Humans connect to, relate to, and trust other humans.
The reason that some marketing messages come across as robotic is because they are not relatable or humanized. This makes it difficult for audiences to connect with the brand.
Here are some tips to help make your brand more relatable, starting today. You don’t have to be an expert to do these things. Start now and don’t strive for perfection – good is good enough.
1. Start from the inside out
Someone I know was recently asked to be a keynote and breakout speaker at a Lowe’s Social Business event. The event was two days of intense training, collaboration, and out-of-the-box thinking for business leaders.
I was impressed by how they are changing their business to focus on social media. It starts with their CEO and then everyone in the company is working together to use social media to help each other. The way they work together is very different and shows how much they care about their target audiences.
2. Start from the outside in
It is important to focus on your customers, audience, community, and stakeholders from the beginning. Consider what they need and want, what their goals are, and where they spend their time online. Have conversations with them that are relevant and bring them value.
An Audience Analysis Worksheet can help you focus your time on social media according to your audience’s needs and goals.
3. Think like a human. Focus on relationships
If you want to connect with people on a human level, you need to stop thinking of only email blasts and traditional advertising. Instead, focus on conversations, content, and ways to build relationships. If you think like a corporate machine, it’ll be hard to connect with people.
Relationships are important in order to maintain a social media following. If you focus on the relationships you have with your audience, they will follow you no matter how the social landscape changes. This is because they are connecting with you as a person, rather than as a brand.
4. Have a personality
If you want to create a strong brand personality, it is important to first understand who you are as a brand. What is your persona? What is your tone? Are you serious or funny? Or a combination of both? Once you know this, you can ensure that all your communications reflect this persona.
Build trust with customers by being consistent with your online persona.
5. Show up (in other words, be available.)
Make sure you are available to communicate with your customers, partners and audience, both online and offline. Don’t create a profile on the latest social network unless you actually plan to be active on it. Show up more than once a week or once a day.
Don’t just tell your audience about your latest achievements – inspire them and help them to achieve their own goals too. Be responsive and pro-active, with the interests of your fans always in mind.
6. Speak in your customers language
Delete the corporate speak that is full of jargon. Social media is not a platform to advertise your 1995 corporate products. Speak in a way that your customers, partners, and social community will understand. Use language that inspires them and creates a connection between you and your brand.
7. Stop the interruption marketing
Social media is not a platform to simply broadcast your message. Your audience will see this as an interruption to their discussion. Build relationships and earn the right to communicate with them.
You should share information that is valuable to your audience, not just information that will help you increase your blog traffic. The best social businesses listen to their audience more than they talk. You can learn a lot about what your audience wants and needs by listening to the conversations they have online. This will help you engage with them in a way that is more valuable to them.
8. Invest in people
Make sure that people within your company understand social media and how it relates to their job. Educate your executives and employees on what you are doing and why it is important.
If you want to be successful, invest in the people who are in your social communities. Learn everything you can about them and see them as potential friends and allies, not just numbers. Treat them with respect and you will reap the rewards.
9. Give some thought to how the corner office can get online, and you may be surprised at the number of options available.
We help brands of all sizes create an online presence. It is not a one size fits all. You cannot simply create a Twitter account and executive Twitter bio and expect your executive team to be successful on Twitter overnight. It takes time, effort and a strategy for each and every individual who gets online and is going to represent your brand.
10. Show off your staff
You should show your audience members who work at your company in your marketing efforts. Even if they’re introverted or young, they can still be useful in representing your company to the public.
If you want to build trust with potential customers and keep them coming back, it’s important to show the real people behind your work. Letting them see the team behind the brand can be a big help. Here are some tips to get started.
Use REAL photos of REAL people who work at your company
If you’re not a great photographer but can’t afford to hire one, try asking someone at your company. Chances are there’s someone who knows how to take good iPhone pictures. You can feature employees on your website, like on the About Us and Careers pages. Or you could show employees throughout your content and on your homepage.
Create memes with the faces of your staff members to show their funny and relatable side.
The point of this is to demonstrate to the world that your company is not just a group of stuffy, corporate types, but rather people who are easy to relate to, funny, and smart, and who are there to help you, not take your money.
11. Turn employees into brand promoters
We live in a world where social media is everywhere. Most of your employees are likely to have active LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Periscope accounts. This means they already have connections with friends, family, or even strangers. You should use your employee’s networks to spread the word about your brand, and show that your employees are proud to represent and serve as the faces of your company.
12. Hire a social/community manager
The brands that do the best job of appearing to be human are the ones that have at least one employee or team dedicated to making the company seem that way. The ideal candidate for this job would be someone who is creative and social, a natural problem-solver, and passionate about helping people. Some of the key responsibilities would be…
Running local events
This is a great way to expose your brand to a wider audience in a fun, interactive manner while also showing that your company is involved in the local community.
Create an online community
While most of your customers may be local, there is still a chance that some are not. Fortunately, an online community can help increase the human element of your brand by providing a place for leads, customers, and employees to engage with each other and chat. This can be done through social media platforms such as creating a trend with a hashtag for people to tag food pictures.
Utilize user-generated content
This makes your brand more relatable and down to earth, while also getting your customers excited. Can you imagine what it would be like to be featured on a Nike ad, for example? Infatuation does this with their #EEEEEATS hashtag by showing the best food pictures of the week and featuring the photographer on their social accounts.
13. Personalize your automated marketing
It is important to make every interaction with a potential customer personalized in order to make your brand more relatable. This can be done by using the person’s name or by using direct language.
Remarketing techniques that feature personalized messaging can help automate your lead nurturing strategies. If your leads are still in the learning stage, for example, you can send them non-promotional emails that feature content that is related to what they have previously viewed or searched for. There are many automated ways to create a personalized experience for your audience nowadays.
14. Send swag and welcome/appreciation letters to new and loyal customers
While it might not be possible to send a gift to every new customer, there are still ways to show appreciation, like sending a personalized thank-you letter and special offer to regular buyers. This is especially true for businesses where sending a gift wouldn’t make sense, such as retailers.
Welcome letters from dedicated account managers are a great way to create a personalized onboarding experience for B2B companies with longer sales cycles.
15. Write with personality
When you use big words or complex phrases, your readers can tell you are trying hard to sound smart. However, this does not make you more interesting to them.
HubSpot’s Corey Eridon says that business and industry-specific jargon is just another way of talking over people’s heads and that you sound inaccessible when you use it.
It is important that the content on your website has personality. This means that it should be written with wit, humor, and emotion. The tone of the content will vary depending on the style of the person who wrote it, and that is okay. Your brand does not need to have one voice. The copy on your homepage should not be generic. If another company could easily think of the same tagline, then you should get rid of it. Be unique with your copy.
16. Strike an emotional chord
Brands that evoke strong emotions are the ones that are building real relationships in the social ecosystem. If you can make me laugh, cry, or angry, you’re doing something right. Be different and inspire me to do more. The more you can connect with your audience, the better you understand what emotional message will resonate with them.