One of Nao Media‘s objectives is to humanize all of our processes both internally and for clients. Today, a great way to do that is via social media. Our goal is to be real and relatable in all that we do. In this digital world, how can we be more organic with our communication?
Humanize: Nao believes in the ability to relate to clients as individuals. Although metrics and data are important in our analysis, we never lose sight of the uniqueness of each client and employee. We acknowledge the complexity of our clients and discover what resonates on an individual level.
Being yourself plays a large role in humanizing your brand. Easy to say, but is it easy to do? It actually is.
Start offline. – Work on being a better person when your hands aren’t on the keyboard or your smartphone. Are you a loyal friend? Is your business loyal to their customers and do they reciprocate? With practice, being attractive or magnetic in the real world will carry over to your communication via social media.
Tweet like you talk. – If you know that you have clients and other business contacts who pay attention to your public timeline, talk about things in the style and with the substance as if they’re standing in the room with you. I personally choose not to swear on Twitter. I swear sometimes amongst friends, but there’s no need for me to do it online in a semi-professional setting. Don’t feel as if you have to be overly transparent.
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Get the leaders involved. – Slowly but surely get your business’s leaders involved with social media. I suggest leaders start with LinkedIn so they can get comfortable communicating with other professionals. From there they can learn to take on Twitter and Facebook.
Promote community. – Some business are built for open communication. Others aren’t (or they don’t believe they are). Put the power of community-building into the hands of your customers by giving them a platform like a Facebook fan page or a Twitter hashtag. Home Depot has done a solid job in promoting open conversation on their Facebook page. It’s not all high-fives and giggles either. They see their fair share of complaining on the page. Close monitoring and moderation is imperative if you’re going to build an online community.
Don’t look TOO much into influence metrics. – Being overly concerned about scores from influence measurement platforms like Klout or Kred.ly could lead you to using your social media accounts for pure gamification. Synthetically inflating scores for perks and props is not human and is quite corny.
Answer questions. – Whether you’re an army of one or large organization, there should be involvement from your brand on Quora and LinkedIn Answers. Human brands help each other and provide quality guidance. Another popular activity is to host Twitter chats that are attached to a special hashtag. Lolly Daskal does an excellent job with her #LeadFromWithin tweetchat.
Serve. – If you seek to have a customer service element to your line engagement, be serious about it. You can’t go into providing social customer service half-assed. Quickly respond to all inquiries. Expeditiously own up to all mistakes. No customer issue is ever too small or unimportant. Respect your customers’ voices. Every customer might not always be right (or nice) but they still deserve your service.
In closing, being humanly social isn’t something you do. You must live it, embrace it and love it.
