7 tips to humanize your brand on Facebook

After starting a new brand on Facebook for my business, and learning from other brands, I thought I should share some methods that I’ve found to be effective in getting people to notice your brand.

Let us start with one of the most controversial:1. Put a face on Facebook. Not all brands want to put their face on their business page or even on any social networks. But it is said that the Best way to be “human” is to have a human face on it. People want to talk to people, not to an avatar or a logo, and I believe that there are several ways that you can do it. 

• Create an alternative Facebook page to respond. You can create an alternative Facebook page dedicated for support or responding to enquiries. Sort of like an alternative Twitter account with a face on it.  I wouldn’t go with a personal Facebook account since it would be a question of who owns the account later on. However, an alternative Facebook page with a person’s photo, person’s name, and the company name can help.
• If your company doesn’t allow a photo, then alternatively what you can do is create an alternative Facebook page to respond, use a logo as an avatar. However when people go to the alternative Facebook page, they will be able to get a full banner and photo of the person behind it.
• If your company doesn’t want a photo or a name, then last resort would be a dedicated page with a company logo, YOUR NAME + company name:

Eg: From ShoeDazzle, they have a couple of people such as Natalie Dazzle, Jane Dazzle:

 

 

2. Facebook posts: I won’t go much into the details about this, but here are some ways that you can make your page more humanized. Posts should be:

• Engaging
• Worth sharing
• Include photos: Stands out on Facebook rather than just boring text
• Questions
• Tips
• Pick one question: Eg: Shoes vs Heels
• Fill up the blanks questions: First thing I do when I wake up is ___________
• Videos

 

3. Develop a personality or a voice: Sounds easy but often times it is the hardest and takes time. A voice or personality brings a whole new level of engagement. Don’t be a ROBOT. If people want to talk to a robot, they’ll use SIRI.

Tip: Write the way you speak!

 

4. Don’t bore everyone about your products daily! Sure, brand awareness or product awareness is something that you want to achieve on Facebook, but posting them daily will bore your fans. Remind yourself that It IS about your fans, not your products. Make it about them and the rewards are two-fold.

 

5. Reward fans: Fans love to help a brand that they love. You can reward your fans by:

• Doing a fan of the week where you have photos of fans on your banner.
• Use applications such as booshaka that allows you to see who the top fans are. This shows how well fans are doing and they will compete among themselves. At the end of the week/month, you can reward them.

 

6. Post “behind the scenes”: This allows people to see what goes behind a brand. People will feel they know a brand or feel a personal connection when they see what happens behind a Facebook page. Here is a great example by Zappos. They shared a photo of one of their employees, Tony Hsieh, making pizza in Las Vegas. Zappos is a great brand that we can learn from.

 

 

7. Respond: Most important of all… respond to every enquiries if possible. If you can’t respond to all them, then have a number that they can call and get help right away. Some tips that I’ve learned is always make it easy for customers to reach you. I’ve seen people going to a company’s profile page, posting an inquiry only to get another email to email the question to someone else without getting a reply. This happens most probably due to companies outsourcing their voice and the person behind it is following a script. A great respond doesn’t follow a script.

In summary, do something that represents your company and culture well. Some things might not work for your brand. Do what feels comfortable. Anyway, I hope I have covered most of them, if I miss any, do share by leaving a comment below.

Note: This post was also published at iStrategy Conference blog where I contribute on a weekly basis