This post was published on medium.com by MediaInspiredNG.com

As the marketplace today gets increasingly crowded, brands are discovering that creating a “likeable” personality is the best way to gain a competitive edge.

And it is also the key to building a loyal and dedicated social media community.

For most brands, social media is an integral part of their overall digital marketing strategy. Social media not only helps build brand awareness, but also offers brands a chance to closely connect with their audiences and reach thousands of potential customers.

Furthermore, it helps brands to extend their brand messaging beyond their company’s website or brick and mortar stores or offices.
Truth is, whether you consciously create a brand personality or choose to ignore it, you’ll still be presenting an image to your customers and prospects.

But let's be realistic, there's a strong competition for public attention and interaction out there. With almost all brands and advertisers using social media, combined with regular platform updates to enhance user experience, brands are battling for organic exposure.

In the past couple of years, about 40% of marketers are finding the social media marketing space more difficult. This is according to Social Media Examiner’s 2016 Industry Report.

But while gaining adequate exposure these days is never easy, the good news is that your target audience is also on social media, ready to get hooked on your brand story and creativity, as well as some of your product or service promotions.

The extent of success your brand achieves on social media comes down to one thing: “Likeability.”

People will follow and engage with you simply because they like you and what you offer on social media, such as quality and fun content, discounts and special promotions, or good customer care.

Let’s look at a few helpful tips and examples...

Create a Personality From Your Brand’s Tone of Voice

Whether you solely manage your business or have hundreds of staff working with you, there needs to be a consistency in the tone of voice.
Users can glean your tone of voice on social media by your posts and how your company representatives interact with your brand followers in the comments.

The first step in setting your brand’s tone of voice is to establish brand guidelines for your social media representatives to follow.

Understand Your Audience

Understanding your target demographics is a critical part of engaging them and helping you create viral content. It's all about sharing something that people who follow your social profiles can deeply relate with.

Unfortunately, you can’t make everyone happy all the time. But there are things you can do that ensures you don’t exclude any section of your target market.

For example, as much as possible, avoid political and religious posts. These territories are easily a public minefield for backlash - except, of course, it’s relevant to your niche.

Engage Your Audience

Technically, this is all you really need to do with your online brand presence. It should be the end goal of your social media campaigns.
It’s one thing to have your posts liked and shared, it’s another thing to genuinely connect with your social media community.

Interact, engage and bond with them. Respond promptly to questions and inquiries. Acknowledge a share or mention. Reply to comments.
Give your customers a sense of connection with your brand. They’ll feel valued that their voices are being heard, regardless of the size of the company. And when they feel valued, your brand gains a lot of “Like” points in the minds of your audience.

...And Nurture Them

It’s important to focus on social media management when trying to build a “Likeable” personality fo your brand. This is essentially about nurturing your audience to grow a bigger, stronger, and more engaged following.

The goal and approach are slightly different from social media marketing strategies, which are targeted at pushing your brand towards specific goals — such as increasing brand recognition or engagement.

Pay close attention to your community’s social needs, interests, questions, and feedback and try as much as possible to satisfy these needs in your next posts or interactions with them.

This affords you the chance for more interaction with them, while also reminding them to follow and engage with your brand on other social media channels and online forums.

Create "Likeable" Content

Creating “likeable” content has different sides to it. You can create a quality and interesting post, but that also needs to be matched by an attractive title to catch the reader’s attention.

Another aspect to “likeable” content is creating evergreen posts. They are valuable because they are never outdated. This type of post is focussed on knowledge, which is relevant time after time, year after year.

Posts with a good supporting video is another content type that scores well when finding ways to engage your audience better.

Add a Human Angle

It’s possible to be too clinical in your social media posts.

From your website content to social media posts on your brand handles, learn to include that "human" element.
It’s important your content sound conversational, just like you would do when you’re speaking with a friend or explaining some fact-based information to them.

Here are tips on creating a sense of human element in your web posts:

- Give your writing a ‘personality.’
- Don't stuff your content with long words.
- Opt for shorter sentences.
- When the mood calls for it, add humour to posts.
- Be clear and concise.

Rather than “dishing out” facts and your brand’s “unique selling points,” see your social media handle as a chance to give advice and connect with your target audience. You don’t want your content to sound too formal or have a robotic feel to it.

By being conversational, the brand gives off a sense of congeniality and accessibility.

