Humanizing Your Brand: Creating Authentic Connections on Social Media

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When social media became this massive digital marketing platform decades ago, brands quickly jumped at the chance to create their pages and position themselves as the best choices in their fields. The problem was, for the longest time, most of the companies in social media launched campaigns that felt too corporate or robotic, making it challenging for them to connect with their target audience. 

However, as their understanding of the platform grew, brands started shifting their approach, allowing their companies to be more relatable in hopes of engaging better with the target audience. Through various practices, many of them have successfully created a social media presence that’s more trustworthy and human. 

Read below to learn more about humanizing your brand on social media. Discover the best practices to connect well with your target audience.

Why Humanizing Your Brand on Social Media 

Many people think the shift to humanize brands started when the global pandemic ended in the middle of 2023. That’s not surprising, especially since consumers at home demanded better human connections when they spent most of the pandemic in isolation. 

However, experts agree that brands changed their online behaviors significantly years before the world went on lockdown. When that happened, what used to be a one-way communication with a highly advertorial approach turned two-way with a more conversational and engaging tone. 

Humanizing a brand in various online channels remains a powerful strategy many companies use to connect better with their target audience. This trend is prevalent across social media platforms, where people are more likely to engage with loved ones and businesses in multiple ways. 

Thanks to this strategy, brands have one of the crucial factors in achieving online success. To further understand how it helps elevate companies, we’re listing and exploring below the different benefits it offers.

Build trust with the target audience

The continuous rise of fraudulent websites and social media accounts has made online users increasingly vigilant about the pages they interact with. That’s why they’re demanding more than well-written content and creative visuals. Instead, they want to see the “human” side of the company before they give their trust and confidence. 

If consumers connect to a brand personally and emotionally, they create a bridge that leads to a more positive association, elevating a brand’s credibility in the market. When that happens, they will likely purchase from or partner with the brand over the competition.

Stand out from a crowded market 

It’s no secret that many industries are saturated with similar products or services. Because of that, brands now mainly compete in value to convert more potential customers. 

Humanizing a brand is an excellent way to stand out in the market. Instead of hard-selling features that the competition may already offer, companies emphasize their personality, story, and culture to set themselves apart and connect better with their target audience.

Improve brand loyalty

One of the many mistakes companies make on social media is creating campaigns that only aim to sell more products. Concentrating on revenue too much is not a sustainable strategy if existing customers don’t return to buy more. Not to mention that, as discussed above, many of the same products may already exist in the market. 

Humanizing a brand is an excellent way to build relationships with the target audience and transform them into loyal customers. If consumers relate to a brand in any way, they tend to stay longer and continue to purchase from them not because of any clever marketing tactic but because they want to support the label further.

Building loyalty is also an excellent way to boost a company’s organic growth. Customers who want to support a particular brand tend to spread positive word-of-mouth about it.

How To Humanize Your Brand on Social Media 

There are no specific rules to humanize a brand. However, there are certain practices you can do to achieve such an effect. 

Here are some helpful tips for humanizing your brand on different platforms.

Speak in your audience’s language and tone

To connect with your target audience, you must remove all the corporate jargon in your messaging. Looking professional is good, but focusing too much on that risks alienating your potential and existing customers. That is unless your company is B2B and you’re targeting C-level individuals. 

Using a language or tone familiar to your target audience is an excellent way to make them feel more involved with the brand. Doing so is like communicating with them personally and not dominating them in the conversation by talking more corporately. 

This is where building a customer persona will come in handy. Researching your market’s preferences will allow you to craft messages that resonate with them better. Create various segments that represent each of your target audiences. However, as long as you don’t use corporate jargon, you have an excellent choice for building rapport with them. 

Many might think humor is a guaranteed way to make this approach. While online users respond well to brands that use fun or witty language, it’s not the right choice if it doesn’t fit the overall branding, industry, and target demographic.

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Provide audiences with a look behind the scenes

People are becoming increasingly reluctant to trust companies online because of the many malicious accounts emerging on various social media platforms. The best way to gain their trust online is to provide transparency by giving them a peek behind the brand’s curtains.  

There are various ways to do this approach on social media. One of the most common techniques brands use to give their target audience a backstage look is live streaming on channels like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. 

Live streaming is one of the best ways to showcase a brand’s authenticity. Through this strategy, you can provide real-time interaction by addressing comments and questions sent out by your viewers. 

The best part is that you can broadcast many content types to humanize your brand further. You can host product demonstrations, set live Q&As, and cover significant events or celebrations in the company. 

Aside from live streaming, other content materials and concepts work well in showcasing what goes behind the company. For instance, you can publish your brand’s creative process in static images and videos. 

