As all Denver marketing agencies will tell you, social media is an invaluable tool for businesses, especially when it comes to building brand awareness. However, many businesses forget about one thing on their social media accounts: personality.
Nowadays, consumers can spot BS from a mile away. In Mark Schafer’s popular book Marketing Rebellion — The Most Human Company Wins, he writes, “… today, [businesses] are built on human impressions that help customers believe, belong, and find meaning.” Whether you’re a larger company, or a small business, it pays to showcase your brand personality. Porch.com puts it best:
In fact, new research shows that consumers are more interested in a brand’s personality and values than ever.
Now, you may be asking yourself…. how exactly do I do that? How do I show my consumers and target audience my brand’s personality in a way that speaks to them?
All Denver marketing agencies would tell you that the answer lies in one word: authenticity. Authenticity is the name of the game when it comes to effective modern marketing, and a big part of maintaining a bona fide, original, and fresh social media presence is by letting your brand’s personality shine through the content you churn out.
Our digital marketing agency professionals here at Red Egg know exactly what it takes to make that happen. Let’s dive into our top 5 tips.
Make Sure You Have a Solid Grasp on Your Brand’s Personality
First thing’s first—have you and your team taken the time to solidify your brand’s personality yet? If the answer to this question isn’t an immediate “yes”, then there’s a bit of work you should do before jumping into improving your social media presence.
Simply put, a brand’s personality is the set of human characteristics you attribute to that brand. It’s how you’d describe a brand if it were a person. For example, Trader Joe’s is a playful, friendly, and accessible brand that’s beloved for its amazing (and affordable!) food, specialty products, and top-notch customer service.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, consider Nike, the athletic apparel brand. Their brand personality exudes bravery, determination, and above all – winning. Their brand makes attracting athletes of all levels look easy.
Having a solid brand personality (as well as a solid brand strategy as a whole) is not only an essential foundational ingredient to creating successful marketing campaigns, but is the roadmap your social media marketing team can use to influence the tone and voice of your messaging (we’ll get into why having a consistent brand voice is so important in a bit).
Pro Tip
Dust off Your Storytelling Skills
Whenever possible, use social media as a tool to tell your brand’s story. Quality storytelling is a powerful marketing tool for two reasons.
It appeals to human emotion (and helps people remember you!): Whether you’re pulling at their heartstrings or making them laugh, quality storytelling makes your brand more memorable. Your audience is more likely to trust you if you appeal to their emotions because it makes your brand more relatable.
It encourages people to act: The connection and emotion that stories elicit don’t just pull on our heartstrings; they can substantially influence our behavior, too. For example, according to a series of experiments conducted by neuro-economist Paul Zak, people who watched a video about an ill boy had higher levels of oxytocin in their brain that made them more inclined to donate money to a stranger.
Now, there are a few ways brands use storytelling in their social media strategy. For example, let’s say your business was started by a few friends, a garage, and a dream (shout out to Apple!). People need to know about it, and social media is a great way to get that information out there. Whether your business has an interesting underdog backstory, you want to dive into what makes your employees so special (such as an employee of the week post), you want to highlight customer stories, or you want to shed a light on a non-profit your employees like to volunteer at, don’t hesitate to share those stories on social media. You’d be surprised what a post with good imagery/videography combined with a clever caption can do to create new leads, stimulate conversions, and ramp up website traffic.
A good example of quality storytelling on social media is the Dove #RealBeauty social media campaign. Past posts in this campaign have focused on showcasing real people rather than models who conform to traditional beauty standards, but recently, they’ve been taking a more direct activism approach. Below is a post they shared on the International Day of the Girl to show Dove’s commitment to combating toxic beauty standards. In the video, Ashton shares her story with how beauty standards have impacted her life. Not only do posts like this show what Dove values as a company, but it is also a smart way to help target audience members connect with their mission and products.
Remember to Know Your Audience
While this may seem self-explanatory, knowing your audience is an important part to not only showcasing your brand’s personality properly, but in creating effective social media content that people want to engage with. Since you can’t target everyone (realistically you probably shouldn’t if you want to get high-quality leads), you have to define, identify, and understand your audience so you can create compelling social content that prompts people to like, share, and comment.
If you’re unsure of your target audience, you should probably narrow that down before releasing any social media content. Here’s how to do it:
Do some digging: Establishing an effective target audience on social media requires understanding the demographic details and traits of your customer base. Utilize analytics to discover who is already engaging with you, then go even deeper by exploring their spending power and patterns.
Find out which platform your audience is most active on: Once you have a better understanding for who your audience is, get familiar with what platforms they’re on. A good way to unearth this information is to consider what generation your audience is. For example, older folks have flocked to Facebook over the last four years, so if you’re looking to appeal to people who are 50+, it may be a good idea to focus on releasing content there. On the other hand, if you want to appeal to Gen Z and Millennials, you should consider focusing your efforts on TikTok and Instagram. Recent reports show that 90% of Millennials and Gen Z’s use Instagram daily and, of those, 68% use TikTok in addition to Instagram.
Conduct a competitive analysis: Denver marketing agencies know to keep tabs on how what the competition is doing (and what methods of theirs are working), it’s one of the best ways to gauge how your business should design and adapt tis social media marketing strategy
Knowing your audience is critical information that can help your social media management team craft compelling posts.
Be Consistent
Consistency is the glue that keeps a brand together. Making sure your brand is easily recognizable across all your social media platforms goes a long way towards creating a positive, transparent, and honest experience for your audience to enjoy. It also goes a long way towards building trust and brand awareness.
To up your consistency game on your social media platforms, make sure you’re following these three steps:
Use your brand voice: Your brand voice is one of the most obvious illustrations of your brand personality and is an absolute must for effective social media marketing Make sure that your brand voice doesn’t change from channel to channel—it’s important to show your audience that you’re dependable and authentic no matter where they interact with you.
Get on a posting schedule: Whether you’re posting content every day or once per week, it’s critical for your brand to choose and stick to a posting schedule. When your content quality and quantity are consistent, you avoid confusing your audience. Plus, this helps build brand credibility.
Make sure the imagery you use is on-brand: Giving your audience a look that’s uniquely you will make it easier for them to remember who you are. It takes more than just picking the perfect colors – make sure all your designs, fonts, and templates feel cohesive and are on-brand no matter what platform they find you on. If you don’t have a brand guide, we strongly recommend you create one to make this step a bit easier to handle.
Engagement Matters
Social media isn’t just about broadcasting information and stories about your business—it’s also about engaging with your audience. These platforms should inspire a conversation, not play host to a brand’s monologue. Responding thoughtfully (and quickly!) to comments on posts shows that you care about what people think and value their feedback.
You can also create polls or surveys to get customer input on products, services, or ideas for future initiatives (we like to do this with Instagram stories!). This will not only help inform decisions at the company level but will also make customers feel like they’re part of the process which is invaluable when building relationships with them.
A Step Above Other Denver Marketing Agencies
With these tips in mind, we have no doubt that you’ll be able to create meaningful connections with your target audience through your business’ social media channels. However, we know it’s a lot to take in and a lot to juggle, especially if you don’t have a dedicated in-house team to tackle the task. While there are a lot of great Denver marketing agencies out there, when you partner with Red Egg, you can rest assured that you have a dedicated social media team looking out for your business around the clock. We’ll make sure the content you release aligns with current trends, reaches and speaks to your target audience, and represents your brand accurately. If you’re interested in getting some help with your Denver small business’ social media management, we’d love to help. Head on over to our contact page and we can get the ball rolling together.