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* Write like you speak.

As much as you can, don’t make it sound like writing. It’s just as good acting shouldn’t feel like acting, but living the character.

But be careful not to sound too colloquial or riddle your writing with filler words and phrases such as “like,” “um,” “you know what I mean?” “Do you understand?” etc.

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!

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

You’ve got a new business going and you’re building a client base. But how to reach your target customers and show them you have the solution they need is still blurry in your head.

The simple answer is a business proposal.

When properly laid out, a business proposal helps to connect you and the services you offer to your prospective customers. It articulates your value proposition and unique selling point. The end goal is to convince the client to engage your services or buy your products.

A business proposal may be unsolicited or solicited, in which case an organisation sends an RFP (request for proposal).

Whether solicited or unsolicited, every serious business needs to send out well-drafted proposals to target businesses regularly, identifying a need and detailing how they can solve it.

First things first.

The first thing you should do before you put together your proposal is to research the company. If they sent you an RFP, read it line by line and understand the solutions they want. It may also be a good idea to have a quick chat or meeting with the new client, so you have a very clear picture of their needs and objectives.

Once you’ve done your background checks, it’s time to write your proposal. There’s no set-in-stone approach to writing a business proposal, but below are vital features and order of a good business proposal.

1. The title page.

Use the title or cover page to introduce yourself and your business. It should be simple with few words, but well designed. It should include the title of the proposal, your company name, the client company name and the date of submission.

2. Table of contents.

A table of contents provides the reader with a quick overview of the main sections of the proposal. If you’re submitting an electronic version of the document, link the items in the table so the prospective client can easily jump to a section he wants to view quickly. This will also aid in easy reading and navigation.

3. An executive summary that explains ‘why.’

Here, you’re selling the value proposition to the client by outlining what the client will gain when they use your services or buy your products. It explains to them how your offering is an answer to their current needs.

Even if the client cannot or is not ready to read the rest of the proposal yet, the executive summary should give them a clear idea of the solution you’re providing.

4. Highlight or specify the need or pain points.

This section is where you outline current and specific problems the client needs to solve to reach their full potentials. This is where you show the client you understand their needs and the solutions they need.

5. Propose a solution.

In this section, you draw up a strategy that will help solve the client’s identified need. Be sure you tailor the solution you’re advancing to the needs of the client so they know you’ve created the proposal with them in mind.

You need to be clear about your deliverables, methods of execution and timeline for when they should expect them.

6. State how you are ultimately qualified to provide the solution.

Are you the right person to fix the prospective client’s pain point? Why should they entrust you with that responsibility? This section is where you show why you’re the best for the job.

It will help if you can include testimonials/case studies of past clients’ success stories and mention any outstanding qualifications, awards or accreditations that establish your authority in your field.

Please note to not bombard the client with unnecessary details or features of your offering. Instead, focus on the benefits the client will receive when they agree to use your service or product.

7. Add price options.

This is where things can get tricky as you want to be careful you’re pricing right – not under-pricing or going over the top with it. It’s best to provide a few options for the client to suit different budgets and needs.

You can find some proposal software that provides responsive pricing tables. It lets the prospective client check the product or service options they prefer while the price adjusts automatically.

8. Provide timelines, schedules and projections.

This allows you to provide details on key processes and phases in the planning and execution of the proposal, including the project timeline, pricing, and payment schedules.

Basically, this page summarises the commitments and deliverables of both parties (you and the client) on the project – in the event the client accepts your business proposal.

Be clear on the terms and conditions and crosscheck with your legal team before submitting the document to the client.

Other key things to keep in mind.

There’s a lot to internalise when putting together a quality business proposal. Here are a few tips to help you create one.

Begin with an outline.
Before you plunge into the details of proposal writing, list out the sections of your business proposal and the key information you’ll include in each page. This will help to keep you focused and your message clear and intact as you transition from section to section.

Keep it simple.
Although there’s no one-size-fits-all length for business proposals, you must not sacrifice quality for quantity. Maintain the KISS (Keep it short and simple) principle of good writing and don’t sound[i] jargon-y.[/i]

Maintain a brand voice.

