Showing Personality on Social Media for Brands
I’m sure you’ve heard “put the social in social media” all over platforms such as LinkedIn & Twitter and these people aren’t wrong… For years and years, brands that published themselves on social media or any form of marketing material were always told to be ‘professional’ and ‘corporate’ and all the boring plain-old standard business drab. Times have changed, especially in the social media world – it changes and evolves every single day. Statistics show that people want to see creativity and unexpected approaches from big brands and businesses. 72% of people surveyed said that they are more likely to purchase from a brand if their Social Media image is humorous [SmartInsights] Why? because showing personality on social media platforms builds a human-like connection. Content consumers these days will not digest your social media posts if they are long, uninformative and most importantly of all ROBOTIC. Consumers like to see faces behind brands and for the communication between them and the business to seem genuine. Copywriters are making a big statement on this over on LinkedIn, they are actively pushing for a ‘new wave’ of copywriting social media content, ‘write how you speak’, ‘you are a person, so write like one’ – they are all effective points to consider when preparing and planning your content strategies. Some of the biggest brands in the world have adopted this technique and it works just as well for them. Businesses such as Burger King, McDonalds, Aldi and Starbucks to name a few are astounding at making their brand seem human and building personal connections with their audience through genuine copy and reactive conversational points. You just need to take one glance at the above-mentioned businesses social channels to really comprehend the efficacy of being personable on social. Every social media platform has a specific audience and adjusting your brand personality on the platforms you use is a smart tactic. Here is a quick summary of the different types of audiences you can hit on each platform: Facebook – The largest platform in the world. A great starting point for small businesses to start their social media marketing journey as it offers effective and user-friendly features that can help network your business. It is extremely easy to send invitations to your target markets and grow your page from scratch. Facebook is becoming increasingly less popular with the younger gen-z/millenial generation age groups but on the contrary, it is still the most popular platform for more mature audiences. LinkedIn – Our personal favourite for business networking. Linkedin is focused on building audiences with like-minded professionals from your industry. It can be great for recruiting future staff members thanks to the jobs feature but in recent years, LinkedIn personal profiles are being used as a CV-like platform to establish professionals as an authority in their working field. Twitter – A fast-paced platform that works wonders for conversational topics that drive social interaction. Some of our all-time favourite personable marketing stunts have been sprouted from Twitter. The largest demographic group of Twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 29 (37%). 25% of users are between 30 and 49 years old. Instagram – A very visual-orientated platform. Instagram offers useful features such as ‘Stories’ which can be used for behind-the-scenes content and day-to-day antics of your business which is a great way to share the personality of your brand. You can also upload short videos to your feed or directly to their ‘Reels’ platform which is shockingly impressive for Reach. TikTok – The newest kid on the block, but one that has made a ridiculous impact. With over a BILLION monthly active users, TikTok is the king of organic reach. Popularity by demographics is across the entire field, however, gen-z still comes out on top. Anyone who has opened TikTok to watch a single video and resurfaced an hour later can attest the app’s powers of engagement. In fact, TikTok is the most engaging of all social media apps, with an average user session of 10.85 minutes.
