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In today’s digital age, standing out on social media can be challenging for businesses. However, thankfully, authenticity holds the key to success. Below you will learn everything you need to know about what makes authenticity, or being genuine, the key to a successful social media marketing strategy.
Building Trust and Connection
Authenticity builds trust and connection between you and your audience. By being honest and transparent, you establish a genuine relationship, which fosters loyalty. Trust is very important, as around 35% of respondents to a PwC-conducted global survey stated that their trust in a brand was among the top reasons they decided to shop. Thankfully, you can effectively improve your brand’s overall trust and connection with your audience in several ways. A few of the most helpful are listed below:
Share Quality Content
Make sure that the content you share on your social media page is high-quality or entertaining. Don’t necessarily make all your content about selling your product or service. Instead, opt for informative, entertaining content that will keep visitors coming back again and again.
Engage
Be sure to interact on your social channels as often as possible. Respond to questions in a timely manner and encourage interaction with others on your platforms.
Ask for Reviews
Many potential buyers will check out your reviews on various platforms before doing business with your brand. Therefore, it’s important to encourage loyal customers to give your brand good reviews.
Make Sure Links are Trustworthy
If you do share links via your social media pages, make sure they are trustworthy, reliable, and without error. If you share something false or with a bad link, your audience will quickly tire of looking at what you post. Do your homework and ensure anything you share is worthy of your brand’s endorsement.
Share Behind-The-Scenes
We all love to peek behind the curtain, so make sure that you use social media to share what your brand is like daily. Get employees involved with this and have fun with it!
Differentiation in a Saturated Market
Social media presents a crowded marketplace. Social Media Today reported that 82% of all marketers felt that social media was an important part of their core operation. In addition, 93.79% of all businesses use social media for customer service, marketing, or engagement. To put this number into perspective, there were 30.57 million businesses that actively used social media in some form throughout 2022. Therefore, ensuring your brand stands out in such a crowded sphere can be difficult. Thankfully, authenticity sets you apart from your competitors. You create a distinct brand personality that resonates with your target audience by showcasing your unique qualities.
Humanizing Your Brand
Authenticity humanizes your brand. Sharing your story and experiences creates an emotional connection, making your audience more likely to support you. Humanizing your brand is important because if you fail to do so, you will be considered less than human or more like an entity. Personalization helps you build a human basis that your audience can then connect with on an individual level. Some actionable ideas on how to humanize your brand are outlined below:
Begin From the Top Down
Upper management and owners must start this process. It’s a culture that comes across as human, so share anything that embodies this. In other words, if your organization runs a 5K or does a charity event together, post about it. This reveals that there are actual people behind the brand who do good for others and care about matters that are important to us all.
Make Your Brand Approachable and Engaging
Although it is important for your brand to be considered a leader in your industry, it’s important not to create this persona to neglect a human element. Create a voice that is human, fun, and approachable. This doesn’t mean unprofessional, it just means that your brand seems more human and less perfect.
Speak the Right Language
This doesn’t mean language but learning to communicate with your audience. In other words, some target audiences prefer a more professional studious approach to content, and that’s what they like. Others like to feel heard and understood, so they prefer the Everyman persona. Either way, it really doesn’t matter what you do, make sure that the language you speak reaches your audience.
Don’t Neglect the About Us Section
Many social media platforms have about us sections of one sort or another. Make sure that you flesh this section out. Otherwise, your social media persona looks like a faceless corporation without passions, feelings, or beliefs. Instead, tell your audience who you are as a brand, what makes you tick, what is your brand's backbone or mission, and the motivation behind what you do each day.
Don’t Be Afraid of Humor
Of course, you have to know your audience and use your judgment on this, but humor can be a fun way to humanize your brand, especially on social media. Everyone loves to laugh, and offering something a bit different from dull content can help you appear much more human as a brand.
Encouraging User-Generated Content and Advocacy
Another benefit of authenticity in social media marketing is the fact that it encourages user-generated content and brand advocacy. In other words, when your audience or followers feel connected to your brand, they will willingly share their positive experiences. This will effectively expand your reach.
Authenticity is Key, so Embrace It!
Authenticity is essential in your social media strategy. It builds trust, differentiates your brand, humanizes your business, and encourages user-generated content and advocacy. Embrace authenticity to transform your online presence and drive sustainable growth. At fuze32, we are a full-service agency happy to help you with your current social media strategy. We recommend using authenticity and would love to help you determine how to incorporate that trait into your posts and platforms. Contact us today to learn more. 
