How Brands Should Show Off Their Authentic Voice on Social Media

Being open, genuine, and authentic on the digital landscape means a great deal to your audience who wants to genuinely engage with your brand on social. It's important to apply a holistic approach, and although many brands struggle to showcase that authentic, relevant identity, it should, however, be effortless.

It's important to find your own, personal voice in the social sphere to have an even bigger impact and be your authentically awesome self. As Forbes already mentioned in 2011, the battle for social media authenticity is about showcasing the human side of your business to make your audience feel truly part of your brand in a culture of openness.

Whichever company makes the best attempt at making people truly care about their brand, ultimately wins that battle for authenticity. Marc Ecko, all-round entrepreneur, says authentic branding goes way beyond perception:

Your brand is not the game of perception. It's not what you parrot to. Your brand is on what is on the inside, it's like guts to the skin thing.

Why do brands need to show off their authentic side on social media?

Regardless of what product or service you're offering, customers are drawn to brands that deliver on honesty and authenticity. As our lives have become insanely virtual and the economic instability over the past years made us extremely conscious, critical customers, our hunger for trustworthy, authentic brands has only increased.

It's key for brands to deliver on truth and trust at every point in the social customer journey. Social media is all about managing the customer journey from initial awareness to total engagement. Since it plays a crucial role in ensuring brands come through on that act of integrity, brands need to engage in conversations to build long-term relationships.

How can brands learn to show off their authentic side on social?

•  Treat Your Customers Like Insiders

Since we're in the age of the customer, it's important to treat your customers like they're insiders by being as transparent as possible. Show you don't have anything to hide, because there's no better way to demonstrate you're human and willing to make that strong connection with your audience. For example, social sharing company Buffer revealed their pay structure (without forgetting the CEO's wage), resulting in a flood of new applications.

Whether it's through tweets, blogposts, webinars, or any other type of communication on social, make sure you're a true problem-solver even before customers decide to work with your company. Since customers are now equally armed with information, they only expect to get that priceless, insider treatment.

• Sharing is Caring

A great way to show your authentic side is through quality social sharing, the "currency of social media", to become the go-to source for any industry topic. This can come in many forms. You can either share great articles in your industry (like user-generated content) with your social following, or decide upon engaging with your audience and provide them with your know-how on the topics you know everything about.

No matter where that particular conversation takes places (e.g. Reddit, Quora, blogs, etc.) make sure you're a valuable, easily accessible source for information that simply oozes personality.

• Empower Your Brand Advocates and Employees

When it comes to authenticity, brands have to specifically focus on advocates and employees as they play a crucial role in building trustworthy and authentic companies. Employees, for example, have the closest connection and engagement rate with a company. Therefore, they need to become the ultimate social representatives of your brand by providing them simple, tangible means of recognition.

Secondly, brand advocates are credible game-changers who already love the brand and speak in high volumes about their brand experience on social media. Their powerful voice really resonates with a brand's audience as they simply hold the most trust. There's no better way to be authentic than to have the social support of your precious brand advocates who are always ready to step in and affirm your brand message.

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Why Authenticity Is Key for Marketing on Social Media

An authentic voice is what can make or break your brand’s presence on social media. Often, we forget that social media’s primary purpose is not to advertise products, but to enable connection between people across a variety of relationships, from family members to strangers who like the same TV show. Users of social media expect your profile to be a representation of yourself, and nothing can brand you as a fake or a poser more quickly than presenting an inauthentic voice.

Infamous Instances of Inauthentic Voice

There are many well known instances in which brands have failed to be authentic and received great criticism from users. In February of this year, American Airlines got their brand into hot water by using clearly scripted tweets. They sent form replies to every user as a courtesy, no matter what the original tweet said. When users started tweeting insults and criticisms, they continued responding with the scripted tweets. This kind of posting is a big taboo for social media interaction, as it is quite obviously inauthentic and impersonal.

