Let's Break Down Know, Like, and Trust for Marketing

You know you hear all of the time, social media is all about building up your know, like, and trust factor. The know, like, and trust factor (KLT) is essential for effective marketing. But what does that really mean in the world of social media marketing? For most content creators, it's something that we know we should be doing by sharing our behind-the-scenes content, our values, and our personality a little bit more to build trust with other humans on the other side of the screen.

But we want to really breakdown what Know, Like and Trust (or KLT) mean so you can better incorporate it into your marketing. We used the article Begin With Trust by Frances Frei and Anne Morriss. While the article is about leadership, it translates really well into social media because so often we are using social media to be a thought leader and to lead our communities. The aspects that go into building trust inside of a company definitely translate perfectly to building that trust within your community online. According to the article, the three factors that build know, like and trust (or KLT, as we like to call it) are authenticity, logic, and empathy. Frei and Morriss call authenticity, empathy and logic, the triangle of creating trust.

So let’s break it down so you can build stronger connections—and sales—online.

What is Know, Like and Trust (KLT) factor?

The Know, Like, and Trust (KLT) Factor is the foundation of effective social media marketing. It’s the journey your audience takes to build a genuine connection with your brand: one that inspires them to trust you enough to engage, follow, and eventually buy from you.

When people know you, they become familiar with your brand. When they like you, they resonate with your values and personality. And when they trust you, they believe in your ability to deliver on your promises. Together, these elements create a powerful framework for turning followers into loyal customers.

We’ve hosted a live session to help you understand and implement the KLT Factor in your marketing strategy. You can watch the recorded video below:

‍

‍

The Foundation of KLT

Building the Know, Like, and Trust (KLT) Factor is a journey, but the ultimate goal is clear: trust. Trust is what transforms casual followers into loyal customers, and it’s the hardest yet most rewarding connection to achieve. In fact, research shows that 88% of consumers worldwide consider trust a crucial factor when deciding to purchase from a brand.

Without trust, even the most visible and charismatic creators and brands struggle to achieve long-term success. So, how do you build trust in a way that resonates authentically with your audience?

We can look to insights from Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss, authors of the article Begin with Trust. Originally written for leaders in organizational settings, their framework also applies perfectly to building trust in social media marketing. Frei and Morriss describe the three pillars of trust as:

• Authenticity
• Logic
• Empathy

These three elements form what they call the Triangle of Trust, the foundation for fostering genuine relationships.

Let’s dive into how the Triangle of Trust empowers the KLT Factor and explore actionable ways you can apply these principles in your social media marketing.

‍

Authenticity

Authenticity is the first part of this triangle. People really want to know that they're interacting with the real you. If they feel like there's a disconnect between the person they're interacting with and the person that they really think of as the real you, they're going to lose trust in you.

To build authenticity so you can build that know, like and trust factor is making sure that people feel that what you share online and the personality you're putting out there, the live streams that you're doing, the photos you're taking, is what they would experience if they met you in real life.

We consume so much content online these days, that when it comes down to actually being able to discern who is authentic, who has intention behind their posts and who's just posting because they feel like they need to have a presence, your community knows the difference.

Your followers need to know what you know, how you feel, and what you think in order to be able to create an image of who you are. Share all aspects of yourself to align properly and ask yourself if the professional side of yourself is the same person who shows up around my friends and family? Of course, you're creating boundaries around what you share and what you don't share and that's an important part about social media, but it's those values and that personality aspect and the tone of what you're sharing that can create authenticity more than anything else.

If you feel like there is a huge disconnect between your online self and your real self, ask yourself why. Is this an actual boundary that needs to be made that's serving you, that's making sure that you're professionally keeping your business and your personal life separated in the way I want? Or, are there things from your personal life, your personality and your values that you can bring into social media more?

The more you can bring that human authentic side, the more your followers are going to remember there's a real person on the other side of the screen and people buy from people. We don't buy from logos!Leading a community also demands you let people know that they can be vulnerable and they can be themselves as much as you're being yourself. This is going to lead to people actually wanting to engage with your social media so much more.

