Brands are supposed to be things, not people right?
Wrong.
You see, all brands were the creative idea of a person. A real human.
So what about your brand?
Does it have a heart? A voice? A personality?
Is it faceless?
Here’s where I am going with this.
Lee Clow who is regarded as one of the top Advertising Creative Directors ever explains brand personality for you:
“Brands are very much like people. Do you think that brand is interesting? Would you like to have them over for dinner? Are they always the same or are they sometimes funny and sometimes serious?”
These were his words in the great documentary ‘Art & Copy‘.
To sum it up, your brand is person. And it should start communicating like one.
If it speaks directly to your target market, even better.
Read on for two great examples of brands doing just that and how you can give birth to your brand.
Before you do that, tweet this link out for me if agree with what Lee and I have said so far.
Would anyone invite your brand over for dinner? – Click to Tweet
Thanks!
Brash To The Bone
Old Spice for years had always been, well, old. I never used any Old Spice products growing up. Neither did my friends. Probably because we weren’t their target market.
They also were pretty boring. Same sailing ad after another.
That changed in 2010 with the famous “Your man can smell like me” campaign. In case you’ve been living in cave, here’s one of the commercials.
Even though the ads were geared towards women, I decided to try some Old Spice body wash last year. When I turned the bottle around, I burst out laughing in the shower! Here’s why…
If you can’t read the picture taken from my crappy iPhone 3, here’s what it says.
“Cleans hair, cleans body then wails on it’s pecks. Does it’s job and drives away in a sports car.”
Talk about speaking directly to their target market in a fun and entertaining way!
What’s also interesting is they treated the body wash it self like a human. Doing human things like wailing on pecks and driving a sports car. Awesome stuff Old Spice and a nice touch.
Axe has dominated the hygiene world amongst males ages 15-34 for some time now. They speak to their customers like a person which creates a connection.
Because of this they’ve had a stranglehold on male hygiene products. That was until Old Spice decided they needed to humanize the brand.
Since then Old Spice has done a bang up job by giving the brand a personality. All because they communicated like a real person.
Another great example of brand personality is Newcastle’s Facebook timeline image
I really like the stand they’ve taken.
One of the things written in the Meaningful Marketing Manifesto is that you should support good causes because you want to and not because you want more followers. They’ve stated that in it a bold way.
The brand alignment is also bang on with their ‘No Bollocks’ tagline.
Both examples are bold and in your face. Shocking for most because brands were things and not people before.
They’ve made me laugh and created an emotional connection. All because they communicated to me like a real human being.
Don’t be boring and Forgettable
How often does this happen to you.
You click on a website or read an advertisement and after 10 seconds of reading, you’re bored and on to the next thing?
I’m sure it’s happened often.
Why does this happen? They don’t have a brand voice. They’re blurting out their message like a robot speaking monotone. I suppose robots can only speak monotone but you get the point.
Those brands don’t understand that people are craving a connection. It’s like being able to talk to your favorite actor, actress, athlete or someone you admire. If they’re boring face to face, they might be your favorite anymore.
You want to see their human side. It’s the same with brands in this socially connected digital world.
Many brands are creating meaningful connections. Simply by having a voice and a personality.
Giving Birth To Your Brand
It’s really simple.
Start talking like a human being in every marketing and advertising piece the public sees!
Let your hair down. Stop standing up straight and being all proper. Being polite will not generate an emotional connection with people.
It’s like this. The last thing you want to do is fit in. By giving your brand a personality and a voice, you’ll be a breath of fresh air and stand out from the competition.
What do you think?
Is there anything holding you back from giving birth to your brand?
If you’re already doing so, tell me about it!
I’ll be discussing more about brand personality in future posts. If you’ve liked this post, subscribe to my updates so you can receive them straight to your inbox.
The main feature of Facebook is being able to direct connect with people.
It can also give you provide feedback and let you know why people like your business.
My last post on how to improve Facebook engagementwas the practical way to do so. I discuss why researching your previous updates is the best way to see what’s worked and not worked.
If you’ve tried that and are still getting little engagement, you’ll agree that things need to be switched up.
Here are a few different things you can use to increase engagement.
You might think they’re silly and have nothing to do with your business and sales. They don’t and that’s the point. You’re reading this because you need to change your posting strategy.
These ideas are about increasing conversation and engagement. When online you should have a networking and conversation mindset. When you network you talk about anything.
I’ll explain the hidden agenda behind these ideas at the end and why focusing on creating conversations will help get the rest of your updates seen.
My news feed is usually littered with anything to do with cats, those formulaic “What most people think” meme’s, or “Sh** ____ says” videos.
But have you ever wondered why?
Read on as this post will explain how Facebook decides what updates are displayed in peoples news feeds.
Trust, Credibility and social proof
I speak highly on how to build trust and credibility for your business.
One way to do that is through social proof.
What exactly is social proof?
Wikipedia’s definition (I always trust Wikipedia!):
Social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation.
How does this work in the online world? What does this have to do with Facebook news feeds?
