How Social Media Is Humanizing Brands

It's simple. Talk to me like I'm a human being. I'm more than an inbox, Twitter handle, or opportunity for a Facebook "Like." I'm your audience. And if we connect, there can be a meaningful exchange that's beneficial for both of us.

In my experience as a user, customer and digital strategist, open conversations mixed with memorable connections are the fastest way any brand can create a meaningful relationship. Sometimes this happens online. Sometimes it happens offline. But no matter what, whether we're talking about good service or better products, in the end it all comes down to how we relate.

I think brands forget this, but honestly who could blame them. In the foggy mix of economic pressure, bosses demanding insatiable amounts of measurable results and the rapid pace of high-stakes decision-making, it's easy to lose perspective and grab for more traditional ways of thinking. We see it all the time. More eyes lead to more awareness which ultimately lead to more success. Well, that's not true. The presumed path to success is paved with brands that have risen and fallen in the pursuit of "more eyes."

What is true, is that each relationship must be earned. Right now, more than ever, brands have the opportunity to blend digital and physical strategies to create authentic relationships with their audience. They can earn it. And they can do it in ways that remind us that we're all human and not just deliverable metrics. To me, this is the path to long-lasting success.

While I'm fascinated with experiences that live at the intersection of digital and physical, I do think it's possible (and fun) to create successful experiences that live independently. But, the brands who are consistently winning and making powerful connections with their audience are the ones that execute fully integrated campaigns. No longer should digital strategy sit in a silo. Invite these strategies into the brand's larger goals and vision. Not only are they at the forefront of fostering authentic relationships with existing consumers, but they may often be your best kept secret for forging new relationships and growing your consumer base.

As I look at social media today and its integration with physical events and products, it proves to be an exciting time for us all. The industry is packed with new ideas, energy and enthusiasm. For example, the Internet of Things is a booming field sure to disrupt many markets and offer new opportunities for entrepreneurs all over the world. All of these factors are driving us toward better connections and more authentic conversations. Now that we're here, let's take advantage of these opportunities and build more meaningful relationships that offer deeper engagement among brands and their audiences. Let's build something that goes beyond the singular focus of quantitative metrics and offers something new! Who knows, we may find the results to be humanizing.

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and Social Media Week in conjunction with the latter's Ideas Connected, a three-day event taking place at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City on Feb 19-21. Presented in partnership with MKG and Crowdcentric, Ideas Connected is designed as an inspirational, educational and explorational deep dive into the architects, inventors, and collaborators who are shaping our lives in extraordinary ways, accompanied.

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Free Social Media Advice for Brands: Find Your Obsessions

Brands continue to flock to social media, but the massive growth phase for most networks is over and you no longer are going to rise with the tide. Now, if you want mindshare, you're going to have to fight for it. I'm here to help.

I should admit up front that I am not a credentialed social-media consultant. I don't use Pinterest and Path to sell shoes. But I do think about how to build audiences and how to design content that people want to read and share. So, consider these thoughts as notes from an outsider. I'm talking mostly to lifestyle brands here, businesses that would run ads in high-end consumer magazines/websites, but the lessons could apply more broadly. 

So, first, you've got a problem. If you weren't lucky enough to get promoted by Twitter itself (like, say, Yves St. Laurent), it's going to be very hard to build a following. And even if you are YSL, most of the followers you got from being on Twitter's recommended list are dead wood. They won't actually help you spread the word. 

You need to build an audience. But how? Just treating a Twitter or Facebook feed like a marketing channel doesn't work. In social media, you have to build the channel itself first, and then you can market through it. (Note that this is what magazines and such have been doing for a long time; we create the content that creates the channel and you all get to sell people stuff through it. BUT seeing as how you are determined to do this yourself, I will offer this humble suggestion.)

Lifestyle brands can't just promote their sales and send out coupon codes and retweet when people say nice things about them. Instead, they need to treat their social media presence as a kind of retail space, where they include the 10 or so things that their brand is supposed to mean or be associated with. I will call these things (topics, ideas, hobbies, ideals) "brand obsessions," which I'm sure I'm unknowingly stealing from someone's slide deck. 

