There is an excellent post on Mashable on The Science of Building Trust With Social Media. The content in this post provides an interesting perspective on what can be achieved through social media and what some of the challenges might be. It is also worth reading the comments below this post to see what others are thinking.

One of the great things about the widespread acceptance of social media is that good organizations, the ones that want to develop and provide good products and services for their customers, have a real opportunity to build trust. This isn’t as straightforward as it might seem, however. There still needs to be strategy and messaging. You need to understand who you want to connect with, what you want to communicate and why, and then look at the how (the tools). Perception is reality and even a great company can mishandle their outreach without a strategy and a plan.

The science of trust is an important component in building positive relationships with your stakeholders. Social media lets us connect directly with individuals and groups; we just need to make sure we are engaging authentically and strategically.