2019 was the year that social media marketing took a turn from perfectly curated and polished feeds to Instagram and Facebook stories that showed your unwashed laundry and screaming children all while expressing how hard the week has been. This has been a huge change for many people who have been raised in an era where you don’t tell people your struggles, let alone share them publicly for all the world to see on social media.
You would either sit on one end of the other of this topic, either you are the person who is so over your cousin who shares minute by minute dialogue of her life aside from toilet stops, or you are the over-sharer and you just don’t realise it yet! Whichever way you fall in your personal life, very rarely does oversharing benefit a business positively. Many of us are uncertain of where to draw the line, we want to be authentic and share about real life and the struggles of running a business, but don’t want to annoy people or turn away potential clients or customers from our oversharing.
A few years ago, it was vital to the success of a business to stay extremely professional and only show the products you were selling and in perfectly modelled photoshoots and well-worded captions. This would lead to a huge increase in sales each time you posted on Facebook and you would wait until you had time to do the next photoshoot to post again. This was the same time that the big fashion brands were only using one body-type of model and people spent more time on online forums than social media.
With the rise of the Influencer, social media changed forever and we started to see girls drag along huge DSLR’s and tri-pods to the beach so they could get that perfect avocado on toast pic with the ideal filter thrown on. That photo would reach thousands! Slowly though people started to get suspicious… It all came crumbling down when multiple high-profile Instagram Influences got caught faking that they went to Coachella (a huge music festival in LA) this year by posting photoshopped images!
All of a sudden people started craving an authentic experience on social media. They wanted to get on their newsfeed and actually see real people, know their struggles, see the unfiltered life, know they were human. So as with anything in Marketing, once consumer behaviour changes, we need to change how we advertise. Zuckerberg bet us to this, when he changed up the Facebook algorithm to mean that businesses couldn’t just rely on getting followers who would see their posts, they had to get ‘real engagement’ on their posts; they had to create conversations and connect with people to get their posts seen by more people on Facebook.
This led to many businesses freaking out and going too far the other direction, by posting things that were too personal. They forgot about what their audience wanted to see and were just thinking about themselves.
So where is the perfect medium??
How do we draw the line in our business of making sure that our presentation of our business on social media is real and authentic, but it is also professional and still sells products?
Well these are my tips as we come into 2020 to help you find that perfect balance.
- Thoughtfulness laced with strategy
We start to overshare when we post on our social media as we go and write about whatever we can think of that day. The trick is to plan your posts in advance. Come up with a strategy for the month and plan your posts around achieving those goals. Then you can be thoughtful about what you share about your business and your journey without posting in the moment when you are already having a bad day.
- Newsfeed for professional, stories for personal
One way to make sure that you are being both professional but also personal is to use your Facebook and Instagram stories to show the people behind the brand; the more ‘behind the scenes’ of your business. This means that people will connect with your business and get to know you authentically, but you still are creating a professional brand that people can build trust in.
- Create a voice
It is important when deciding to share more on social media that you get clear on your brands voice and personality. Your business brand shouldn’t just automatically adopt your personal personality because you are the business owner. Ashton Kutcher is known for his sense of humour due to featuring in a range of famous comedies, but he runs a Human Rights Organisation called Thorn and this brand on social media has a very different personality than what you would know of Ashton. This is how he has created a distinct voice for his business that is separate to himself, but he still shares his personal heart behind the organisation regularly which is what makes the page personal.
- Write a list
Write down a list of what you think your audience wants to hear and see from you. Would they be interested in a behind the scenes of how your product is made? Or maybe you have a unique story of how you started the business? Do you have fun team days on Fridays that you could share on stories or are you passionate about an issue that relates well to your business that your followers may also be passionate about? Once you get these things down on a list you can start to see the things you should focus on.
- Read the analytics
How do you know what your followers want to see more of? You need to dive deep into your analytics. What stories did a lot of your audience skip through, did they not resonate with it? Or are your posts about being a stay at home dad while running your business connecting with your audience in a way you didn’t think they would? Check out the engagement rate on your posts (number of comments, likes, shares and saves) and post more of what people like- it’s as simple as that. Another easy way to find out what your followers want to see more of, is to just ask them? Using Instagram question boxes, you can find out what people want to see more of.
This is the year of personalisation so we have no choice but to catch up with it otherwise we will get left behind. But being personal in your social media doesn’t have to look like everyone else. You just have to find out what your audience actually wants to see. The key to being personal but still professional in this age is to have a strategy, know your personal vision, keep far away from appearing ‘corporate’ but still maintain your branding.
I promise it’s not as scary as it sounds! With a little bit of work you can maintain the perfect see-saw of staying professional in the year of humanised marketing.