Share More than Your Own Content

While it's necessary to share your content, it's not the only way to engage your audience. It’s a good idea to share other useful content as well. But make sure the source is not a direct competitor.

Pointing your social media community to relevant or related websites, tools and resources that may interest them will also be helpful to both your brand and your audience.

Invite Conversation

Social media is really all about building and nurturing a “social” community. People airing and sharing their views, interacting and connecting with people with similar interests, learning and gaining new insights.

So, one of the most powerful approaches to creating a “Likeable” brand is to give people a forum where they can express their opinions and experiences with each other.

How to trigger a conversation?

Ask your audience their views on recent happenings (Twitter has a poll post option), particularly relating to your niche. Make sure the questions are insightful and engaging, and as the conversations unfold, tap into the interaction and insights.

Avoid Being Too Promotional

Don’t get overly sales-y with your post. If most of your posts are promotional, you should stop. That’s not really what your audience wants to see, so you’ll probably have less responses and interactions if you constantly do that.

Your audience wants to know who you are, what you do, what you represent and how they can benefit from you. And all of these go beyond simply rehashing the “great features” of your brand products or services.

Don't Shy Away From Negative Reviews

Every brand wishes they could totally avoid negative reviews, but that’s almost impossible in today’s vibrant and dynamic social media space.

Accept the reality of constant or occasional feedback, and that some of them will be negative. Things happen sometimes - No matter how hard you try. And customers and clients are finding the social media a convenient space to vent their grievances.

Although allowing brand mistakes to be public information may appear like a nightmare, you mustn’t let it get to you or destabilise you.
Instead, use any negative feedback as a chance to showcase some of your “Likeable” brand characters like empathy, patience, modesty, understanding, motivation and care.

Be Consistent

One vital secret for brand “Likeability” is consistency. It really is vital.

You create brand consistency when your tone, colour scheme and imagery follow the same or similar pattern in every message. Sustaining this continuity of tone and imagery can further emphasize your brand characters and bring your brand personality into clearer view.

By this, you’ll have an audience who can instantly identify your branding, even without seeing your brand name.

Regular, quality social media posts will help keep your brand in the consciousness of your followers, inspire “Likeability” and trigger buying decisions.

Share Experiences About Your Brand

On a final note, many brands have seen a spike in their social media followership and engagement by simply sharing their brand story and histories on their timelines.

Readers love a good story. Storytelling connects with them at a deeper level, especially if they can relate to the hero in the brand story. They also feel informed and it generally improves the brand’s relationship and reputation with the community.

It’s not necessary to go into personal details when telling a brand story or history. Perhaps all you need to inspire interaction and engagement is to share interesting elements of the business that are public knowledge but not known by many people.

Wrapping Up

Most social media users wish they could build great interpersonal connections with brands. The more a brand interacts with them, the more they trust the brand and share their experiences.

In the end, creating the content that keeps target users engaged and keep coming back for more is up to you. The social media “Likeability” branding tips above are just the start.

https://medium.com/@mediainspiredng.com/how-to-create-a-likeable-brand-personality-on-social-media-89cd9583e75c

[color=#006600][/color] I love this content. Have been trying to build a likeable brand for a spa company's social platform (www.facebook.com/lareinemedspa, www.instagram.com/lareinemedspa) am managing but all my effort and strategies to engage with the audience seems to hit deaf ears... Is there something am not doing well?

YungLasaint:
[color=#006600][/color] I love this content. Have been trying to build a likeable brand for a spa company's social platform (www.facebook.com/lareinemedspa, www.instagram.com/lareinemedspa) am managing but all my effort and strategies to engage with the audience seems to hit deaf ears... Is there something am not doing well?

Hi. creating brand consistency across all social media channels is important, plus following all or most of the recommendations in this post. It's not an overnight success as most social media users are tickled by sensitive and controversial subjects like politics, religion, and crime. But make sure to build, improve and project an attractive brand personality.

Another useful tip : Model your approach after bigger, more successful brand in your niche.

Good luck!

MediaInspiredNG:


Hi. creating brand consistency across all social media channels is important, plus following all or most of the recommendations in this post. It's not an overnight success as most social media users are tickled by sensitive and controversial subjects like politics, religion, and crime. But make sure to build, improve and project an attractive brand personality.

Another useful tip : Model your approach after bigger, more successful brand in your niche.

Good luck!

Thank you for this useful tips