After writing a post for the local business blog addressing the decades-long decline in attention and trust, we’ve seen ‘post-truth’ named word of the year and a harsh light cast on sharing fake news, especially via Facebook.
So, I wanted to reinforce a few points here:
- Attention is scarce. Our online media time is more social than news. Pew has good data, particularly on the ‘marketplace of ideas’ (see #5). Think about how you can be remarkable, because that’s the path to attention.
- We trust people like ourselves. Peer voices have been trusted online for awhile; we all basically trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. The good news is this can scale. Make sure your organization looks and sounds like the customer.
- Businesses and NGOs can lead today in ways that media and government cannot. While Americans basically don’t trust institutions to do what’s right, we really don’t trust media and government. This is not just Amazon’s opportunity to drop ads. Organizations that can connect and show a way forward will win.
What do you think? Where are we heading in 2017? Please get in touch.