TRUST SIGNALS by Scott Baradell is essential reading for public relations professionals who are stuck in the old world of media relations, as well as marketers, salespeople, and C-suite executives who need to make sure they get value for communications money. Baradell, founder of the PR firm Idea Grove, subtitles his book “Brand Building in a Post-Truth World.” His argument is that, due to the decline of mainstream media and other sources of authority, the PR practitioner’s main task is to build trust between organization and client. “What PR clients are really seeking is credibility,” Baradell explains. “They are seeking authority. They are seeking third-party validation.” He argues that the traditional definition of public relations— “A strategic communications process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics”—needs to be updated, which he does to a more pithy “PR is the art of securing trust at scale.” Over 16 chapters in his 285-page book, Baradell lays out the principles, strategies, and techniques for achieving this.

In one chapter, the author provides a history of trust seals, from kinds to e-commerce, and in another lays out the various features that make a website trustworthy. He focuses a lot of attention on Google and what PR firms need to do to ensure that their clients’ names not only come up in searches, but do so in ways that persuade potential customers that the business is reliable. Baradell is very aware of the impact of cancel culture, and one of his recommendations for avoiding this is for organizations to vet their employees’ social media profiles, scrubbing anything that might cause controversy. He also advises companies to do research on their customers’ values, citing various surveys where respondents say a commitment to ethics and worthy causes influences whether they buy or not. However, he also notes brain scan data that show that what people say on a questionnaire doesn’t necessarily reflect their true preferences. Baradell is not shy about revealing how his own company approaches PR campaigns. This is because, as he emphasizes, an effective campaign takes is a long-term process because trust cannot be established quickly. He provides 29 kinds of website trust signals, 20 types of inbound trust signals, and 12 SEO trust signals. But applying these effectively requires quantitative and qualitative research, which includes building buyer personas and trust profiles.

Scott Baradell’s TRUST SIGNALS is an invaluable resource for PR professionals who are looking to up their game and provide clients with effective growth strategies, as well as marketers, salespeople, and C-suite executives who need to make sure they get value for communications money.

~Kevin Baldeosingh for IndieReader