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1-Page Summary of Trust Agents

Overview

To find out what others think of you online, do a Google search for your name and the name of your product. If there are complaints about you or your product, acknowledge them and apologize to customers.

Internet has forever changed the way we communicate and share information. Companies have realized that TV ads and billboards aren’t as effective anymore, so they’re turning to trust agents – savvy individuals who can use the internet to spread their ideas.

In this passage, you’ll learn the following: Why aggressive sales and advertising are useless in today’s society. How humanity and compassion can be used to sell products. When it may be a good idea to downplay your own product or service. How viewing life as a game can help us succeed.

Big Idea #1: The Internet has created a new kind of marketer, called trust agents.

The internet has changed the way people live their lives. Because of this, marketing techniques need to adapt. For example, there used to be a time when we trusted advertisements and salespeople. Nowadays, however, we can do our own research on Google and don’t have to trust advertisers anymore.

However, even in today’s cynical times, there are still some people who inspire trust and confidence from their customers. These individuals are called trust agents.

Trust agents are people who can build up trust. They use their expertise to share ways that technology can help you improve your life. Trust agents generally build influence on the web, such as by setting up a blog about their area of expertise and sharing it with lots of people. You could become a trust agent too, but at the end of the day they’re marketers and have business opportunities available for them because they’ve built social capital through their blogs or other means. For example, if you have loyal followers from your blog posts, you could write an e-book based on those blog posts and sell it to your followers.

Let’s look at some of the traits that make a person trustworthy.

Big Idea #2: Look at the World as a Game

Do you feel stressed out at work? How about when playing a game, like football or Monopoly? Probably not. Games seem easier than real life because of their clear goals. You should set similar clear goals in your real life too. For example, if you want to get 10,000 followers on your blog within the next year, make that goal clear and strive for it.

First, games often include both an element of competition and a sense of achievement. In real life, you should also strive to be competitive and achieve your goals. You don’t necessarily want the other players to lose but rather that you do better than them (at least in some ways). Second, games are hackable; experienced players find hidden codes/tricks that allow them to score more points. Similarly, in real life too we can figure out hacks or shortcuts which will enable us to accomplish our tasks faster/better without compromising on quality. For example, your job is like a game with rules such as “You must be at the office from 8 am-4 pm.” You can try changing this rule by suggesting something like “As long as the work gets done it shouldn’t matter where or when it happens”. If you’re successful then maybe you could start working from home (which would save commuting time).

The biggest lesson you can learn from games is that while playing them is fun, the best rewards lie in making your own game with your own rules. The real life equivalent of this would be to do something new and bold, which may seem risky but has huge potential for success. For example, Twitter discovered how well text messaging worked online by trying it out and seeing what happened.