Social media is an opportunity for your firm to interact with a community of people who are active in your field and who often make or influence purchase decisions personally and within companies. And with Google now ranking on social influence and cues, brands can now use social media as a lead generation tool by sharing great content that will get more prospects to their site and improve their SEO rankings.
The catch? Gaining the trust of your audience. Whether you have a social media team or single community manager, it is important that your interaction with your audience is all about conveying your brand’s personality through these channels. But how do you create a social media personality that is connected to your brand and accepted by your audience? Even more importantly, how do you improve your brand’s personality if for some reason it just isn’t connecting with your audience?
To help you out, here is a guide to how to win (or at least be a part of the social media popularity contest) by developing the right social media personality that appeals to your target buyers. Now the choice is: which social media personality is right for your brand?
Nervous Nellie
When Nervous Nellie does is in any social situation, she is too nervous to start chatting to new people and get involved in conversations for fear of saying something stupid, or other people judging her. Quite often she is wrongly perceived as ignorant or rude. As a result, she stays inside her comfort zone, because it’s easier, although she wishes he could be a bit more like Loud Leo (you will meet him soon).
If your brand sounds like “Nervous Nellie” on social media, ask yourself this: If my customers are talking about my brand on social media, why aren’t I part of the conversation?
Similarly to Nellie, your anxieties are holding you back, but the chances of you making a fool of yourself are slim. Even if you did… the chances of any one else caring that you have said something “foolish” are even slimmer. There’s always an opportunity to clear up anything you’ve previously said. That’s the beauty of social media – it’s an ongoing conversation. Unfortunately, just like Nellie, if you don’t bite the bullet and start getting involved, you risk getting left behind.
Arrogant Anthony
Arrogant Anthony doesn’t listen to a word anybody says. He interrupts you with his incredibly boring stories about how brilliant he is at XY and Z. People avoid Anthony at all costs except his mother. Anthony doesn’t understand why nobody wants to talk to him especially when he so much to share about himself.
Content by “Arrogant Anthony” is based on pure sell, sell, sell and frankly this type of content has no place in social media (or anywhere else frankly.) Social media is about sharing information and knowledge that’s helpful, educational, useful or entertaining – and your content is neither. Nobody who frequents a social network wants to tune in to adverts. Nobody cares about your opinion of your own product. Put it in the press release section of your site, or on your products page. If you do a good job of servicing your current customers while giving prospective customers the information they crave, then you can leave the evangelizing to your fans.
Boring Beatrice
Boring Beatrice has nothing exciting to say about what’s going on in the world. She repeats other people’s opinions, never has any of her own, and talks about stuff all her friends have heard before.
Firms need to know their audience’s problems and interests. For example, if “Boring Beatrice” realized that she needs to think about who she is talking to and what they are interested in, she would become much more exciting to talk to. Repeating basic industry insights might be interesting to people who are still very early in their buying journey, unaware of their problem. However, this wouldn’t be helpful to those further along in their journey. It’s old news. They will think of you…and yawn.
Centering the conversation around your prospects interests (which depends on what buying stage they’re at) will attract people to you. But you also have to keep them interested. That’s why it’s so important to have useful, relevant information for every buying stage – so that when they progress further with their purchasing decision, they still have a reason to tune in.
What’s ironic is every company has interesting things to share with their audience, they just don’t realize it. Ask people at your company to offer up your potential audience some great tips for solving their problems. Consider using social media to make everyone at your company more accessible to both prospects and customers.
Loud Leo
All of us know that one person that just won’t shut up. They tend to cause damage to the ears and a splitting headache. In fact, Leo talks so much that everybody just switches off and stops listening.
Some people (especially on Twitter) update their statuses 20 times a day. Nobody has something extraordinary to say that often. Not only will your audience stop listening, they will avoid you altogether by unfollowing / blocking / unsubscribing to all your noise.
Prioritize quality over quantity. Release your social updates in drips, not blasts. Not only does this help you stay on your followers’ good side, but you won’t have to fear running out of things to say.
Cool-Hand Luke
Luke gets it. He is just cool. Everyone likes him because he is helpful, a great listener and always has something interesting and entertaining to say. People trust him and when things go wrong they go to him for advice.
Follow “Cool Hand Luke” by getting to know what your audience wants, be helpful, intelligent and insightful. Be charismatic and entertaining. Listen, don’t shout. Ask questions and promote conversations. Be kind and humble and over time you will earn and attract some good quality relationships online. These relationships are what Google uses to understand your online influence and rank your website pages accordingly. In addition to this, your social media reach will expand, resulting in more traffic, brand awareness and leads.