When you share that vulnerable side of yourself you give your followers permission to respond in an authentic way. That authentic response from one follower might be the spark that you need to get that meaningful social interaction that the algorithms are looking for and people want to have an authentic connection.

Be the example of authenticity and vulnerability for your followers. Inspire and allow your followers to share that vulnerable side and then, they'll be able to expand the information and value of your entire social media page. If your followers are sharing an experience that they had, you get a lot of different voices going into your social media community.

The more diversity of ideas that we are that we're able to come into contact with, the more likely it is that we're going to be able to expand our knowledge and expand our life. Allowing your followers to share their diverse ideas adds value to your page because people get to think about different things a little bit differently than perhaps they would have if they didn't have that discussion with other people interested in your subject area. Allow people to open up and share their ideas by exemplifying that yourself, authentically sharing your own ideas and you'll get that engagement rate up.

Creating a true community means making sure that you have these boundaries set up so that inclusion of all of these different diverse ideas and voices are in a safe space. Thinking about this, make sure that if you have like a Facebook group or on your Twitter page, you remind yourself what's allowed and what's not allowed to promote a healthy and engaging discussion rather than it just being a place that people are afraid to show themselves. Set up those community standards, remind people of why they are joining this community, and what you want it to be all about.

When we're able to forget about what the critics say about us and when we're able to tune in to being authentically ourselves, that'll show in our social media because we're not afraid to repel the people who won't connect with our message. Set up those boundaries, forget about what the critics will say and stop trying to please everyone. Authentically please the people who you know your product or service can help.

How do you do this? You want to pay less attention to what other people outside your audience are saying and pay more attention to the followers you have. Show up for the followers you have with a mission that you feel so convinced is going to help them out and they'll be able to feel that authentic spirit from you and they'll be more likely to engage.

‍

Logic

The next section of this triangle of trust is the logic section. You want to be reminding yourself that people are asking themselves every single day:

• Do I trust this person's logic?
• Do I trust that they are going to get me results?
• Do I trust that this is the right company to solve my pain point?

They are trusting your judgment because you are able to clearly outline and describe what pain point the person has and if you're able to describe what pain point they have better than they are describing it in their head, you have logically made that bond so much better.

Think about the clarity that you're actually describing these problems and make sure you're remembering logic relies on you getting in your follower's heads, making sure that they know you are the logical choice to purchase from because you position yourself as an expert in your industry.

‍

Empathy

The last section of the triangle of trust here that can be built into the know, like and trust factor is empathy. Do you care about them? People want to be reminded that other people out there care about their success. You can be a company that provides that feeling for your followers.

Being able to out-care your competition these days gives you a huge edge. Often in the past, we could create a product or service and it could be differentiated on the features that we have or could be differentiated because that product didn't even exist in the marketplace. While there's still room for that, it's pretty hard to do these days.  The biggest differentiating factor these days is caring and it's that people and customer service factor.

‍

Creating a Balanced Triangle of Trust

Now, you know you have skeptics in your audience at all times. Not everyone in your audience is ready to buy right away. Oftentimes in your social media audience, you'll have cold leads who are just starting to discover your brand and then you'll have hot leads who are ready to buy right away and warm leads, everybody in between, who's just in that consideration phase, trying to decide what product or service within the industry is right for them.

Within all these segments, there are skeptics. You really want to focus on the type of content you can create to strengthen that area of the triangle that you're weakest in, in order to convince those skeptics a lot faster.

‍Again, the triangle is authenticity, logic, and empathy and you need to identify what message in your social media marketing is not hitting on one of those three things evenly in order to get that skeptic convinced that you're a trustworthy brand and trust is the buying power of social media.

‍Ask yourself what part is making these people skeptical and focus on improving that. For example, if you are a course creator, you could ask yourself:

• Has this person purchased a product or service within the industry before and they've been a little bit burned?
• Have they purchased a course and it didn't lead to the results that they were promised?
• Did they purchase a course and perhaps didn't find the time to actually complete it, so they're a little afraid to spend money on a new one?

