At PolitiFact, we’ve done a lot of work around building reader trust.

We lay out our fact-checking mission and process in both written and video forms. We disclose who donates to our nonprofit newsroom. We list out our sources for each fact check. We publish reader feedback, positive and negative.

Independence and transparency are the heart of journalism and are especially important in fact-checking journalism. Our readers should understand how our journalists decide which statements to fact-check and that we consult sources and analyze data to reach conclusions.

Still, every now and then, we get social media comments like, “Why isn’t this Pants on Fire?” “Who funds you?” and the classic “Who fact-checks the fact-checkers?”

PolitiFact tries to be open as often as possible about how decisions are made in the reporting and rating process, editor-in-chief Katie Sanders said.

“This may be our fifth presidential election, but we cannot assume that every voter who’s considering a choice in this election understands the ins and outs of what we do and why we do it,” she said.

Building audience trust on social media is hard. Journalists have a limited amount of space and time to convey information on platforms that incentivize engagement over context. And getting readers to click out of a social media platform and into the story can be difficult.

So how can news organizations build trust with audiences that only casually engage with our content? PolitiFact’s audience team started a test-and-learn sprint to find out how we could explain our mission to our top-of-funnel audiences (i.e. people who find our work through search and social media).

“It is essential for fact-checkers to be flexible and open to the constant feedback on how our work is being received by audiences,” PolitiFact audience director Josie Hollingsworth said. “At the same time, we should have the proper processes and procedures written up to be able to explain the ‘why’ of our work in different forms.”

What PolitiFact learned

Our sprint mainly focused on our Facebook and Instagram audiences, although some of our tested techniques did focus more on our website audience. For 100 days, we experimented with different trust-building techniques every two weeks, such as:

• Linking to our principles page in Facebook comments
• Creating graphics about our mission and ratings system
• Creating vertical videos that explain our mission and process
• Responding to social media commenters
• And linking to our methodology page high in all of our fact checks.

A challenge we faced was how to define what success would look like for this sprint. Measurements of reach, such as pageviews or reach, are not necessarily measurements of trust. Someone who visited our principles page could not trust PolitiFact at all. Someone who never engages with our social media posts could trust us deeply.

We decided to use a net promoter score to give us our baseline measurement of social media trust. A net promoter score measures loyalty by asking a participant how likely it is on a scale from one to 10 that they would recommend a brand or product to a friend. The percentage of detractors (people who answer zero to six) is subtracted from the percentage of promoters (people who answer nine through 10). A score more than zero is considered good and a score more than 50 is considered great.

Our goal with this experiment was to raise our social media net promoter score by 10% over 100 days. In June, we surveyed our audiences on Facebook and Instagram Stories and calculated a social media net promoter score score of 46. We needed 51 to meet our goal.

In the final week of the sprint, we surveyed the same social media audiences that were originally surveyed in our June report. Our final net promoter score was 52, one point higher than our goal.

We had three main takeaways:

1. Pick our moment. Understandably, we saw more engagement with our trust work when it was paired with high-interest topics, such as the premiere of “Sound of Freedom” and the first Republican presidential primary debate. As PolitiFact looks forward to big events like the State of the Union address or the first presidential debate, we’re making plans for how we’ll share our process across different audiences.
2. Make our trust work accessible. We recognize that if a reader finds PolitiFact’s work on social media or through an internet search, they might not know all of these transparency resources exist. We’re now making our process page more accessible in stories, answering questions for our social media followers and asking our audience for their questions.
3. Remember the quiet ones. For every loud social media troll in our comments section, there’s a quiet observer taking in what we publish and forming their own opinions. Our goal in sharing our process or answering combative questions is to reach the “respectful skeptics,” people who are open to considering the evidence and appreciative of learning more about our process.

We’ve laid out our strategies, goals and motivations for building reader trust going forward in this piece for PolitiFact readers.

How can your organization build trust with top-of-funnel readers?

If all of this sounds like something you want to try with your newsroom, here are a few tips:

• Build trust work into your newsroom culture (if you haven’t already). Does your news organization have an “About Us” page? Do you lay out your mission, process or funding anywhere that is easily accessible for your audience? If you don’t — or if you do, but you think it could be more informative — consider how you can spell out to your audience your newsroom’s approach to journalism.  If you’re not sure where to start, Trusting News is a fantastic resource for newsrooms who want to earn trust and build credibility with their communities. PolitiFact has worked with them to share our mission and fact-checking process with readers. Once you have this information laid out for your readers (and for your newsroom), it’s easier to identify how and what you can share with them.
• Tailor your trust-building to your different audiences. Think about how your audience finds your work and how you can meet them where they are.  If people find your work through search, can you spell out your values within your story or add transparency boxes to your web design? If one of your posts is doing well on social media, try answering questions in your comments section or create content that explores your process. If you want to foster engagement with your newsletter audience, ask them what they want to know about your process or coverage.
• Make transparency part of the game plan. If your newsroom has an important event coming up or a big story dropping, draw up a plan for explaining your coverage or reporting process. When PolitiFact went to New Hampshire for the recent primary election, we took readers behind the scenes and explained how we were covering the candidates. Of course, sometimes big news happens when we least expect it. If you have a moment as your organization reports on breaking news, see what people are asking you on social media or add context about how you’re approaching the news to your current coverage.

As newsrooms examine how much work goes into stories and their conclusions, Sanders said, they shouldn’t hide their work.

“They should talk transparently about the amount of time it took, the amount of people they talked to and the decision to move forward with the story in the first place,” she said. “I think all of that should be apparent to the reader.”