Today, I gave a social media presentation to the American Institute of Architects and didn’t get a chance to elaborate on a finding that I found fascinating regarding a finding about “continuous conversation”. So I figured, I’d blog about it . During my portion of the presentation (powerpoint here), I cited a report published every year called the Edelman Trust Barometer. It is a survey conducted every year to measure consumer trust in businesses, government and other industries. Within that report there’s a finding that concludes, “Regardless of channel or voice, the majority needs to hear a message 3-5 times to believe it.

Whoa! Did that just blow your mind like it did mine!?! 60% of people need to hear information about a company 3-5 times before they believe it. If you deconstruct this a bit more, you can see how as a company, while you may be marketing 1 message (or shouting it, if you will) in order to really be effective, people must here this message echoed before they really believe it.

Think of this from a more integrated communication strategy (e.g. online, print, face to face). If your message or information needs to be reiterated, multiple times, by multiple sources- employing a strategy that reaches out across multiple mediums is essential. The long-term goal would be that people will promote/discuss that message or information for you with others (who you could call your “cheerleaders”).

There are a lot of elements that people evaluate in order view someone as trustful. However, I found this finding somewhat of a “Seinfeld eye-opener”, that illustrates you should never rely on 1 communication channel to achieve a goal. Things are all integrated and it should all be consistent (golden rule: consistency facilitates recognition). Given these findings, I believe that utilizing social media (which is a set of communication tools) you can reiterate that message in several areas in order to fulfill that 3-5 time requirement in order for people to believe it.
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