  If you figure out what matters for your customer, the profits will follow.

There were a number of great sound bites that came from the breakfast meeting – many of them captured in the Tweet stream as many tweeted insights and memorable quotes in the august Harvard Hall.  Here are some of the tweet-bytes:

@benjaminstrong:  “what if you put your most disgruntled employee as CMO?” @chrisbrogan #trustsummit

@megwheel: Doctrine of competition, over commerce, is killing our economy. look at Detriot-treated customers&suppliers as competetiors. #trustsummit

@fredabramson:  Purpose of companies is to serve society. #trustsummit

@D_Elms:  Julien Smith “The reasons we trust people have always been the same ,…That’s why trust is a system.” #trustsummit

@mattingsley:  If people don’t *like* working with you, you’re going to have to do all that other marketing rubbish -David Maister

@suigenerisnyc:  Be willing to make mistakes in social media. Risk is worth it for the reward. @Julien #trustsummit

@sparklingruby:  How interested are you in other people? “The world is filled with people-you have to develop relationship skills” #trustsummit David Maister

@michaeljoel:  #TrustSummit Metrics v relationships? @chrisbrogan: Relationships provide yield over time. We need more productive numbers not more number

@DonVanDuren:  #TrustSummit Metrics v relationships? @chrisbrogan: Relationships provide yield over time. We need more productive numbers not more number

@iamparris:  Charlie Green: we under rate the risk of not doing the right thing. #trustsummit

@PinkIncDesign:  #trustsummit success = good idea stick with it through thick & thin. Build trust. Care. Be Genuine.

@mattsnod:  Charles Green: Doing the wrong is less risky than not doing the right thing. #trustsummit

@DonVanDuren:  #trustsummit. Green: Doctrine of competitive advantage is anti-ethical. It’s only about ourselves. Must connect with customers/partners.

@CatherinVentura:  Moneyback guarantee: You don’t have to convince your clients you’re perfect, just that you’re really trying. Maister @ #trustsummit

@missmotorcade:  In advisory businesses (design, accounting, PR, etc…), providers should always give unconditional guarantees (David Meister) #trustsummit

@markb:  Oh my god. @chrisbrogan just quoted Vanilla Ice. “Stop. Collaborate. And listen.” Brilliant. #trustsummit

@amandarykoff:  hat about advertising? As Andy Sernovitz said: “If you have to do advertising, you’ve got a sh*$%y” product.” #trustsummit

@burnspatterson:  can you be both trusted and trusting? How interested in other people are you genuinely?

@14str8:  ust identified the trait that I admire most about @chrisbrogan – he is always quick to acknowledge others. #trustsummit

@DrewCM:  A diversity of measures is important. A measurement is a basis for discussion. Get the dialogue going. David Maister #trustsummit

@sparklingruby:  “Buddhist capitalism”- Serve others without demand for immediate gratification. Higher ROI will result. #trustsummit

@Kona_Luseni:  #trustsummit; gems from Julien Smith – I urge you to be skeptical of drinking the SM koolaid. It’s an experiment. It it fails wipe it clean.

@laureni:  “customer service is more marketing than marketing is marketing.” @chrisbrogan at #trustsummit

@fredabramson:  RT @chrisbrogan: @fredabramson – be the priest, build the church See Trust Agents: Agent Zero). #trustsummit (re service professionals)

And one final note, one of the most striking points of this morning’s discussion was Charles Green pointing out that the competitive advantage model propagated at Harvard Business School for the last 50 years is anti-ethical as it views people as a means to an end.  As an MBA student at Harvard in the mid-80’s, I was swept up in the competitive strategy movement pioneered by Michael Porter.  It made sense from a purely analytical point of view.  However, through the years, the analytical prism always rubbed against my undergraduate education at Georgetown University, a Jesuit university, which always emphasized the “cura personalis” – the care of each person in a community.  Today at the Trust Summit, I experienced a moment of reconciliation in my educational foundations and I fully embrace the trust economy.

Top 5 Inbound Marketing Stories of the Week:  Educate, Enlighten, Entertain

This week’s treasure trove of articles includes a profile of an attorney who has grown his business through a blog that educates, enlightens and entertains, 50 blogging lessons, the 3 realities of social media (covered here in Daily Bytes on Monday), SMB lessons from the Blog World Expo last week and insights on how little Google is paying attention to bad links.

Social Search:  Customers Influence Search Results Over Brands

In yesterday’s Daily Bytes, I focused on Marissa Mayer, VP of Product Develop and Consumer Experiences for Google, at the Web 2.0 Summit talking about Google’s social search pact with Twitter.  This was a week of social search news, with Bing and Twitter also forging a similar pact.  Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group collaborated on this post to discuss the implications of these pacts and what it can mean for businesses.  It is a lot to take in, but it certainly points out that if your business has been avoiding Twitter, it is time to start paying attention as it will soon become an important component of search results on your business.