Humans connect to, relate to, and trust other humans.
If someone doesn’t trust you, would they be likely to do business with you? Of course not. This is why providing faces and names to develop.
#1: Show the Funny and Relatable Side of Your Staff Members
The goal here is to show the world that your company isn’t composed off a bunch of stiff, corporate, Donald Trump look-a-likes, but rather relatable, funny, intelligent individuals who are there to help you rather than take your money.
Check out Quinn Popcorns team page where they show of their staff in mini videos with humorous facial expressions, showing the interesting people behind the pop!
#2: Turn Employees into Brand Promoters
We live in a social media world. The majority of your employees likely have active LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and perhaps even Periscope accounts. This means they have connections, whether it be friends, family, or complete strangers. You should be leveraging your employee’s networks to spread the word about your brand, and show that your employees are proud to represent and serve as the faces of your company.
Of course, this can also be dangerous. Let’s say one of your employees has very strong political or religious views, and you’d rather have your company’s brand steer clear of these controversial matters. To avoid any conflict I’d recommend creating employee guidelines when posting about the brand. With the First Amendment and all, you can’t take away freedom of speech, but you may want to encourage employees to include a blurb that their views do not necessarily reflect their employers.
Not every employee will feel comfortable serving as a brand promoter, and that’s OK, but sending out emails encouraging employees to share certain content about the company, or even forming a thought-leadership team can help humanize your brand in a very positive and impactful way.
#3: Hire a Social/Community Manager (or Team)
The brands that tend to excel at humanizing are the ones with a dedicated employee or team working collaboratively to build that component of the company. The person should be someone who’s able to listen, engage, and react. Someone who’s creative and social, a natural problem-solver, with the passion for helping people would be the ideal candidate. Some responsibilities would include…
Running Local Events
For instance, the Startup Institute has a community manager who runs regular events, one of which I recently attended. They partnered with a nearby rock-climbing facility to create an event called “Ladies Night”. Attendees came to hear from some young female entrepreneurs and after we were able to climb for a discounted rate. This is a great way to expose your brand to a wider audience in a fun and interactive manner, and show that your company is involved in the local community.
Create an Online Community
Chances are, not all of your customers will be local. Luckily, creating an online community can drastically increase the human factor of a brand, as this fosters a place for leads, customers, and employees to engage, chat, and bond online.
You can even create these communities through social media.
#4: Personalize Your Automated Marketing
In order to truly humanize your brand, you need to ensure that every touchpoint you have with a lead or customer is somewhat personalized. Whether it’s using the person’s name in an email or utilizing direct language like “you” rather than “we” or “I”.
Implement remarketing tactics with personalized messaging. Automate strategies to send out nurture emails depending on where your leads are within the funnel.
If they’re just in the learning stage, send non-promotional, helpful content that is in line with what they previously viewed or searched for. Nowadays there are so many automated ways you can create a personal experience for your audience.
Connecting on a personal level will truly make your audience feel the human elements of your brand.
“Build trust by creating a strong emotional connection and appealing to people’s sense of self,” says Janet Choi, Chief Creative Officer at iDoneThis. “Remember, they long to be confident and awesome while wanting you to be warm and trustworthy.”
#5: Send Swag & Welcome/Appreciation Letters to New & Loyal Customers
Depending on your business, it might not be feasible to send a gift to every new customer. For example, if you’re a retailer this might not make sense (especially if you sell, say, diamonds), but there are things you can do to show your appreciation like sending a personalized thank-you letter and special offer to regular buyers. For B2B companies with longer sales cycles, contracts, etc., one great technique is to create a personalized onboarding experience by sending out a letter from their dedicated account manager welcoming them to “the family” – it can’t get much more personal than that.
#6: Write with Personality
Have you ever read a blog post that lulls you to sleep? Probably not, because you likely abandoned the page after the first few sentences. This is what happens if you write in a monotone, stuffy voice filled with “big words” that are not inviting and easy to digest. Your readers can tell when you’re trying too hard to sound smart, and they’re not interested in your fancy jargon.
“Business and industry-specific jargon is just another way of talking over people’s heads, and although you think you sound super smart and important, you’re really just coming off as inaccessible,” says HubSpot’s Corey Eridon.
All of your site content should be infused with personality – wit, humor, emotion – these are all added pluses. These personality-infused posts will vary depending on each writing style of your content producers and contributors, and that’s ok! Your brand doesn’t need to stick to one voice. Ensure the copy on your homepage is not generic – if another company could easily think of the sage tagline, then ditch it. Be unique with your copy.
#7: Tell Stories of Failure
Your audience is going to relate far more when you share your failures over your successes. That doesn’t mean revealing all of the bugs in your software or talking about the storefront manager’s weekly tardiness and lack of motivation. Don’t air out your dirty laundry, but rather share personal stories or life lessons learned. Share with your blog readers stories of overcoming failure or share stories of how your business helped a customer overcome failure.
SOURCE :SEJ
No comments:
Post a Comment