TL;DR
Trust, not vanity metrics, separates high-performing influencer programs from those still treating relationships as transactions.
Later's 2025 State of Influencer Marketing report shows mature brands prioritize trusted, long-term creator partnerships over one-off campaigns.
The Everywhere Agency and SocialHP LinkedIn study reveals executives who consistently show up with authenticity command 6.2% engagement rates versus the typical 1 to 2%.
As AI floods platforms with synthetic content, the ability to build and maintain authentic trust will become the competitive advantage that defines 2026.
Together, these findings point to an emerging "trust graph" that will matter more than follower counts or reach alone.
Table of Contents
While marketers obsess over reach, engagement rates, and conversion metrics, a different measurement is quietly reshaping how successful brands and executives build influence. Trust is no longer a nice-to-have byproduct of good marketing. It's becoming the primary currency of credibility, and two recent studies reveal exactly why it matters more than ever.
What we measure reveals what we value
For years, social media success has been quantified through numbers that feel solid but tell an incomplete story. Impressions measure eyeballs, not attention. Followers indicate interest, not loyalty. Even engagement rates can be gamed, purchased, or manufactured. These metrics aren't meaningless, but they're insufficient for understanding what actually drives lasting business outcomes.
Trust operates differently. When someone trusts a creator's recommendation, they don't just engage with content. They change their purchasing behavior, advocate for brands unprompted, and return repeatedly. When employees trust their CEO's vision on LinkedIn, they become active ambassadors rather than passive observers. When consumers trust a brand's values, they forgive missteps and defend decisions to skeptics.
This is why trust is emerging as the defining metric of 2026. It's multidimensional, harder to fake, and directly correlated with the business outcomes that matter most: customer lifetime value, employee retention, brand resilience during crises, and sustained growth rather than viral spikes.
What the data reveals about trust in creator partnerships
Later's 2025 State of Influencer Marketing report makes one thing abundantly clear: the brands winning in creator partnerships stopped treating influencer marketing as a series of disconnected campaigns. They built infrastructures around trusted, long-term relationships.
The report found that 47% of brands increased their investment in influencer marketing in 2025, with 30% directing 41 to 60% of their total marketing resources to influencer programs. What distinguished the most mature programs wasn't budget size alone. It was strategic commitment anchored in trust.
The most successful programs no longer saw influencer marketing as transactional. They built infrastructures that supported both ongoing creator relationships and amplified major initiatives. Campaigns remained valuable, but their impact multiplied when layered onto trusted partnerships that had already established credibility with audiences.
This shift manifested in how brands structured their creator rosters. Research revealed that 29% of high-performing brands achieved optimal results with 10 to 19 creators per activation. Another 26% focused on even deeper partnerships with just five to nine creators. These models prioritized depth over volume, recognizing that audiences respond more strongly to creators they already know and trust rather than one-off sponsored posts from unfamiliar faces.
The report emphasized that mature influencer programs transformed relationships into levers for growth by integrating creator partnerships directly with core business functions. Forty-one percent synchronized influencer activations with revenue-driving sales and discount events. Thirty-seven percent amplified promotional and brand strategies through creator content. Thirty-six percent launched new products as part of their influencer strategy.
This integration only works when trust flows both ways: brands trust creators to represent them authentically, and creators trust brands to respect their audience relationships and creative judgment.
What the data reveals about trust in executive presence
While Later's report examined creator partnerships, a separate study from Everywhere Agency and SocialHP analyzed how U.S. LinkedIn Top Voices and Fortune 500 CEOs build influence on the platform. The findings reinforce trust as the common thread connecting all successful social strategies.
The study analyzed 220 LinkedIn Top Voices and 149 Fortune 500 executives between November 2023 and November 2024, revealing stark differences between those who commanded attention and those who struggled despite large followings.
LinkedIn Top Voices, including executives and C-suite leaders who earned the distinction, achieved an impressive 6.2% average engagement rate across nearly 9,000 posts. This far surpassed the typical one to two percent engagement rate for LinkedIn content, highlighting the significant influence and credibility these voices command on the platform.
Fortune 500 CEOs average 375,000 followers, placing them in the top five percent of LinkedIn users by total followership. However, despite their large audiences, many high-follower executives saw low engagement, revealing a critical insight: follower count alone doesn't build influence. Trust does.
The study found that posts focused on authenticity and workplace culture drove strong engagement, averaging 3,736 and 1,854 interactions per post respectively. This demonstrates that audiences respond most strongly to content that feels genuine rather than polished corporate messaging.
Consistency mattered enormously. Executives who showed up regularly, shared perspectives aligned with their values, and engaged meaningfully with their communities built the kind of trust that translates to actual influence. Those who posted sporadically or delegated their presence to communications teams without authentic input saw their reach stagnate regardless of follower counts.
Multimedia content proved essential, with 80% of top-performing CEO posts incorporating images, documents, or videos. Yet short-form video remained significantly underutilized, appearing in only 12% of posts, despite LinkedIn data showing that total video viewership on the platform increased by 36% year-over-year. This gap represents a major opportunity for executives willing to show up more authentically through video.
