Brand Management:

Finding the Perfect Balance Between Corporation and Cool Kid

I’m not a huge fan of social media — never have been. I’ve always avoided Twitter. I rarely post anything on Facebook. I hardly ever use Snapchat and the same goes for Instagram. I think I’ve taken a grand total of about four selfies in my entire life. When I do use social media, I tend to avoid adding commentary to the content I share. I’m just not comfortable enough with some of the nuances of social identity and image management, and I tend to get really self-conscious about the way I sound on the Internet. If I’m going to publish something, I usually need to agonize over it for at least a few days before I’m ready to post it. Once you hit publish, it’s out there forever.

So, naturally, I ended up in a field that has been utterly consumed by social media.

I started with a few accounts for a hyperlocal news site I cofounded after college. It wasn’t a big part of my life yet. I only had to worry about my personal accounts and the Muckgers accounts. A year later, I was hired as the coordinator of the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University — a few more accounts. Over the next two years, I found myself in charge of managing another two, three, then four accounts. A few temporary accounts for events here, a few for initiatives there, and a few more for our annual conference and hackathon.

Fast forward to today: Here I am, sitting in a class on social tools and platforms at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, scheduling CivicStory’s Facebook posts for the next week as part of a group project.

Social media still makes me uncomfortable, but I’m learning. For instance, I’ve learned that there’s a huge difference between using personal accounts with my name and likeness attached to them, and using a suite of faceless accounts for an organization or brand.

As an individual, I represent myself. Whatever rambling nonsense spews out of my account belongs to me and me alone. I’m the only one who will be held accountable for it. But when I use brand accounts, I’m speaking on behalf of an entire organization. The reputation of that organization rests precariously on the tips of my fingers, so I have to be mindful of that every time I post.

This kind of dull but constant pressure gives rise to a distinct voice with a deliberate vocabulary, tone, and manner of speaking — and I used it for every single brand account I managed.

You know it. You’ve heard it. You probably hate it as much as I do. I’m talking about that patronizing, overly-enthusiastic, used car-sales voice you hear when you think of politicians, crowd-funders, and every inter-office work email ever. It’s the one that uses way too many exclamation points per paragraph, where the person’s voice is always a few octaves higher than normal for some reason.

Since I realized what I was doing, I’ve been trying to change. But I don’t want to stray too far and risk getting in trouble for something just because I was trying to be cool on Twitter. I want be witty, pithy, and hip as much as the next guy, but I also want to be as accurate and honest as possible. The goal is to do both.

Everything in moderation, right?

In my quest to find the perfect balance between corporation and cool kid, I’ve started reading the Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual, by Rick Levine et al. As they say in the 95 Thesis, “learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about ‘listening to customers.’” The only way brands and organizations can sound human is to “empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.”

I’m a human being, so I’m off to a good start. All I have to do now is get better at involving more humans along the way.