In January, British supermarket chain Tesco also got into trouble with users because of scheduled tweets. The company was caught in the midst of a crisis because their frozen dinners were found to contain horsemeat, ye they inadvertently tweeted, “It’s sleepy time so we’re off to hit the hay!” The tactlessness (and rather hilarious bad timing) of this particular tweet showed that it was clearly scripted and inauthentic.

Another big no-no on social media is using a national tragedy for product placement. During the Boston Marathon bombing, Epicurious posted tweets suggesting various food items they sell “in honor” of Boston. National tragedies are one area in which consumers seem to consistently see through product placement and deem it insensitive and inauthentic. 

Tips for Authenticity

In light of the widespread criticism that an inauthentic voice always generates, how can brands work to be more authentic? Here are a few tips on what to avoid and how to better engage.

• Make it Personal: The best way you can improve your presence on social media is to make the experience personal. Customers like to see brands get personal with insider views and direct communication with employees. Real-time responses to actual user questions and complaints are also a huge success.
• Avoid Scripts & Schedules: As we’ve seen in the above examples, scripted and scheduled tweets can very easily backfire. Avoid form tweets at all costs. If you schedule your posts, at least make sure to check and pause the schedule in the face of a national tragedy or a PR crisis.
• Never Use Tragedies: Speaking of national tragedies, it is never a good idea to use them for your own benefit. This strategy rarely (if ever) fools customers, particularly those in the area affected by the tragedy.
• Be Creative: Finally, the most important piece of authenticity on social media is to be creative. Social media is intended to be constantly changing as users post different types of updates about themselves and their lives. Similarly, your brand should be posting new, innovative content in a variety of formats to keep users engaged.

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Four Ways Personalities Can Enhance Your Social Media Strategy

Personalities can enhance your social media strategy in 4 key ways:

1. Personalities build relationships

It is a very human trait to build relationships with people. In particular people build relationships with people they like. In Tom's case he is friendly, modest and very helpful to his audience. People really like Tom as a personality and it reinforces a key point that many other commentators have made - life is short, be helpful.

People also have a life outside of their professional life, they are parents, they live in a city, they travel etc. They connect with other individuals outside of a purely work context. All of this helps to build relationships in a different way to relationships with a brand.

Social media relationships are between real people and can develop over time. They may start in a passive way including reading, listening to audio or watching video of someone. The relationship can grow through various forms of interaction including text based discussions but also through the use of Google hangouts or webinars. This synchronous interaction from a question and answer session to a full discussion all helps to build relationships.

In Tom's case he has become a star attraction at global elearning events, his followers are very keen to meet up with him face to face and to get to know him better. Fundamentally individuals build deeper relationships than brands.

2. Personalities generate trust 

Surveys show that people are more likely to trust people in their social networks, even strangers they have never met, than a brand. Recommendations from individuals are therefore very powerful, even where the individual has never met the person making the recommendation. This is why many companies, exemplified by Articulate, use multiple individual personalities as part of their social media marketing. People relate to other people and establish trust through being authentic and genuine. 

3. Personalities provide authenticity 

Small stories from a person’s life really help establish authenticity and intimacy. These might be as simple as ‘when I was doing …’ or ‘today I was at a conference where…’ These personal stories create an authenticity about a situation or a solution. 

People are real rather than perfect. A personal blog or Twitter account will often lack the polish of corporate marketing messages. The images used or slides created may not be as slick or as well edited as the corporate brand materials but their content has an authenticity that people connect to. People are also more forgiving of personal content than they are of branded content.

To have a personality and authenticity you do not need to reveal a lot of personal information, you can share small everyday stories. The degree of personal sharing is a matter of individual choice but these small stories establish authenticity and intimacy.

4. Personalities bring alternative perspectives 

Individuals do not always take the corporate line and provide their own personal viewpoint. They may even provoke or challenge assumptions in a way that a corporate blog cannot. Individuals also have emotions and these can come across in a Blog or Twitter posts, whether they are frustration or passion. These perspectives help develop relationships, trust and authenticity.

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