Stop being such a robot

What’s the one thing that companies and customers have in common? They’re both human beings. So why do brands find it so hard to speak to their customers in a down to earth human way?

The answer of course is because we're afraid that if we get it wrong we'll look terribly stupid. Sharing GIFs of your pet cat certainly won’t do it for your line manager and CEO. But the problem with the ‘professional’ approach is more often than not everything becomes automated and you end up sounding, well, like a robot. Which really sucks.

Below, I have outlined my top tips to help you humanize your brand and tone of voice.

1. Create your customers’ persona

You can research and understand your audience better if you create a twitter list of your target audience and monitor them. By doing this you can find out answers to questions such as their demographics, job role, goals, challenges, what kind of music do they listen to? What types of TV shows do they watch? What trending topics they tweet about? Etc. 

By doing this initial research will help you shape your brand tone of voice.

2. Identify your brand values

What does your brand stand for? What key message are you trying to tell the world?

Try brainstorming these questions in your team. This will also help you shape your brand tone of voice.

3. Understand the difference between B2B and B2C

As an organisation you may be targeting both sets of groups. Channels such as Facebook are great for using a friendly B2C tone of voice, whereas LinkedIn is a powerful B2B platform.

4. Now start thinking about your tone of voice

Generally, a good social media tone of voice will be a mix of being educational, encouraging, helpful, and little a bit quirky. Whatever your tone of voice is it has to be relevant to your audience and brand values as outlined above.

 5. Focus on your company culture

Focusing on your company culture is a great idea for two reasons. Firstly, it helps you internalize your brand culture within the look and feel of your office and company culture, helping you bring your brand values to life. Secondly, once you begin showing off your creative internal culture on social media your customers will begin to trust you.

6. Focus more on content rather than sales

Nobody likes a pushy salesman. By focusing primarily on your content strategy your customers will begin to see that you’re in business for the greater good and not just to get rich. Again it comes back to building trust.

7. Use keywords from your sector

This might sound a bit boring and ‘robotic’, but the fact remains that we’re the digital game here, which means we still have to play by the digital rules of SEO.

8. Be funny

This is probably the one that will frighten you the most. Try brainstorming ideas of jokes you could tweet within your team. Make sure the jokes are aligned to your brand values and audience interests. Try making fun of yourself rather than making fun of your audience. Experiment, take risks, and measure the results.

9. Engage in real time news and events

One of the best ways to convince your audience that you’re not a robot is comment on trending news and events, reply back to tweets, engage with key influencers, or even get involved in a live twitter chat.

10. Use inspiring images

Nailing your tone of voice so that it’s relevant to your audience is a great achievement in itself. But adding stunning images to go with it will give your content that knock out blow. Find out more about how to do this in my previous post.