Trust is often perceived as the primary driving force of social commerce. Consumers make shopping recommendations on Twitter or solicit shopping advice on Facebook, because they want to share or get information from people with whom they have a personal relationship. Therefore, social media platforms are seen as trust-based marketing channels, where brands and merchants can leverage on the personal network and goodwill of their customers to drive further sales. Brands and merchants thus increasingly move away from traditional advertising (which, experts say, consumers no longer trust) and invest more in social media marketing.

This strategy is fair, but some sellers go one step further and measure the relative “trustworthiness” of different social media platforms in order to make strategic decisions. A recent study revealed that consumers trust shopping advice and recommendations from Facebook more than from Twitter or Groupon (source). Prima facie, it seems to imply that the Facebook environment inherently inspires or creates more trust than Twitter and Groupon, since we at least know that there is a correlation between Facebook and trust.

The truth is that there is nothing magical about Facebook and its features, interface, etc. that results in more trust; it is the people that we trust or not, not the platform. Facebook just happens to house our real-life friends and family, while we generally follow people more liberally on Twitter. The difference is subtle yet important, because, if it is the people who are the true source of trust, we should discover how people primarily connect to their friends and family online and then invest in those channels.

There are two main benefits of following this route. First, by working with first principles, we discover and can tap on other less-hyped, under-utilized channels that we would have otherwise unwittingly overlooked. For instance, Dropbox’s referral system leverages on its users’ email networks, an increasingly-forgotten marketing channel. Second, measuring trust based on what consumers claim or say is dubious in itself; there is no measurable or verifiable action (e.g. a purchase after seeing a product recommendation) that accompanies said claim, making said claim less credible. It is, however, less dubious that people generally trust people whom they know personally more than people whom they do not know. More than one thing can cause Facebook to look or feel more trustworthy, such as its support for multimedia or even clean interface, and those things do not even necessarily result in more sales, which is what really matters.

The point is that trust cannot and should be measured not only by what people say but also by what they do. Actions speak louder than words, and, in online marketing, action is king.