Jay Leonard
Here’s one of the most significant tenets of content marketing: People like to do business with other people. They don’t like to do business with faceless, anonymous, inhuman brands or big corporations.
Here’s what this means for your small business: You should be doing content marketing to engage and to inform, yes—but also to humanize your brand. To give it some character. To put a face to it, and to make it relatable.
You never know: Being relatable could be just the thing that causes a consumer to pick your friendly, inviting company over the more blasé company down the road. If nothing else, a personable social media presence will go a long way toward making your company memorable.
The question is, how can you make your business come across as more human through your content marketing? Try these five simple tips:
- Go behind the scenes. Snap a few photos of your team in action—whether at the office or out, at a holiday party or company social event. Get some candid shots of your team members doing what they do. Try to capture an image of what your office is really like. Go behind the scenes, taking pictures in parts of your office that most customers never see. Share some of these photos on social media—not a barrage of them, but maybe one a week or so, just to put faces with names and showcase that yes, your company is made up of flesh-and-blood humans, not robots!
- Do some team blogging. Do you have multiple team members who are skilled at writing? Then enlist them all to help you blog! Allow each team member to bring his or her unique voice to your company blog.
- Be funny. We don’t actually recommend turning your Twitter feed into a joke machine, or your Facebook page into a constant meme generator. Your main focus should be delivering value to your customers. However, a little humor from time to time never hurt anyone, especially not if you can somehow relate it to your vertical.
- Highlight your philanthropy. Has your company participated in a charity walk, helped build a house, sponsored a fundraiser, or otherwise raised money or awareness for a worthy cause? Mention it online. You don’t have to brag; just note that it’s a cause you believe in, and include a link to somewhere people can get more information or make donations of their own.
- Ask questions. If all else fails, just try to strike up a conversation. Take to social media and start picking some brains—asking what your social media followers might like you to blog about, inquiring what they like best about your products, or whatever else comes to mind.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Jay Leonard.
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Your article is a great reminder to companies. Taking a step back and letting their personal human nature thrive in the business world, can connect and engage consumers more than by hammering information into consumer’s heads. I like how all your tips gave a company a more relaxed vibe and approachable environment for consumers. A consumer is not going to want to read a company’s content if it is only informational and sounds like a sales pitch. It must have a personal touch and feel as if a relatable human is behind the content, not a sales person.
Companies should think about their own relationships with people. By pinpointing important fundamental aspects within their own relationships, and remembering they are people connecting with people, companies can build better relationship with consumers. In addition, companies could think about the type of content they personally like to read while they are not on the clock. By pinpointing the type of verbiage and personality they enjoy reading or viewing, they can apply it to their own content. Of course, a company will need to adjust content based on their target audience, but as you mentioned, by relating to their audience in a human way can only benefit them.
These days, companies face the problem of consumers seeing them as intruders to their social experiences online. However, if a company can be viewed as a friend verses an intruder by using these tips as you mentioned, not only will they be able to gain a competitive advantage but create relationship and build brand awareness.