Since writing my May Carnival of Trust post (click here for the post), several others have commented on Web Strategy by Jeremiah’s post suggesting that people do not trust bloggers. Of course, the real point of the studies Owyang cites is that people do not trust an unspecified blogger as much as their family or other unspecified news sources. As I said before, that should be an expected result and it shows good judgment. But it is easy to get caught up in the survey and miss the fact that people trust "their" bloggers — those that they have entered a conversation with, read regularly and, therefore, have developed a trust with. Several others have picked up on Owyang’s post and the surveys, with similar comments. I am posting them in an Addendum to avoid breaking the Carnival of Trust ten post rule (although I will update that post with a link to this one). Here are some of the commentaries:
- Kevin O’Keefe at LexBlog and Real Lawyers Have Blogs says that he must be trusted, there is no explanation for his site traffic and speaking engagements except trust — click here for Kevin’s post:
People put their butts on the line at least once a month asking me to speak in front of large groups. Just received invites to speak at the Texas Bar Annual Conference and to keynote at a Wisconsin Bar Association Conference. I don’t know any of the people who invite me. They’re reading my blog. If they didn’t trust what I was writing, would I get an invite?
Law firms, from solo’s to the largest in the country, call me for advise on blogging. The same firms subscribe to LexBlog’s blog service. No other way those folks know me than my blogging.
And for the record, Kevin is wrong, he is pretty funny. But he is correct in that the legal community would not keep reading his blog for the humor alone, it is for his insights coupled with his delivery.
- Kevin also cited Bill Ives at the Fast Foward Blog who had similar comments, arguing that blogs (as opposed to MSM sources) require more work on the part of readers to determine whether they should trust the blogger and on the part of the blogger to cultivate and earn that trust — click here for the post:
Blogs are conversations and they do put more responsibility on the reader to judge the material than say, the New York Times, with its army of fact checkers. But even the NYT gets it wrong some times and everyone has some type of bias. Blogs are also a medium. The NYT also has many of them. Do you trust a magazine article more than television? In each case, the answer would be it depends on the person. This is not say that communication channels do not have their own properties. Naturally, seeing someone on TV gives you more information than a magazine article. Blogs are usually the voice of a single person or a group of individuals and not an editorial board. However, a blogger has to build the trust of his or her audience by being consistent and transparent as the first commenter wrote above.