As you create your business proposal, explore the opportunity to let your brand personality shine through. Keep the brand voice consistent and distinct from your competitors and let the client see it.

Use data and visuals.
Use visuals like charts, graphs and infographics, and compelling, quantitative data to enhance your message.

Include a call-to-action.

Don’t keep the reader hanging or guessing about what to do next after they’ve read and understood your proposition. Include a clear CTA (call-to-action) so the client knows what steps to take, if they’re impressed with your proposal, to kick-start the business relationship.

Create a sense of urgency.
Your proposal should have a timeframe within which the client should take action. Do not make it indefinite. Let the client know there’s a deadline on your special offer and making a decision as soon as possible is important for their business interest.

Proofread and proofread again.
Before you submit the business proposal, take a little more time to read again, rewrite a few lines, if necessary; edit and re-edit, and proofread well so the document reads well, devoid of spelling, grammatical or factual errors.

3 ingredients of a successful proposal presentation.

There are three vital factors that make a winning business proposal presentation.

1. Content.

This is the information the readers or listeners need to digest so they can take the required action after your presentation.

2. Visual Design.

This includes images, infographics, slides and other visual elements that support and enhance the message.

3. Delivery.

This is the process of how you convey the essence of the entire business proposal.

These three parts are like a three-legged stool. They complement each other. If one component is missing or not properly applied, it reduces the effectiveness of the proposal.

Comfortable writing zone.

Perhaps the most difficult part of business proposal writing is organising all the key sections and actually writing the proposal it in a coherent, flowing and articulated way. No doubt, this requires a certain level of expertise and experience to pull off.

If you don’t have the skill or background to write a good business proposal and still try to rush up things to beat a deadline, you may end up with a document with little or no semblance to your original goals. In that case, it’s best you hire professional business proposal writers to help you create a winning business proposal.

https://mediainspiredng.com/how-to-write-a-winning-business-proposal

A copy is writing that sells, so by definition, it must be persuasive.

A good copy should successfully persuade your readers why they should buy your product or use your service, and not your competitor’s. It sells “a better life” (not just a product or idea) to the target audience.

Does your copy need to be clear – fluid and punchy with no strain of boredom? Yes, it does.

Does it have to be concise – straight to the point, organised and not jargonised? Yes, again.

Clarity and conciseness will ensure your message is digestible, which is essential if you want your target market to read and understand your post with ease.

That said, the clearest and most concise copy ever published is still a fail if it doesn’t persuade its readers to act.

Compelling and convincing copies fascinate readers and propel them to pull the trigger and take action. It does this by grabbing their attention, highlighting a pain that they are desperate to relieve, and offering a call-to-action that is beneficial and focused on solutions.

Your aim is to compose a copy that is not just clear, and concise, but, ultimately, also compelling and convincing.

Let’s begin…

Know your audience

Who will read this piece? Imagine the average person in your target audience. Imagine you know them personally, even. Think about how they spend their day. Think about what’s important to them.

What do they really love to do? What is their average age? What items or services have they bought from you or your client previously? The more you know about the market for which you’re writing, the more your copy will be focused and targeted.

Know your unique selling point

What differentiates you from the rest of your competitors is your unique selling point. In brief, the unique selling point satisfies the question: “Why should I purchase from you, and not from your competitors?”

Your unique selling point doesn’t have to be mystical or amazing. What’s important is that your customers will find it really useful and valuable.

Be absolutely clear about your goal

What’s the purpose of this content? What specific things or decisions do you want the reader to take after reading your piece? You need to be unmistakably clear on this before you write. If the answer is still vague or ambiguous, it certainly will be also to your reader.

Craft an attention-grabbing headline

Just about 10 seconds. That’s all you have to grab your reader’s attention and convince them to read more.

This means your headline needs to do a lot more than just summarise the piece. It needs to intrigue your readers and compel them to continue to read the rest of the copy. So make your headline count!

Within this short time, a strong sales headline can answer one question: Why should your customers care? And this exactly is the very question that is running your average reader’s minds.

Your answers should be clear and straightforward. Also, remember that many other companies offer similar products and services as you do. So, if you can’t answer that question plainly in your headline or provide them with a strong hint, they’ll go elsewhere.

