In the social media world you’ll often hear people say that it’s important to humanize the business.
What does that mean?
It can mean two different things:
- Talk about the business in terms of people,
- Talk about everything as if the business were a person.
Talk about the business in terms of people
Many businesses want to talk about their earnings or their products. They get wrapped up in talking about operations, supply chains and customer service. Humanizing a business is about all of those things but the focus is different.
- A humanized business talks about the passion of the people who make the products.
- A humanized business talks about the team that optimized the supply chain to get products to YOU faster.
- A humanized business doesn’t talk about its customer service, it shows you James or Tara who have been working in customer service with the company for 6 years and it highlights their favorite memory of helping a customer solve a problem.
The humanized business puts people at the forefront; it enables you connect with another human being.
Talk about everything as if it were a person
What would your business talk about if it were a person?
Think about your restaurant’s Facebook page as a personal social profile page. What if your restaurant (she) was a person?
- Would she take pictures of the food and share it like a person visiting a restaurant?
- Would she talk about her friends (staff) and how great they are? Or new people she’s met (new customers)?
- Would she shoot videos of cool stuff that happened to her? Would she invite her friends to come by for a drink?
This is just an example but this is how you you develop a voice. It could be a restaurant, it could be a doctor’s office, it could be a bank, the idea is still the same, know your company’s voice and share, and connect as a person would.
The Social Business
The Social Business does all of this, but not at the expense of the business results. There is no harm in shifting the conversation from numbers to human interest; or from events, to the people that participated in the events.
There is a tremendous brand building power in freeing the company’s voice and focusing on employees, and customers.
So…
What would your brand say if it were a human being?