It’s that “Je ne sais quois.” That certain something that will neither completely and comfortably fit in a corporate brand guide. Establishing an attractive, brand positive personality in social media can be elusive to businesses simply because personality marketing is dynamic and happens outside most link clicks and Twitter follows.

Business’ tendency is to live in structure. Next steps and rules are clear and predictable engagement analytics like Hootsuite, will give you numbers. Helpful, but keep in mind, millions saw the first Star Wars movies (high view and sales stats) but hate them (including myself). The final judge of personality marketing is measured in emotion and perception. Business must learn or learn to lean on communicators that are comfortable with that uncertainty  and lack of structure or be satisfied with their social media serving as merely an glorified event board.

With that said, for those ready to embrace it, personality is timing. It’s engaging with others and and have that innate sense to adjust language and topic.  It’s learning that saying one clever thing is interesting. But until you’re saying multiple engaging ideas, you’re not interesting…yet.

Personality marketing is being yourself or true to the core of your company. In the context of social media, the challenge is the art of being yourself in different situations. Sounds ironic. But if you really think about it, we do it all the time in the real world. You can be funny or say witty things in a Church setting, just perhaps differently than you might at the bar or work. You adapt. Recalibrate. In fact, when you talk as the company, think like you’d talk at the company. You probably found ways to make co-workers laugh or trust you without cursing or acting outside company policies. Use the approach to bring out your personality in your social media.

Those in charge of marketing need to give the “person” a personality that:
1) Listens
2) Build trust through integrity of message
3) Is interesting and…
4) “Feels” like someone you want to get to know
5) Remember that you be evaluated on your personality (the sum of your actions), not just your posted messages.

See the  two previous posts to this story:

Stop calling social media, “social media.” It’s personality marketing.

Why personality marketing (social media) is not natural for companies.