Try to get into the head of your audience and make sure that you are not misrepresenting any of your promises of the outcomes your product or service is going to get for your followers. That's the authenticity part. If you feel like perhaps your skeptics are the ones in your audience saying, "You know what? I've tried this before it hasn't worked," go ahead and think about how you can authentically show up more to convince them how you're different, why you care more.

If you are wondering if you lack empathy, ask yourself is in life are you thinking about putting your own needs first? In the sense that you put social media posts out there, but you don't want to go and reply to the comments. Perhaps if you're not replying to comments all the time and if you're finding you're not even putting engaging posts out there asking your followers questions, perhaps the empathy part of the triangle is the one that you need to work on.

Can you actually get in there and say, "You know what? Is my audience skeptical because they're questioning not getting results because I haven't logically laid out the steps that they need to get there?"

Or, you haven't provided any value that they've taken action on to get a smaller result? This is a great strategy on social media. It's to put something out into the world that gets a smaller result for them. A tip that they can take action on right away that day, that's going to get them a result, that's going to build trust and they're going to logically be like, "Okay, this company knows what they're doing. They've already been able to give me a result. I'm more likely to purchase from them in the future.

"If you're wondering what kind of skeptic that you have here, go back and look at some of the comments or the DMs or the emails in your support inbox and try to tease out, is empathy, authenticity or logic that you could really start to improve?

For example, if you want to improve logic, you want to speak to things like data and testimonials. That story of being able to say, "Look at what other followers felt before they purchased my product or service. They were nervous just like you." Create that community vibe and let people know they are not alone in their feelings.

Then, go ahead and share data. People love to make sure that logically they are purchasing based on real results. Share the data that people are actually finding when they use your product and service to improve that logic aspect.Logic also goes into communication. You know the bread and butter of social media is copywriting. Can you write compelling, fun to read copy in a logical format that leads your followers from becoming aware of your brand all the way through deciding to purchase from you?

Other things that you can do to improve your communication, which subsequently improves your logic aspect, is to take your audience on a journey. We all know that our brains really like this idea of tension and then a pay-off. All great stories are made up of a buildup to this tension moment, to this climax of being able to be like, oh my goodness, are they going to win or lose? What's going to happen? Then there's a payoff of getting to know that happy ending. Think about how you can position in your social media status updates in that same arc and it's going to make them a lot more fun for people to read.

Other things that you can start to think about here is if you feel really jumbled and you're feeling like you're not putting a clear message out there, there's this idea that will actually want to start out with your main point at the top, so don't bury the lead in your writing. Start out with that main attention-grabbing hook and then build down to a base of evidence.

Make sure that you're not burying your biggest differentiating factors of who you are as a company within like a couple of paragraphs. Start out at the top and build the evidence underneath.If you're not sure which angle of the triangle of trust you need to work on, the original article shared some questions that you can answer to determine which area you can work on. These things are questions about are you honest with yourself?

1. Are you honest about your own ambitions or are you ignoring what really inspires you and really lights that fire underneath you? If you feel like you're ignoring those inspirational sides of yourself and you're not being as ambitious as you could be, authenticity might be the problem that you need to work on, so get in touch with that more authentic side of yourself so that you can project that to your followers.
2. Is it something that you feel like maybe empathy is your problem, ask yourself, "Do I attend to my own needs? Do I actually acknowledge the needs of my own self-care and of my own boundaries?" If you don't, perhaps empathy is the thing that you need to work on so you can project that to your followers.
3. Last, if you feel like perhaps logic might be the issue, you can ask yourself, "Do you lack conviction in your own ideas in your head?" If you answer, "Yes," to that question, it's likely your followers feel like you lack conviction in the copy you're putting out to them. Remember diversity in all communication to your followers and making sure you're authentically communicating these ideas, even though that word is so overused these days in marketing, is truly the way that you can gain a lot of different market share and increase your know, like and trust factor.

Your community is looking for the know, like and trust factor on social media. But when we break it down into this triangle, it's a lot easier to actually work on each area rather than just thinking about it as a concept.

The know, like, and trust factor (KLT) is more than a marketing buzzword, it’s the key to building lasting relationships with your audience. Start by focusing on authenticity, logic, and empathy and create stronger connections with your audience (and turn followers into loyal customers!).