I was talking to a good friend the other day about Twitter. He knows that I believe it is important. Really important. Some of his clients are also beginning to ask questions about it. But he just didn’t get it.

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I started blogging in 1998—before it was called blogging. I simply posted new articles to my web site, because I noticed that people would come back if the content kept changing. But it was a hassle. It wasn’t easy to change the content or structure of your site. Everything was fairly static.

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Today, we live in a world of near-total transparency. Google, Wikipedia, and many other websites make it possible to check any fact almost instantaneously. As a leader, speaker, or author, you have to be particularly careful with your statistics. If you exaggerate the facts, you will be found out. And the results can be embarrassing—or worse.

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A few years ago, I taught a seminar on blogging at one of our trade shows. The CEO from one of the largest, general market trade publishers attended. Afterward, he came up and introduced himself. He asked if we could have breakfast the next morning. “Sure,” I said.

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Trust is to an organization what oil is to a car engine. It keeps the moving parts from seizing up and stopping forward motion.

But trust is not something you can take for granted. It takes months—sometimes years—to build. Unfortunately, you can lose it overnight.

Some people seem to have a knack for building trust. When they speak, others take them at their word. When they are absent, people speak well of them. Even when they make a mistake, people give them the benefit of the doubt. Continue Reading