Keep it short and simple (KISS)

Most people don’t really read online – and that’s the cold truth.

Studies after studies have shown that what people do is simply scan information on the web, which is even more apparent when people read on their smartphones.

How to fix this dilemma? Especially when you’ve got a fairly long post you need your target market online to read?

Use short words and paragraphs to communicate your message. This makes your lines more succinct to your potential customers as they scan your sales copy. I suggest you use sentences that contain around 15 words or fewer, and only occasionally longer.

Include bullet points

The best way to emphasise the benefits of your product or service is to list them in bullet points in your sales copy.

Besides helping make your sales copy easy to scan, bullet points subconsciously ready the minds of your readers and tell them: “This will be important.”

The bullet points also have white spaces surrounding the text, and this further highlights the details or points.

Focus on the problem

A persuasive marketing copy should not feel like just a long pitch. Instead, the content should make the reader feel the pain of their problem.

By highlighting their pain points, you make your readers acutely aware of them that they start to long for a solution quickly.

So when you start explaining how your product or service will help them fix each of these pain points, they are more prepared to buy.

Avoid weasel words

When crafting headlines, subheads and body of the copy, ensure to skip words that are vague, ambiguous, or prevaricate and don’t communicate a direct command.

Such words are known as weasel words and usually include terms like ‘try’, ‘hope’, ‘wish’, ‘would’, ‘perhaps’, ‘strive’, ‘maybe’, ‘could’, ‘but’ etc.

Many copywriters have made a habit of using them generously, especially if they are writing marketing content for a brand, product or service with a weak USP or promise.

You don’t want your copy to read weak and listless, like a light feather floating in the air. Instead, make your writing stronger, more assured, more authoritative, and more persuasive with words like ‘will’ and ‘can’ to describe to your reader what your product or service will or can do for them.

Remember: Copywriting should be made to persuade your target market why your product and service is what they need at the moment, not communicate doubt in any way.

Above all, it must convince them why they should buy your product or service and not that of their competitors.

Use FOMO

FOMO stands for “fear of missing out,” and it’s one of the psychological triggers that drive people to buy. With social media now a major part of many people’s lives, this desire is stronger than it has ever been.

There are two ways to capitalise on this:

The first is by telling them you’ve specially selected them for your offer. This gives the reader a sense of importance, and everyone loves that feeling.

The second is pegging a specific time to your offer with a social media contest. People normally become more responsive when they see there’s a timeline for them to make a decision.

Always respect your readers

According to David Ogilvy, a target reader is not stupid and you should see him/her like you would an intelligent spouse or partner. So, respect your customers’ intelligence and don’t shock them either.

As amazing as your product may be, talking to your audience condescendingly will turn them away. As much as you’d love to be charmed by your copy, keep your eyes on the ball – which is to connect with your readers and clearly spotlight their problem and a great solution you have for it.

Show your customers respect and dignity. You’re on an equal footing, or maybe a little lower, taking into account you’re the seller. Make sure to let that position shine through in your copy.

Actually, what you should do is tell the story of your buyer persona with your copy. Use their experiences to develop content that talks to potential customers going through similar pains and looking for similar solutions.

In Conclusion…

Will you be able to compel everyone? No, you won’t. No chance!

But you mustn’t let that bother you. Just as any craft, copywriting is honed over time. So, it’s okay to fall short sometimes and at the early stages.

Keep stumbling, keep falling, but keep getting back up again. It’s completely normal… natural. There was never a great success without some previous great, often unreported failure.

Just keep practising and perfecting your writing and persuasive skills. Soon, you’ll start creating compelling copies that drive people to buy or use the products or ideas you’re marketing in your copies.

And soon too, these skills, techniques and experiences will be ingrained in and become a part of you. And then you’ll be becoming a sales copywriting machine!

https://mediainspired.net/what-makes-a-post-compelling

It would seem FG didn't properly think through the lockdown initially. I was hoping to read any caveats, waivers, exceptions, specifics...(like has been modified above).

It was like a wholesale lockdown.

Not done!