Building Trust Within Your Online Community
(This is a guest post by Chris Hill – you can find him online here & here.)
If you lead a ministry that mainly takes place online, it’s important to understand how to build trust through your social networks. Building trust face to face with one another is something a leader can do naturally because we’ve had our entire lives to put it into practice. However, with our changing culture, it’s important to incorporate new methods of trust-building online.
Here are a few simple strategies you can put into practice using the word TEACHER for memorization:
Be Teachable: If you think you can’t learn anything from your community, you’ll never earn their trust. Leaders must continue to learn from whom they lead. The more you know about your group and the more knowledge you receive from them, the tighter the community will become.
Be Engaging: Ask questions. When you blog, end it with questions for your community to answer. If you don’t intentionally prompt or encourage conversation within your community, don’t expect it to happen. While it may be tough to walk away from a physical (face to face) meeting or lecture, it’s pretty simple to close your browser or move on to other things. There is an higher level of anonymity that exists online.
Be Authentic: As Seth Godin says: “Authenticity, for me, is doing what you promise, not being who you are.” Breaking promises to a member of your online community will yield the same result as it would in any kind of community. Make sure your schedule allows you to follow through with your commitments before you make them.
Be Credible: Become a resource for your community based on your talents, passions, or expertise while making sure the info you’re sharing is correct. Offer links to the information you are currently learning and share the knowledge you’ve gained from any research you’ve done online.
Be Honest: Honesty has to be the number one theme of whatever tool you use to communicate with others online. Even in the smallest things like your avatar pic or bio, you need to express honesty. We are a culture that values transparency and easily identifies the fraudulent. Proverbs 12:22 says, “The Lord detests lying lips, but delights in men who are truthful.”
Be Enabling: An important role as leaders is to enable others to take on leadership roles of their own. Jesus gave us a great example of this in his leadership of the disciples. He didn’t lead by managing, he led by enablling. When you enable others, you are empowering them by building up their confidence in their own gifts and talents. Lifechurch.tv does a great job of this by encouraging current members of their online life groups to eventually create and lead their own group.
Be Respectful: Lose the snark. I know we are an ironic culture who rewards sarcasm, but as Christians we are called to be set apart. Your online community may think you’re witty, but what you’re actually doing is isolating yourself with every sarcastic or negative comment you make. People will not easily trust you or confide in you if they fear you’ll put them down or make a joke of their current situation.
How are you currently building trust within your community online?
Losing the snark is hard, but what a great point! I know I don't personally trust a sarcastic person, and I see people keeping their distance if I am snarky.
A great post, Chris … Love the last point in particular. I think there's too much of a desire to be "funny" or edgy in the way we communicate sometimes to the point where it's just not helpful.
Thanks Nick. The last one has been heavy on my heart lately because sarcasm and "humor" is usually my easy way out of an uncomfortable conversation. Then I look back and realize that I missed out on an opportunity to go deeper with someone conversationally or learn something from them……or more importantly, I missed the chance to share Christ with them.
I build trust by joining the community. Recently I joined the forum on ChurchCrunch. Its a great site to stay on top of techie church stuff. Its funny but just like you guys say same rules apply to online communities as local communities. Not sure why its such a hard concept to understand.
[...] Building Trust Within Your Online Community by Chris Hill [...]
Some great points here! The "snark" or sarcasm issue is a big one with online communication, but needs to be watched carefully. It is so different with face-to-face communication where you can gague the reactions on the faces of others, it´s much harder to gague reactions in cyber-space, but easier to offend! Respect!