How to Build Your "Know Like Trust" Factor on Social Media

Mar 29

Whether or not you’ve heard of the “Know Like Trust” Factor (aka KLT Factor), it is a fundamental concept in laying a solid foundation for growing and scaling your business in an organic and sustainable way.

Social media is actually one of the fastest ways to actually build the KLT factor because you can connect with your audience quite easily in a multitude of ways - Feed posts, Reels + TikTok, Stories, DMs, and more.

What is the Know Like Trust Factor?

The “Know Like Trust” Factor is the concept that people need to know you (and your brand), like you, and trust you before they’ll make a purchase from your business. It’s truly the foundation of community building. It builds a familiarity with your brand which leads to a stronger connection and positions you as the solution to their particular need and ultimately leads to brand loyalty.

Think about meeting someone for the first time. You need to first get to know them to determine if you like them and then once those two are established, you start building trust with them. It’s the same with your business.

This process can sometimes happen quickly or it may take some time to build that connection but it worth the investment to set your brand up for long-term success.

Why the Know Like Trust Factor is important?

To be brutally honest, the KLT factor is the foundation for every relationship you create (in business and probably in life too). Without it, it is extremely difficult to make sales and maintain brand loyalty.

Whether you are just starting a business or trying to grow an exiting business, focusing on building the KLT factor will help you establish your business and enable you to grow it in a truly sustainable way as these relationships will turn into brand advocates for you… and we all know how powerful that social proof and those referrals can be!

How your content pillars can be used to establish the KLT Factor

Social media is a great way to establish your KLT Factor because if you do it right, you can actually accelerate this process. I like to do this by being really strategic with my content pillars to create a content funnel. Each content pillar actually equates to know, like, or trust which all funnels people into your promotional content eventually.

Here’s how the five content pillars breakdown in terms of the “Know Like Trust” Factor:

Engagement Content 👉 Know
Educational Content 👉 Know, Like, and Trust
Connection Content 👉 Like and Trust
Social Proof Content 👉 Trust
Promotional Content 👉 You need to have built the Know, Like, Trust Factor before getting to this point

Keep these pillars and content funnel in mind as the foundation when building your KLT factor with your social media.

Social media strategies to establish KLT Factor

Now let’s talk about the strategies to use with your content pillars to reinforce and solidify your KLT factor with your social media audience.

Be your authentic self

Always, always, always show up as your most authentic self. It becomes pretty obvious when you’re not being fully authentic and that is the fastest way to make people not like you, and definitely not trust you.

Use your true voice and show off your personality. Share your opinions, thoughts, and unique perspective. This is a big part of where your Unique Value Proposition (UVP) as a brand comes in. This is what sets you apart from everyone else!

If you’re not sure what your brand voice or personality is, now’s the time to establish that before jumping into building your KLT factor. This is essential to showing up authentically and being consistent.

Establish your key messaging and brand values

Going along with your brand voice and personality, what are your core brand values and the key messaging of your brand? Being consistent with these is going to help people get to know you really well and will create a connection with them based on shared values and perspectives. Building a relationship based on values is one of the strongest connections you can make (in business but also in life!)

This is also a big part of your UVP and helping you stand out from others.

You not only want to establish these but in the vein of being your most authentic self, you want to actually live these brand values. Transparency, honesty, and vulnerability in your messaging is going to help your audience get to know you on a much deeper level, ultimately solidifying your KLT factor with your audience.

Show your face

Gone are the traditional B2B and B2C days — It’s now all H2H, human-to-human. This means people want to connect with a brand on a more human level and one of the easiest ways to do this is by showing the people behind the brand.

It’s hard to feel a connection with just a brand so showing your face (and any team member’s faces) will offset this.

Instead of having your logo as your social media avatar/profile picture, have a picture of you! This is especially true if you’re a service-provider and your clients work very closely with you.

Along with that, show photos of you and your team in your feed and in any Reels you post. Talk directly to your audience with front-facing stories. All of these will help your audience get to know you and feel a stronger connection with not just you but your brand as well.

Be social

Think about when you meet someone for the first time. If they only talk about themselves, you typically don’t end up liking them all that much, right?

Social media is the same way so you want to make sure you’re actually being social on there as well!

You can do this by implementing an engagement and networking strategy (liking, commenting, DMing other accounts in an authentic way). Get to know your audience by asking them questions and getting their opinions (in your feed posts or on Instagram Stories).

Getting to know your audience on a deeper level by having actual conversations with them will ultimately lead to your audience getting to know and like you more but they will also start to trust you meaning you are connecting with them on that deeper level.

Establish yourself as an expert

A lot of people don’t want to give away too much of their expertise for free but giving your audience tips and tricks they can implement themselves for a quick win is the fastest way to build trust with your audience.

This psychologically establishes the thought process of, “If I’m learning a lot from their free content, imagine what I’ll get from their paid offers.”

You can also share a unique perspective on something specific to your industry, bust some common myths, or highlight the work you’re doing with your existing clients.

All of this leads to your audience seeing you as an expert and thought-leader which means they trust you wholeheartedly.

Social proof

Another way to establish your authority in your industry is by showing social proof. This highlights that others have trusted you enough to purchase from you and signals to your audience that it’s also safe for them to trust you. You can do this a few ways:

User generated content
Testimonials
Statistics to support what you’re saying
Behind the scenes of projects you’re working on

Combining these strategies within your content pillars will quickly help you build your KLT factor with your audience helping to grow your brand at a much faster rate.

Want even more help with your marketing?

My Strategy Intensives provide you with a complete brand and marketing strategy based on market research and analysis and your own business metrics.

My 60-minute sessions are great if you need help brainstorming or working through a specific challenge.

Not sure what you need but know you could use some support? Reach out and I’ll help guide you in the right direction (whether that’s working with me or not!)

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