For growing companies, effective social media management can seem counterintuitive, especially if they have been active in advertising through traditional media platforms. Instead of trying to reach hundreds, thousands or millions of people, now they’re focused on finding individual “friends” who will “like” them and may even “follow” them or “share” the company’s messages through their own social media channels.
Earning such an intimate response on social media can be difficult because people see companies as buildings, and buildings – well, they just aren’t that interesting.
But that’s not to say that companies can’t reach their audiences through social media; plenty of brands are killing it socially. You just need to realize your faceless company isn’t going to do the trick. You need to create a persona to in turn create an active and actionable online community.
Identify your customer
Determining who your customer is constitutes marketing 101, and it’s helpful in developing your social media persona as well. After all, your social media persona should reflect that customer. If your customer is young, your messaging should be hip. If your product is fun, your messaging should be entertaining, funny and fun as well. Your customers view your brand with a certain mindset, and your social media messaging should reflect and support that mindset. The better you can align with your customers, the more likely you are to become friends.
Show your human side
Want to add a human touch to your social media campaigns? Use the humans you have working for you, especially the ones who best support and represent your persona. Post pictures of real employees and match them to the appropriate social media channels. That means focusing on work-related subjects for LinkedIn and products or cause-related ideas for Facebook or Twitter. If your employees appear on social media channels and are excited about your products and your company, your customers are more apt to feel the same.
Inform or entertain
Your products offer their own rewards when customers purchase them. Perhaps they taste great, handle chores efficiently or increase your brand’s exposure. Whatever they do, the benefit exists in the product itself. Make adding a benefit part of your social media persona as well: Use social media to offer messages that inform or entertain. This is a great time to use humor, offer industry insight or highlight special deals or coupons. Whatever messaging matches your social persona, use it here to reward those who follow you on social media. The more you reward them, the more they’ll come back and share your messages.
Your persona is waiting
Your social persona is what you make it. If you want to use social media as an effective way to reach your clients, craft your own persona and talk to your customers as the person and people you are, not as a faceless company.
