What Makes Social Media Trustworthy?

Not surprisingly, we trust content from the people we know the most. But, the venue greatly impacts the degree to which we're willing to trust that content. If my friend writes a blog post – not very skeptical. If a brand posts onto their blog, my BS detector goes into overtime. What if, instead, they took that same message and published it onto their Facebook page? As it turns out, research shows that people would trust the same content less, simply do to the switch in locations:

But, the research doesn't stop there…

There are certain features that are important to increasing the trustworthiness of social media too. First, there has to be an open dialog between both positive and negative comments; the quality of each individual comment – that also impacts how much people are willing to trust a publication. The author of that content also has to be willing to respond to his or her readers and the volume of particpation in general has consequences too. For starting out bloggers, whom are trying to earn trust, this is quite troubing, because if people aren't commenting on their blog; it makes new readers less willing trust them and their content because of it: