If you had to choose a cartoon character to represent your brand…who would it be?
So you’ve done all the things that businesses do. You have a great business plan, marketing strategy, a fantastic website and you’ve even set up a great social media presence. What more could you need?
What If I asked you to pick a fictional character that best represented your company? Who would it be?
Would it be Daffy Duck? Mickey Mouse? Maybe it’s Punky Brewster or Ward Cleaver. I’m not asking you to leave anything to Beaver here. Nope. I’m trying to encourage you to humanize your company.
People don’t just buy a product anymore, they buy a personality and they buy the emotions they feel while interacting with your brand. While a website is a great way to share information about an organization’s product or mission, it lacks a certain human element. It is your clean storefront, but it may not fully get across your brand “personality.” This is where your social media can be a wonderful tool to be silly, emotional, inspirational, to stand on your soap box and make it clear that there are actual human beings behind your operations, customer support, technical support, sales and marketing. This is your brand personification.
Maybe there are no set rules for social media, but I think we can come up with some rough and ready guidelines.
- Don’t do things to others that you wouldn’t want done to you. In other words, embrace the golden rule of social media.
- Generate real value for your listener. Make sure you always answer the “what’s in it for me” question with every single post.
- Make mistakes! It’s a new frontier out there, so make up your own rules as you go along. Don’t be tied down to perfection. This will stop you at every turn and you will end up going nowhere fast. Make mistakes, embrace them, learn from them and own them. Pivot and move along.
People aren’t perfect, and your digital presence won’t be either. Try new things, have fun, and take risks. If a post isn’t working the way that you intended it to, be agile and adapt quickly. This is what growth hacking and agile marketing is all about. Be human, and you will find your audience understands and respects this.
At Laura Mitchell Consulting, we carefully craft and maintain digital brand identities. We stand out because we go against the grain of traditional marketing rules to create fun, cutting-edge and entertaining social media presences that customers want to engage with.
To learn more about Laura Mitchell Consulting, please email us at info@lmcllc.us or visit us at lmcllc.us.
