Is Your Brand’s Social Media Personality Behind the Times?
Why the rulebook is changing and how you can adapt positively
As they scroll through their feeds, today’s social media audiences are looking for different things. Some are looking for news — if the pandemic’s slowed, if cities are safe, or if their friends and family are doing okay. Others crave the human connection, seeking conversation and community that will help counter the sense of isolation that’s become the social norm.
How can we social media marketers help our brands and businesses adapt and thrive in this social environment? Certainly, a radical rethink of brand personality — content tone, voice and style — is needed. Brands need to realign themselves to what’s worked: greater empathy, authenticity and honesty for all social communications.
It’s certainly what audiences are expecting of brands. Over 71% of customers saying they will stop trusting brands that continue to place their interests over that of others.
If that’s not a compelling reason to change, here are a few more below — and after that, ways you can kickstart the rethink of your brand’s personality
People are spending more time online — with consequences
Social media fatigue is real and everyone’s experiencing it. When my social feed is continuously being drowned with breaking news, homebrewed videos and the opinion articles, I tend to block brand messages out — unless they are interesting enough to catch my eye.
People want to be entertained, comforted and distracted — and that’s tough to do with a formal, monotonous, business-like personality. For now, your brand’s going to need to kick off its shoes a bit. Because in today’s online world, you’re competing with sassy state Twitter accounts and a police force can that spoof Billy Eilish’s ‘Bad Guy’ with great panache.
People just need some good, wholesome vibes now
These days, people tend to gravitate towards brands and pages that give off good vibes, more than ever. And nothing does this better than a brand that doesn’t take itself too seriously and can communicate on a relatable level with audiences. To quote Gillian Oakenfull:
But let’s be clear, brands aren’t empathetic; the people who manage the brands have to be empathetic. As the COVID-19 pandemic and racial injustice protests thrust U.S. society into social and economic turmoil, what does this empathy brand mandate mean in practice?
In practice, it could mean prioritizing conversations over the volume of content. It could mean putting up stuff that doesn’t push your marketing needle, but sparks replies and engagement between you and your audience.
Brands may have entered new markets or audiences
Some of my friends work for brands that have pandemic-pivoted into new markets and products that are far removed from their core offerings.
Unsurprisingly, they quickly realised their old brand strategy and personality were incompatible with their new hunting grounds.
This is fertile ground to try out new brand personalities and see what works. When gyms and fitness instructors were shut due to the pandemic, many pivoted to online lessons and had to adjust their brand and workouts to resonate with a burgeoning audience that was anxious and restless at home.
Who knows, you might hit a tone and voice that clicks with your new audience — and reverse-engineer it to work with your core brand as well.
Here’s are some ways to align and adapt:
1) Swap Marketing Material for Humanised Content
The single best decision any social marketer can make is to shelve their planned social calendar, for now. Scheduled posts or promotions made during better times may not resonate — or will irritate — today’s social audiences.
The alternative? Put up human-centric content. Brands are putting their employees, leaders and even customers front and centre, because audiences respond better to the words and emotions of fellow humans onscreen. Through their people, brands have a powerful medium they can use to project their new personality —better than a string of words ever can.
That’s because faces and body language are better at showing helpfulness, hope, steadfastness, bravery, care, love and perseverance. Never discount the human element when reinventing your brand’s personality.
2) Track Audience Sentiment With Social Listening
Social listening clues you into audience sentiment during good and bad times. It creates awareness of existing gaps and problems that your brand can fill and thus, project a helpful personality — if that’s what you’re going for.
For instance, brands that noticed a growing interest in gardening, cooking and online learning during the lockdown quickly pivoted their content towards ‘how-to’ videos and guides. That placed their branded content smack in front of audiences at the right time — while also forming perceptions that these brands cared and are connected with the needs of their audience.
If you’re looking for a comprehensive list of social listening tools, Christina Garnett has compiled a thorough list on her piece, Why Now’s the Time to Practice Social Listening.
3) Pick a Positive Personality Closely Related to your Brand
Brands must adapt, but that not literally overnight. The key is to ease into a new personality over time. And the best way to do this, without seeming abrupt, is to align yourself with a personality that makes the most sense to your brand.
This is how it looks like, in practice:
- If you were a stylish fashion retailer, perhaps go with a personality that’s simple and down-to-earth, to mirror the current mood of your customers. Or if you’re like Nike, be inspirational, if that speaks to your audience.
- Bakeries and restaurants will do well by establishing a warm and caring personality by showcasing their hardworking staff while emphasizing customer safety. You’re a people business after all.
- Are you a utility or service-based business? Then strive to project optimism and helpfulness in your future comms, by assuring customers that services remain uninterrupted in the months ahead.
- Managing a museum or branded tour? Breathe more joy and wholesomeness into your brand by providing human-guided virtual tours or hilarious down-to-earth competitions.
Imagine your brand as a person that needs to cheer up and comfort someone. How will you go about it? What would you say? How different is this from your usual tone? These questions will help you find a personality that resonates with your present audience.
4) Prioritize Conversation and Community
During normal times, promotional content seldom struck a chord with audiences; now, even less so. The aim of today’s social marketers should instead be in fostering authentic conversations that answer questions, sparks discussions and provide value via community interaction to audiences.
Question posts or opinion polls are a great way to kickstart this. They are a natural way to encourage people to engage with your brand while providing a not-so-awkward inlet for you to chat up your audience.
Understandably, it can be demanding to engage every reply, especially if your follower count numbers in the hundreds of thousands. So as a general rule, I only respond to the following:
- Questions or complaints
- Heartfelt testimonies or praises
- Brilliant customer suggestions or ideas
- Replies that tag other brand pages
It Doesn’t Need to be Instantaneous
It takes time to build a brand’s personality on social media. Evolving that personality takes an even longer time, plus a significant amount of ingenuity, effort and patience from your social media marketing team
But your audience will thank you for it. As social media marketers, we’re well aware that our medium is changing all the time. Pages are constantly being added and removed from the rulebook. It’s all we can do to adapt and stay ahead of the curve.
As long as we focus on building a wholesome brand personality that focuses on fostering community and engaging conversations, I don’t much that can go wrong. Indeed, as we move toward recovery, a reinvented social media personality may bring much right to a brand as well.
