So back to Chris’ post, Depends How You Define Value. In this post Chris boldly states the value he finds in having a large Twitter following. You might not think this to be bold on the surface, but he stated it in contrast to Seth Godin’s assertion that there is little value in a bullhorn. The point here is not so much the argument over large followings versus smaller, more intimate one’s, but about Chris’ transparency with his readers.

Chris does a great job of building trust with his readers. One way in which he does this is actually one that on the surface may seem negative. He creates controversy sometimes by stating what he believes, even when it is not the popular opinion. Some might think that having a less-than-popular opinion about something might be cause to keep it to oneself, in order to prevent alienating anyone. However, being honest, when it’s not easy, or popular is one of the best way’s to build trust.

Transparency is an important part of building trust and will certainly become a reoccurring theme in this community. Being transparent can be risky, whether you are marketing yourself as an individual, or building social media relationships as a business, to consumers. Transparency is about honesty and being human. These are two very critical elements that are required for building trust. Social media is a great interface for business to start developing a human aspect to their brand. People prefer to buy from other people, from humans, not from companies. The human element in marketing and social media is so important to building relationships.

Hubspot used a real-world scenario that could quite possible be true. They lied to their followers to make them think they had received a cease and desist letter from a lawyer, forcing them to shutdown their Inbound Marketing University (IMU). Then they requested that in order to help them, people could sign-up for a new/temporary group they setup on Ning. There were a lot of aspects of the whole thing left unclear, but it turns out, that was the point. The game involved clues that would eventually lead to understanding what really happenned – which of course was that the whole thing was a game. The game involved them developing this new Ning community, they had a new mascot, clues sent people to Twitter to communicate as well, sharing what they found, and spreading the word to their own network.

Some people complained about the IMU site being down, and how losing access to those services was in some way damaging to them. Then others responded that hey, those were free services, so you can’t complain if they are unavailable for a period of time. I think this whole discussion is completely beside the point. The issue here is trust. The issue is how and why people were deceived, and what relationship damage that cost, both between Hubspot and their community, as well as between the game participants and their own network of relationships that they may have recruited to help “save” IMU.

Discussions began evolving on Twitter from users who felt betrayed and had a lost sense of trust with Hubspot. This was the situation that spawned the start of the @IMUGlobalPR Twitter account. I wanted to try and give the frustrated users a central place to bring the conversation together. It was also simply a social media experiment to see how easily I could start from scratch and develop some new relationships. As this process continued it became clear to me that there was space here for a community around the issue of trust. Specifically as it relates to online marketing, social media, and relationship building.

That was the inspiration for this community. So I thought I would open the first discussion to around this topic. I think it is clear at this point that many people have lost trust in Hubspot, so to keep this positive, let’s focus the conversation more around what Hubspot can do now, to rebuild that trust. One suggestions of my own was to attempt another ARG, but this time, let people know it is a game. Creating a scenario that is engaging and interesting enough to draw in a crowd, without having to deceive them first. This was a first of its kind, not just for Hubspot, for the concept in general. So a less than successful first run is not the end of the world, but it is important to rebuild that lost trust. Ensuring their audience that they will work hard not to breach that trust again.