Take PBR, @pabstblueribbon. Scroll through that feed. You'll see not just references to beer and community shoutouts but summer rooftops, bands, bikes, tattooed girls playing basketball, skateboards, mustaches, beards, mullets (the haircut and the fish), barbecuing, people pouring beer into pink flamingos, surfing, and breakfast burritos. The feed runner has developed a voice in which it makes sense for him or her to tweet, "Just got resurrected by a breakfast burrito." It's all about saying: "This brand knows how you live. This brand gets you. This brand, too, appreciates a breakfast burrito when it is hungover." 

Of course, you might say it's easy for PBR and this kind of engagement would be tougher for an upscale brand with an older target demographic. But I return to the idea of a Twitter feed as a retail space, not a marketing channel. Look at a gorgeous Ralph Lauren retail outlet. There's a canoe hanging on the ceiling and some old photos of aviators (the people, not the glasses) and maybe, just maybe, a photo of people playing polo. Am I seriously suggesting that Ralph Lauren tweet about games played on horses and outdoor sports? Yes! Post links to smart articles on Outside Magazine and get Instagrams of the polo tournament in Dubai and post a retro photo of a heroic aviatrix flying over France. Of course, it'll take some time to tune the the voice so that it's classy like a Wagoneer and not "classy" like a stretch hummer.

And man, take it from a media guy, voice is hard. Most upscale brands' voices on social media get stuck in the linguistic uncanny valley: not quite a robot, but not a full human either. PBR solved that problem by hiring a young person who is living the brand. It's not so easy to find someone who just happens to be in Dubai for the polo tourney and who wants a job posting 20 times a day to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. 

But that's actually an operational advantage of the brand obsession approach to social media. It's much easier to troll the Internet around 5 or 10 themes and then post the most interesting stuff from that work. (What do you think us bloggers do, after all?) It's almost a corporatist twist on Jay Rosen's idea of mindcasting on social media. He doesn't tweet what he had for breakfast but what he read over breakfast. And in a sense, brands can do the same thing. I'd even say it's more honest than "living" the brand because the social media operator is *imagining* what it's like to live the brand, which is ultimately what one's customers are doing, too. 

And then, once you've established this deep emotional connection with your ever-growing social media audience, you wryly, knowingly cram all the promotional stuff through the channel and hope that people connect with it the same way they connect with your mindcasting. (Again, what do you think we bloggers do?) 

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Social Media Branding and Entrepreneurship

Although the generation over 35 does not understand it, there is an entirely new business model that relies on social media branding as a complete method of targeted marketing. Hollie Turner is a leader in this field of entrepreneurial social media branding, and this article will explain some of the ways in which she and others have been able to use social media in order to solidify the brand of a business online.

1) Brand localization and specification 

 Branding a business online is an exercise that requires specificity. Through the process of optimizing a website for longtail keywords, the business will naturally brand itself in a more targeted fashion. Many of the most recent updates of major search engine algorithms reward localization and specificity in keyword optimization. This means that if you are a business selling cat food, you will receive a higher search engine ranking if you actually specify the location and type of cat food that you sell by optimizing your website to that keyword specifically.

For instance, instead of optimizing your website to the term “cat food,” businesses today are finding much more success in branding themselves by optimizing their website to “organic chicken cat food Boston.” This helps search engine queriers determine if your business can solve their immediate needs, which prioritizes it in search engine rankings.

 2) Branding a business as quick on the draw 

One of the main advantages of social media is its ability to quickly connect a business with its customers. For instance, if a customer leaves a bad review on a restaurant, the restaurant can be immediately notified, even while the customer is still in the building. They can then take steps to rectify this wrong as quickly as possible, giving them a definite leg up when it comes to customer service.

Any business that is able to handle customer complaints with this type of efficiency will brand themselves indelibly into the minds of their market. Social media helps businesses become quick on the draw when it comes to customer service, which definitely increases customer loyalty and decreases bounce rates.

3) Branding of business as technologically advanced 

 People always want to know that they are dealing with a business that has the edge when it comes to technology. Social media can help a business appear as if it is on the cutting-edge of its industry. For instance, would you want to attend a dentist with an up-to-date website or one with a website that had a slow load time and no social outreach? What does this say about the equipment that dentist may use?

When it comes to branding, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be utilizing social media platforms.  They provide several easy and free ways in which to strengthen your brand, and can easily allow you to reach millions of users in a matter of minutes. If you wish longevity and success, then focus on building and maintaining your brand, and be sure to integrate social media into your efforts.

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