You can post your design sketches, brainstorming sessions, and other product development or improvement activities. It’s an excellent way to showcase the hardworking people behind your brand, improving your credibility further.

Increase transparency by admitting mistakes

It’s natural for businesses, big or small, to make errors. The bigger sin is brushing off any negative perception customers create, especially on social media. 

Instead of running away from any criticism online, constructive or otherwise, take the situation and humanize your brand further by being transparent about any particular issue. Explaining what happened and owning up to the mistake is better than ignoring it altogether. 

Doing so will help boost and maintain your target audience’s trust and confidence in the brand, especially if you show them how dedicated you are to preventing such an error from happening again. 

Aside from that, consumers, in general, value transparency. That means being transparent about a particular issue could help attract potential customers.

Select a cause to support

Today, consumers increasingly desire brands to do more than sell products and services. They are looking for companies with helpful initiatives that benefit communities. 

Supporting a cause shows heart and personality. It conveys how your brand cares about resolving a particular issue or helping a specific group of people. Plus, it’s a wholesome way to stand out from the competition and better connect with the target audience.

When choosing a cause to support, select one that aligns with your brand’s core values. Going for a random initiative might make you look impersonal unless you explain your team’s deep connection with it. 

There are many ways to support your chosen cause. Of course, the best one is to contribute a percentage of your company’s earnings. But aside from that, you can promote the initiative on your social media accounts. You can also seek donations on your pages from your followers.

Maintain an active blog on your website

Publishing blog posts has been one of the most valuable tools brands use to improve their authority in the field. Aside from that, it’s an excellent way to showcase a human side to the target audience. 

Maintaining an active blog is essential to boosting your brand’s search engine optimization (SEO). Having an excellent SEO ranking by publishing relevant content helps elevate your organic growth, which, to most online users, is a sign of credibility. To them, it means a dedicated team actively wants to educate the target audience. 

Sharing your active blogs on different social media platforms is an excellent way to establish your authority without sounding impersonal or corporate. When sharing them on social media, think of it like you’re giving expert advice to people you care about.

The best part is that publishing blogs benefit companies in all industries, whether you’re retail, technology, or real estate. Plus, you can write about many topics to achieve the benefits mentioned above, from something as simple as beauty product tutorials to applying for VA home loans.

Engage with your target audience 

Engagement is crucial to any digital marketing’s success, including social media. The higher the engagement, the better the brand achieves organic growth in the field. 

The simplest and most effective way to improve engagement and make your brand more approachable is by responding to every comment, message, and mention on your platforms. Actively engaging with your target audience’s feedback, good or bad, demonstrates that your brand values its customers’ opinions and is responsive to their needs. 

This is why having a dedicated team to handle your brand’s social media pages is vital. Doing so will ensure you don’t miss every inquiry, review, or message.

Take advantage of user-generated content (UGC)

User-generated content (UGC) is any content online users create to showcase a particular brand. Many often confuse this with influencer or affiliate marketing. However, UGCs are not made from a partnership between the user and the label. Instead, online users produce UGCs out of support for the company.

UGCs are valuable assets, especially on social media, because they help elevate a brand’s authenticity from the target audience’s perspective. It comes from real-life interactions, opinions, and emotions. That’s why sharing them on all your social media accounts is a powerful way to make your brand more relatable. 

Moreover, publishing UGCs is an effective way to boost brand loyalty. Doing so is like acknowledging your customers on social media by noticing their content. When that happens, you create better connections with them and foster a sense of community.

Keep up with the trends

Always remember that the hot topics on social media are constantly and quickly changing. Whatever’s trending today may not be discussed in a week or two. That’s how fast social media shifts in today’s highly aggressive digital landscape. 

Staying knowledgeable about current and emerging trends is vital. Aside from hot topics, watch out for the latest templates or styles social media users apply to their content. Always hop on them, especially if they’re relevant to your brand. Doing so will showcase how active your team is on social media, which elevates your authenticity even further. 

It would also help to provide your target audience with more insightful information about the trending topic they’re talking about. You can simplify critical points in a topic to inform online users or provide solutions on a particular issue. Do it without misleading the people or offending a specific community. That way, you also elevate your authority and trustworthiness in the industry.

A Better Way To Connect With Your Target Audience 

Humanizing your brand in social media provides an excellent opportunity to connect better with your target audience and stand out from the competition. 

The practices mentioned above are some of the best ones you can try. But don’t be afraid to experiment. The key is to prioritize engaging with your customers, using more conversational language, and creating content relevant to the current trends. 

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