Everything.
If people see you have testimonials on your website along with lots of followers on Twitter and likes on Facebook, they’ll generally trust you more. Would you agree this is very important if they’re a first time visitor to your website?
Of course it is!
So if visitors to your website, Twitter and Facebook profiles see people like your product or service and speak highly of it, they’ll follow the crowd and trust you more.
Many small business owners know this. I’m sure you do as well.
Knowing this, how can you increase your social proof and get more likes on Facebook?
Reciprocity Influence
You can grow your Facebook page a few ways.
ask friends for likes
ask random strangers for a like
rely on organic growth
buy likes
I’m not even going to talk about the last idea. It’s a bad one as this post will explain why.
Growing likes organically can take some time depending on your customer base.
What happens then is that we request that our friends or strangers like our page. In exchange we’ll probably like theirs. That’s the influence of reciprocity.
It’s all in an effort to improve our social proof. The more our fan base grows on Facebook, the more our social proof increases and the more trustworthy we appear.
Recently I’ve seen the influence of reciprocity on LinkedIn. In various groups people link to their Facebook pages in hopes of receiving more likes. They would then reciprocate by “liking” others pages.
I took part in this to build my Facebook page fan base last month.
A harmless gesture right? After all we’re just trying to help each other out!
This is a big mistake though.
Let me explain.
Facebook EdgeRank aka the Gatekeeper
We need a gatekeeper when on Facebook.
That or our feeds would be jammed with updates from our friends and pages we like. Most people spend only a few minutes on Facebook and they want to see the best of the best. That’s where our gatekeeper friend EdgeRank comes in.
I’ve already talked about why it’s important to earn the right be followed online as a way to ensure your status updates are seen within your fans news feeds.
So basically our news feeds aren’t really news feeds. EdgeRank determines what we see in our news feeds by using an algorithm. I’ll let Kelvin Newman explain EdgeRank at Econsultancy so read up on that.
If you don’t want to, I’ll quickly explain.
Three things are weighed into the EdgeRank algorithm:
Affinity – Calculates how friendly you are with someone or page. The more you interact with them, the more you see their updates.
Weight – Determines what type of content shows up more in a news feed. Videos, photos and links have a better chance to show up in a feed. Weight can improve over time as your content or status update receives more likes, comments and shares.
Time – The fresher the content the more seen it gets. Pretty straight forward.
Does it make sense now why anything to do with cats or those “What people think” memes and those “Sh** ____ says” videos are always seen?
People are engaging with those types of posts! This means their EdgeRank is higher than your thoughtful and useful status update.
Frustrating isn’t it?
How does EdgeRank effect your updates and who sees them?
The people who have engaged with your updates in the past will see more in the future. This is the affinity score of EdgeRank. Pretty easy and obviously what we all want!
However if someone has never engaged with your updates in the past, they’re not going to see others. They’ll see a few upon liking your page. But when they don’t engage, Facebook knows this and they cut your future updates from that person’s newsfeed.
Your updates will be replaced with popular updates from their friends or other pages they’ve liked. Facebook is simply trying to give people relevant and popular updates in their newsfeed.
This is a story of quality over quantity. You shouldn’t be worried about your social proof and how many likes your Facebook page has. It’s great that you have 1000+ fans on Facebook. If you reciprocated likes to get large portion of your fans, it’s not helping you.
Why?
Obviously they’re not seeing your updates. Therefore they’re not sharing your updates and improving your pages awareness.
Another reason is those people who visited your page organically might wonder why you have 1000+ fans but no interaction. They’ll think you’re boring and thus not click the like button. After all, who likes boring brands?
Focus on finding raving fans. And engage with those current ones you have.
One of my favorite quotes on social media is from Gary Vaynerchuk.
“It’s not the number of followers you have or “likes” you get, it’s the strength of the bond with your followers.”
This quote applies to business in general not just social media. Its part of the out care your competition mentality I want business owners to adopt.
So how can you improve your EdgeRank score?
Turn up the foreplay on EdgeRank
Avoid asking friends who are not emotionally invested in your business. You want the friends that will actually comment, like and share your content.
Stay away from reciprocation likes from people you don’t know. My LinkedIn example from above is exactly what I am talking.
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What do you think?
Are your Facebook updates getting a good amount of engagement?
Too many businesses are looking for more followers.
Instead they should be looking to build a community.
In 2012 and beyond, the importance of earning a “like” and a “follow” will greatly increase.
Consumers still have all the power online. They choose who they follow and what content they want to engage with and share.
Every business has been told they need to be using social media. As more and more businesses are jumping online and asking for likes and follows, people’s news feeds are becoming bogged down.
They’re seeing less status updates from Pam White and how awesome her tofu McNuggets are. Instead they’re seeing updates from Mashable talking about some Tech startup that’s going to kill it in 2012.
Because of this people are becoming more protective of their social networks and who they follow. It’s going to take a lot more to get people to follow, like and engage with your business online. Especially compared to the early days of social media when everybody was liking and following everything in sight.
