October 12, 2016
Social media has been revolutionary in not only brands giving brands a direct relationship with their current and potential customers, but for providing brands with a personality. In previous years, social media was used as simply another platform for advertising the benefits and uses of a product or service. Brands would often focus purely on something we in the business call ‘transactional’ messaging, where price promotion and discounts are prioritised in social media marketing. While this might be appropriate at times – for example during a short-term sale – this can’t be your one and only tone of voice. Why?
Purely transactional messaging is simply lazy and dated social media marketing. Remember, social media has to truly be social. Humans are naturally social animals, so when a customer is looking at your feed, they don’t necessarily want to see only product-focused messages. Marketing within social media has evolved into an interconnected environment where real time exchange and collaboration is at the core, and if a brand does not give itself some sort of personality or voice, it will fall behind in the social media race.
By creating a personality for your brand and using social media to reinforce the conversational side of marketing, it can showcase the people and culture behind your business. It also allows your customers to see your brand as more than just a corporation or organisation, but a living, breathing being with real people making things happen. This provides a sense of trust and transparency, something that consumers are now craving. Authenticity in marketing has never been so important. As consumers grow tired of being blasted with communications 24/7, social media can provide that sense of honesty. Relationship-focused marketing can also help distinguish you from your competitors; where two companies may be remarkably similar in terms of their product and size, there can be an extremely different tone of voice for each brand.
So next time you’re sitting down to think about how your brand is going to evolve it’s social media marketing, bear these things in mind. Social media is likely to be the first point of contact your customers have with your brand, and your brand’s character, tone and use of language are the first impressions your customers will have of you. So make sure you map out your brand’s personality and tone of voice while forming your strategy, and keep it in mind for all of your social media marketing.