Digital Trust: Social Media Strategies to Increase Trust and Engage Customers

Social media gives organizations a public place to speak with customers—and a public record of how well their actions match their words. In Digital Trust, Barry Connolly explores how businesses can use that environment to foster trust, encourage customer engagement, and support stronger brand relationships.

Grounded in marketing concepts and supported by frameworks and case studies, this book considers both the opportunities and the risks of building a brand in digital spaces. Its perspective is particularly useful for readers thinking about how trust is earned, maintained, and put at risk through everyday business communication.

Trust as part of the brand relationship

Connolly begins with branding and digital branding before turning to trust and the connection between trust and engagement. This progression helps place social media activity in a wider context: platforms are not simply promotional channels, but places where customers form impressions of an organization and its conduct.

From engagement to business value

The book explores how social media engagement can contribute to consumer relationships and corporate value. Its frameworks address topics including brand reputation, service delivery, credibility, and consumer security, offering readers several ways to think about the factors that shape trust in social media brand communities.

Research, frameworks, and a wider digital lens

Alongside strategy, Connolly discusses conducting social media research, with attention to qualitative and quantitative approaches and digital-text analysis. A chapter on Bitcoin and digital trust broadens the discussion beyond familiar social platforms, while the concluding review brings together the book’s themes of trust and engagement.

Who may find it useful?

Digital Trust will interest marketing and communications practitioners, business leaders, and students or researchers exploring digital marketing, consumer behavior, and social media strategy. It offers a considered look at how trust relates to what organizations communicate—and what customers experience.