The trust graph is replacing vanity metrics
The convergence of these two studies points to something larger than isolated best practices. We're witnessing the emergence of what could be called the "trust graph," a new framework for understanding influence that prioritizes credibility over reach.
Traditional social graphs mapped connections between people. Creator graphs identified influential content producers. Interest graphs predicted what content users might engage with next. The trust graph goes deeper, measuring the strength and authenticity of relationships that drive meaningful action.
This matters because we're entering an era where synthetic content is abundant and skepticism is rising. AI can generate polished posts, optimize headlines, and even create realistic-looking influencer personas. What it can't replicate is the accumulated credibility that comes from showing up consistently, making good on promises, admitting mistakes, and building relationships over time.
The trust graph recognizes that not all followers are equal, not all engagement is valuable, and not all reach translates to influence. A creator with 50,000 genuinely engaged followers who trust their recommendations drives more business outcomes than one with 500,000 passive observers. An executive with 100,000 followers who consistently engage with their content wields more influence than one with a million followers who scroll past without reading.
This emerging focus on trust was a dominant theme at Creator Economy Live in Las Vegas this past January, where several roundtables (including one featuring Later CEO Scott Sutton) explored the importance of trust in building sustainable creator-brand partnerships. The growing importance of trust as a metric also appeared among Chief of Strategy, Lyle Stevens' creator economy predictions for 2026.
At Mavely by Later's inaugural Swipe Up Creator Commerce Summit in November 2025, keynote speaker Krista Williams, co-host of the popular podcast Almost 30, addressed more than 100 top creators on the platform with a powerful message about trust and authenticity as an operating system for creating content that resonates. "Authenticity for me is congruency between what I'm saying, what I'm thinking, and what I'm feeling," Williams explained. "We told the truth when we were happy and when we were struggling. That honesty built trust."
The Mavely by Later network demonstrates how prioritizing trust over follower counts drives real results. Nicole Brown (@leliassoutherncharm) exemplifies this approach: "I don't believe in pushing a product just to make a sale. If it's not for me, I say so. I never bash a product or say I hate it. I'll just say, 'Hey, it's not for me today, but I'll still share it in case it's something you'd love.' It's not about pushing a sale. It's about building trust."
Industry voices outside Later are recognizing this shift as well. Abby Ho called it "The Trust Economy" back in October, emphasizing how trust would become the foundational currency of creator partnerships.
This creator-first philosophy demonstrates what happens when platforms prioritize trust over transaction volume. Creators who maintain authentic relationships with their audiences convert more consistently, regardless of whether they have 10,000 followers or 100,000.
What this means for brands and marketers in 2026
The implications of trust as a defining metric extend across every aspect of social and creator strategy.
For influencer marketing programs, this means fundamentally rethinking how partnerships are structured. Brands should prioritize fewer, deeper relationships over broad creator rosters that lack continuity. They should integrate creator partnerships directly with business objectives rather than treating them as awareness plays. Most importantly, they should invest in the infrastructure that enables ongoing relationships: streamlined collaboration workflows, fair compensation structures, and creative freedom that respects creators' relationships with their audiences.
For executive presence and employer brand, this means committing to consistency and authenticity rather than outsourcing voice entirely. Leaders who show up regularly, share genuine perspectives even when imperfect, and engage meaningfully with their communities will build the trust that translates to talent attraction, customer confidence, and stakeholder support.
For measurement and attribution, this means developing new frameworks that account for trust alongside traditional metrics. How many times has this creator successfully driven action for us in the past? How consistent is this executive's engagement rate relative to their follower count? How authentic does this content feel compared to competitors?
Some of these questions can be quantified through engagement quality metrics, sentiment analysis, and conversion tracking over time. Others require qualitative assessment informed by community feedback and brand perception studies. The key is recognizing that trust takes time to build but can be measured through sustained performance rather than individual campaign results.
Looking ahead to the trust economy
The transition to trust as a primary metric won't happen overnight, but the evidence suggests it's already underway. Brands leaning into systematic influencer programs with trusted creator partners are building sustainable advantages. Executives showing up authentically on platforms like LinkedIn are commanding disproportionate influence relative to their reach. Audiences increasingly reward consistency and authenticity while tuning out performative content regardless of production value.
This creates both challenge and opportunity. The challenge is that trust can't be bought, automated, or hacked through growth tactics. It requires genuine commitment to relationships, consistency over time, and willingness to show up even when metrics don't immediately reflect the investment.
The opportunity is that trust creates durable competitive advantages. Once established, trust compounds. Audiences who trust a creator's judgment are more likely to trust their next recommendation. Employees who trust their CEO's vision are more likely to advocate externally. Consumers who trust a brand's values are more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt during inevitable missteps.
As AI makes it easier than ever to produce content at scale, the brands and leaders who win will be those who invest in the relationships and credibility that technology can't replicate. The trust graph is emerging as the next evolution of social influence, and 2026 will separate those who recognized this shift early from those still optimizing for metrics that no longer drive results.
Ready to build an influencer strategy rooted in trust and long-term creator partnerships? Connect with our team to learn more.
