Whether you realize it or not, both personal and professional elements of your personality - or those of your team - are reflected on your brand’s social media. We understand it can be hard to manage both sides while maintaining your brand’s personality and voice. Both aspects are important to your social media accounts’ success and gaining more followers. Getting personal with your customers is more valuable than you know. Customers appreciate businesses that are authentic, comedic, and follow trends, however, it’s also important to be professional and represent your brand appropriately. So, where do you find the balance?
5 Tips for Balancing Your Brand’s Social Media
Your social media bio might not seem like a huge deal but it can help distinguish your brand’s page from a personal account and a professional one. A social media bio that showcases your brand’s name and references a professional title or industry, is a great way to create the perfect bio. Your bio can act as a signal to your audience so it’s clear what your goal is on social; do you want to help your audience learn? Inspire them? Be a resource? Offer Customer Service? Put it out there! Companies who say who they are and why they’re on social are respected for establishing their space on their terms.
Don’t overlook the power of your social media profile picture. This is the immediate depiction customers will have of your brand. It’s important that it’s recognizable to past consumers and memorable for new ones. It should also be an accurate representation of your brand and what it’s all about.
Social media bios also offer an opportunity for searchability. You have the chance to incorporate keywords into your bio to help your account be found by the right people. Using keywords is as simple as incorporating them into the sentences within your bio. Since the keywords have everything to do with what your brand is about, it should be pretty easy to write them in. It’s important to note that putting hashtags in your bio does NOT improve your searchability so stick to those keywords instead!
All in all, no account is truly great if the content below doesn’t reflect the bio. Make a conscious effort to keep your content consistent and customers will see your brand as a real business.
2. Know When To Get Personal and When to Be Professional
Social media is a great place for advocating for your business. But, it’s also about creating content that is helpful and useful to your followers. Your brand’s social profiles can and should be a combination of both. When your followers or customers are experiencing a problem, be authentic and get personal with them to help solve the issue. Customers appreciate that more than you know. In fact, 86% of customers say that authenticity is a key factor when deciding what brands they like and support. Your product or service offering can be a solution to that problem. In any engagement or interaction with your followers be real and personal. Answer questions and comments with authentic answers and your customers will really grow to love your brand and its values.
Customers also want to get to know the face behind a product or service. They want to know you and your story! Share tidbits and clips of information about the history behind your business and how you got to be where you are today. Keep that differentiation between personal and professional, and make sure these bits of ‘fun’ information pertaining to your business and will help your customers better understand what your brand is all about.
This might seem like an obvious one, but what content you post on what platform should revolve around who your followers are and why they chose to follow your account. Are they following your account because they love your product or because they love the information you post about? Determining this is simply looking at what sort of posts render the highest engagement and then creating similar content. Maybe, your customers love the behind-the-scenes clips you’ve posted. That might mean they want to get more personal with your brand. Take a deep dive into what content your brand has already put out and generate ideas of what your followers might enjoy in the future.
Public profiles on social media, like your brand’s, can be seen by anyone and everyone. This means other people in your industry, competitors, and potential customers. It should be both an accurate depiction of who your business is and a resource to its followers.
Be mindful of the nuances of each social platform and what makes them unique. Pair this with audience insight and you’ll be able to clearly build a strategy and goal for each platform to communicate most effectively. Every social media platform has a slightly different demographic and environment. Knowing the sort of content your followers are looking for can be helpful in keeping the personal and professional separate on your page.
Social media offers the perfect opportunity for authentic communication between you and your followers. No one likes to follow an account where they are constantly bombarded and overwhelmed with ads and promotions for a product, service, or brand. In order to have the perfect combination of personal and professional on your brand’s social media, try to steer away from overly promotional posts, like:
- Posts created solely to push followers to buy a product or install an app
- Posts that push followers to join a sweepstakes or promotions contest without context
- Posts that replicate advertisements
Steering clear of these types of content can help your brand’s social media avoid a ‘salesy’ and uninteresting reputation. To be clear: this doesn’t mean you can’t promote your business, product, or services - it just means that you have to do it in a more informative way that is equally beneficial to your followers. Try to create content that sparks interest and intrigue in your brand versus just pushing your followers to take action.
Sharing is the whole point of social media. This brings us back to the element of sharing behind-the-scenes information, pictures, and videos of your business. Sharing these types of content helps your followers to better understand what’s going on behind the brand. Another example of sharing something meaningful could be posting user-generated content (UGC). 79% of consumers say UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions. Share a customer success story or a picture and quote of a happy customer with your product or service. This type of content can be really helpful in making your business more authentic and trustworthy to your followers.
Sharing something meaningful doesn’t have to just be certain types of content. It could also mean getting involved locally and sharing events and support towards things that are happening in your community. You can subscribe to your local newspaper or read up on local announcements to see how your business can get involved in local events.
The true balancing act for your business is its social media. Both professional and personal aspects are important to generating a following and support system for your brand. However, knowing how to do it properly is truly the key. Try out some of these tips and tricks on your social media page and find the right balance for your business.
