ActiveRain / Adobe EchoSign Challenge: What Does Trust Mean to You?

Wow, 2012 already? Can you believe it?

For January's challenge, we are honored to have the folks from Adobe EchoSign joining us. EchoSign was recently purchased by Adobe. Adobe is a company that a ton of us have been putting a lot of trust in for the last decade (some of us even longer than that). When you think PDF and secure transmition of documents online, many of us (at least I do) think Adobe.

Adobe purchased EchoSign because they also want to be that company you trust when you are having documents signed electronically. More and more of us are getting used to having documents signed electronically. Adobe EchoSign wants you to trust that those contracts and all that vital information contained in those contracts is safe and secure, much like they've been doing with our documents for quite some time.

We're not going to have you write about how much you trust electronic signatures, or how much you trust Adobe. We want you to share with us your feelings on trust in your business or life in general.

It's such an intregal part of why people choose to do business with one and other. It's engrained in us from birth. There is something about trust that makes it a fundamental of life, isn't there? From the day we are born, we have to trust. As we grow up (I know, I know, some of us never do) our trust is usually shaped by our environment. So when we come into the real estate industry, we have so many factors that have determined how trust incorporates with our business.

Share it with me, share it with Adobe EchoSign, share it with your friends and peers, how do your feelings about trust impact your business or your life? This is very open ended but I hope that people will chose to think about trust and really create a blog post that shares how they view trust and how trust affects the decisions you make in your business and your life.

What things have helped shaped how trusting you are of others? Are you one of those people that is naturally inclined not to trust someone until they prove they are trustworthy? Why is that? Have you been burned by someone in your business you trusted and how has that impacted your future dealings with people? Maybe it's just a story that exemplifies how you feel about trusting the people with which you work. Maybe it's a story that shares how you got burned by trusting the wrong person. It can be anything as long as it relates to the concept of trust in your business.

You can go any way you want with it........but I implore you to give it some serious thought. Do not just throw out 200 words about trust and call it a day and a contest submission. Think about it. Think about it for a while if you have to. Share with us your feelings on trust in your business. I'm going to go very deep in my post, I can already sense it. I hope you choose to do the same.


 

Challenge Guidelines:

Posts must be submitted between January 2nd, 2012 and January 27th, 2012 at 11:59pm Eastern Time. The challenge will end at 11:59pm Eastern Time on Friday January 27th, 2012.

Posts must be a minimum of 200 words. Remember, I'm asking you to really give it some thought. If you can sum up your entire feelings on trust in under 200 words, bravo to you! But it won't be eligible :-)

All posts submitted before January 27th at 11:59pm Eastern Time will be given 1000 points. Points for all entries will be manually awarded by the staff at ActiveRain after the conclusion of the contest.

All posts submitted before January 15th at 11:59pm Eastern Time will be given an additional 1000 bonus points. (This means if you submit early, you can earn up to 2000 points total)

In order to 'submit' your post for consideration, you need to leave a comment in the comment section of this blog post with a link to your post about trust. If you aren't sure what this means, ask someone or wait for a bit and you will see other members leaving comments on this post with a link to their post. Follow their lead.

Because the FTC doesn't like bloggers writing blog posts that could win them a prize without disclosing that fact, you need to include a line at the end of your post that goes something like this:

This post is a submission to the ActiveRain / Adobe EchoSign Trust Contest. I could possibly win a prize. You can find out about the contest by clicking here

Challenge Prizes:

Grand Prize: iPad 2

One Person will win a $150 Gift card

One person will win a $100 Gift card

Bonus: Each person that writes a submission can sign up for a free EchoSign account and send up 10 documents for
signature for free (typically EchoSign free accounts allow 5 documents for signature). Or, I suppose, even if you don't write a submission you could sign up for that free account since the link is right there for you.....

In addition any ActiveRain member can upgrade to a PRO account at a 55% discount when paying annually. Typically an EchoSign PRO account is $179.40 when paid for 12 months in advance, but ActiveRain members can purchase an EchoSign PRO account for $108 when paying annually in advance.