Now that the world has experienced the pomp and circumstance surround Facebook’s IPO, business owners from all different verticals are now sitting around and thinking: “How can I do that?”. Let’s not kid ourselves though, a company like Facebook only comes around every ten years or so, but building a company that’s worth millions is a fair goal to set for yourself.

The way to get there is to build something powerful that people trust. Look at a company like Fab, which on an absolute tear. The business model that Fab has rolled out is genius and built entirely on trust. The type of trust that could lead to success depends on your personal business model, though.

For Fab, people have come to trust Fab for fantastic recommendations on items to purchase, things that they can’t find elsewhere. Furthermore, people are trusting Fab by subscribing to emails that suggest more things for them to purchase. If you’ve been paying attention to Fab’s growth, it’s working.

For a company like Zappos, the company started out as a great way to buy shoes. The curveball was that if you didn’t like the shoes, you could simply send them back and get a refund. People bought and bought, trusting that if they didn’t like the product, Zappos would come through. And it did. The trust that Zappos built with its customers led to its eventual $847M Amazon acquisition.

Let’s take a look at the word “trust” as a way to start modeling your own personal march to millions.

Without trust, you have nothing

Trust shows itself in all types of ways. I would argue that Instagram built a phenomenal product based entirely on trust. That trust led to Facebook dropping over $1B into purchasing the company.

What did trust have to do with Instagram’s success? There are thousands of photo sharing apps. Instagram reached a quick critical mass based on the fact that people decided to trust the company with their most intimate of moments. If those same people only casually used Instagram, it wouldn’t have been a success.

The Instagram product was so polished and built in a solid way that saw almost zero downtime, people didn’t need to use another service to share their photos. Trust me, people are very picky about what products they use to share things on Twitter and Facebook consistently. If something even slightly rubs them the wrong way, they’ll move on to something else.

One of the things that Instagram did very early on was employ a Community Manager that interacted with its users. Not only did she interact, she watched how people used the service and gave that feedback to the team. That bridge required its users to trust that the company was listening and would act accordingly.

It paid off, didn’t it?

Things people pay for requires even more trust

If you have a service that people are paying for, or buying from, then trust is even more important. The best way to build a foundation for trust is to build out a top-tier customer service division. Sure, it might only start out with one person, but you have to grow as your customer base grows.

If people have questions about your products and you take a long time to answer, they won’t trust you and will look elsewhere. Getting people’s trust is easy if you care, keeping the trust is even tougher. You have to be consistent.

I’ve spoken to so many companies who say that they have a “solid customer service plan” because they outsource and have people ready to answer questions 24/7. I’m not a fan of this model because once you outsource something you lose complete control of it. Just because you have something doesn’t mean that it’s the best. The only way to make sure your customer support is the best is by living and breathing it.

Having said that, outsourcing after hours support isn’t a horrible idea, as long as you’re constantly reviewing their work.

It’s not easy, that’s why it’s hard

People like to skip over the “hard stuff”, because it’s hard. The companies that are successful and trustworthy don’t skip the hard stuff, they make it a focus. When you focus on something with all of your heart and soul, it becomes easier. If you decided to run a mile each day it would become easy, but if you only did it weekly, it would be harder. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Ask yourself this question: “If I were a customer, would I trust my company?” Ask yourself that question multiple times a day. If you ever find yourself not being able to answer “Yes” quickly, stop what you’re doing and figure out why that is.

You could have ten engineers and a product with no bugs, but if none of them are easy to talk to, stop what you’re doing. For every feature that you build, you have to have a person who can explain that feature outwardly. If you don’t, nobody will trust you. If nobody trusts you, you’re wasting your time.

Every year, for the past ten years, the PR firm Edelman has released a trust and credibility survey called the Edelman Trust Barometer.

This year’s was recently released, but with some interesting results: Mainly that the trust in global business has risen across the board. Something surprising was that trust in all forms of media went down.

When it comes to information about a company, stock or industry analysis reports topped the list for credibility at 49% while social media bottomed out second to last — only above corporate advertising — at 19%.

Social media is about the voice of the people, like you and I, to spread by word of mouth what we believe in — whether it has to do with a brand or not. But how did the numbers fare there? Trust in information from our peers dropped by three points, from 47% to 44%, but went up in all other areas including trust in information from government officials and CEOs.

Now, it’s not a shockingly steep fall in trusting our peers, but it really raised my eyebrow. Why, in this age of Twitter and word-of-mouth advertising, would we lose trust in one another?

Losing it

Social networking site membership has picked up dramatically, with 350 million active Facebook users and 15 million active Twitter users currently, it’s no fad. But at the same time, think of all the useless noise in those numbers. Spammers, phishers and all-around sketchy scammers have found new ways of reaching an audience.

It just seems like a natural progression from the early adopters to the mainstream. But is social media dead? Not at all, it just means that this is a time of adjustment. People will find their place and figure out how to filter their feeds to gain what they value the most.

Not only that, but take a look back at 2009 — foreclosures, bank failures, unemployment. Many unemployed turned to affiliate marketing and similar practices surrounded by skepticism to earn a living. Some even contributed to the pollution that many outlets on the Internet are facing. So, I’m not really surprised.

Keep your head up though, it seems that we’ve taken quite a bit away from our recent experiences.

For the first time ever, the survey showed that trust, honest practices and transparency topped the list of things we look for in corporate reputation while financial returns showed last. How did this change from the past? Well, back in 2006, before the financial crisis hit — and pre-Twitter — quality products and services, as well as strong financial performance, topped the list.

What does it mean to you?

If you’re a small — or large — business owner, step back and take a look at whether or not your social media strategy has worked for you. What’s the feedback like? Has it changed your bottom line? Maybe you should also consider a voice from higher up — your CEO, that is. According to the survey, information coming from a CEO went up in credibility nine points in the US, from 17% to 26%.

If you’re a consumer, find ways to filter out the noise. There are many tools out there to do this, some are features within your social network and some are third-party apps. Whatever you need to do, do it — sacrificing such a fountain of good information is not an option! Once you groom your feed into something you can count on, and trust, be selective when letting something else in. If you find a bad egg, don’t be shy to use the block button. It’s all about what you make it.

If you’re part of the media, work hard to gain trust. Check, and recheck your sources. Don’t be spammy. Engage your audience. Most of all, give back to the community — reciprocate however is appropriate. It’s not just social media that has fallen, but TV, radio and other types of media have lost trust as well. So take all of it into consideration moving forward.

Not an end-all, be-all

Don’t be discouraged. As a matter of fact, take the survey with a grain of salt really. Keep in mind it is just a survey and it has its flaws. Remember this:

“The 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer survey sampled 4,875 informed publics in two age groups (25-34 and 35-64). All informed publics met the following criteria: college-educated; household income in the top quartile for their age in their country; read or watch business/news media at least several times a week; follow public policy issues in the news at least several times a week.”

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