Social media is a great way to build up your community and reach new people if you’re using it right. Just having a social media account and putting up some content isn’t enough to bring in flocks of new followers.
People want authenticity online. The more authentic your brand image is, the better your audience will be able to connect with you. With how important authenticity has become, it’s worth looking into making your social media presence feel more grounded and relatable.
Let’s take a look at how you can make it happen.
What Does Authentic Content Look Like?
Authenticity online is when your social media accounts are speaking and acting in a way that’s completely consistent with your brand image and your values.
If you’re a clothing company that values inclusivity, your content should reflect that by emphasizing how you’re making your products more inclusive for your target audience. If you’re a lifestyle content creator, your content should line up with the lifestyle image you’re trying to promote.
Authentic content doesn’t feel out of place. Even if something would be cringy, campy, cheesy, or weird for another brand, it can work if it aligns with what you’re all about.
A good example of content that tried to feel authentic but missed the mark is the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad debacle in 2017. Although it was an ad, not a social media post, the same concepts can be applied.
What made it feel inauthentic? It all boils down to the tone of the content. Although Pepsi was trying to give a positive message on a relevant, controversial topic, the message fell flat because, at the end of the day, it didn’t make sense. It didn’t speak to their audience (or any audience, really).
The ad was trying to unite two sides with a message that didn’t resonate with either of them. Ironically, they ended up uniting people by giving them a common target to clown on. Unfortunately for Pepsi, they didn’t come out of that situation looking like the good guys, and they actually did damage to their brand image instead of improving it.
How to Make Your Social Media Content More Authentic
How do you avoid falling into the same trap as Pepsi? There’s a lot you can do to make your content feel authentic and real to your audience without missing the mark.
Know Your Audience
Do you know who you’re talking to through social media? Do you know who you WANT to be talking to?
It’s hard to speak authentically if you’re not sure who you’re talking to. You need to speak in a way that lands with your audience, so it’s vital that you know who they are and what they’re looking for from a brand like yours.
Be Consistent
If you want to feel more authentic, you need to have a reliable pattern of activity. Your posting schedule doesn’t have to be every day, but it should be fairly regular. This is going to help your posts get seen more often, and it gives people familiarity with your account and content.
The best way to stay consistent is to have a content marketing plan. This plan is going to include:
- A rough content posting schedule
- Post types you plan to do regularly
- An overview of your target audience
- An excerpt of the values you want to espouse through your content
- Your targeted aesthetic for social media posts
- Your desired voice and tone
- Which channels you plan to post content to
This is a pretty simplistic overview of a content marketing plan, but it can give you an idea of what you’re going for. The point is that having a plan, even in the very early stages of running your socials, can help you make your content way more consistent, making your account feel more cohesive and professionally run.
Engage with Your Audience
If you’re just broadcasting from your social media accounts, you’re missing out on valuable conversations with your audience. When you ask, your audience will often respond, and their responses can help shape your brand and give you a stronger presence online.
Social media is a two-way street. It’s not just a place to shout into the void. You can and should interact with others. Let your audience know you’re not just there to be heard, but you’re also interested in what they have to say.
Create while Inspired
Do you ever find social media content to be uninspiring or a drag? If social content feels like a chore to you, it could be helpful to look at switching up how you create your content. If you switch to creating a bulk of content at once and posting it slowly on a schedule, it frees you up to create when you’re in the right mood.
Content that’s created while you’re feeling inspired or excited is often way better than content you feel forced to churn out. You might also find you create content a lot faster when you’re feeling inspired.
If you try to create new, fresh content every day or every few days, you’ll probably run into a lot of times when you just don’t feel like doing it and you’ll end up using a lot of energy to pump out subpar content. Instead, come up with a variety of content ideas, then build the posts around those ideas when you’re in the mood, creating a backlog you can post regularly.
Don’t Just Copy Your Competitors
If your mission is to create authenticity and to speak from your unique perspective and voice, copying your competitors can only get you so far. Take inspiration from everywhere, but make sure you put your own spin into everything you’re posting.
Make Your Value Obvious
Just as your values should be shown through your content, you also need to give VALUE through your content.
Ask yourself this: what’s the point of your account?
If you can’t answer that question, you need to spend some time figuring it out. You need to know what you’re trying to do and why your audience would want to follow you on social media. Even if every single post isn’t valuable, your overall account should be providing something valuable to your audience.
Value doesn’t look the same for everyone. Your value could come in the form of entertainment, relatability, education, growth, or anything else. For example, if you’re running a themed Instagram page, your value could come from providing satisfying, aesthetic content to your audience. As long as you’re giving something to your audience in exchange for their attention, you’re doing fine.
Remember that in the end, social media is a platform for exchange. You’re asking people to pay attention to what you’re posting, follow your account, and maybe even interact with you through comments, DMs, etc. What are you doing to make their time and attention worthwhile?
Be Diverse
Diversifying how you get your message across can do wonders. Especially on social media platforms, you need to go along with what’s working on that platform at the moment instead of relying on a single type of content to carry you forever. Give your account some fresh life by trying new post types and experimenting with new content.
One thing to consider is that your message may not be coming across in the right tone if you’re only doing image and text-based posts. Mix in some short-form video content to put a face to the content and make it more fun, interactive, or relatable. Diverse content shows all sides of your brand.
If you’re not seeing the kind of response you want from your content and you’re not connecting with your audience the right way, try switching up the kind of content you’re posting. Sprinkle in some new content and see if it impacts your account in a meaningful way.
This is a great place to segue into the next point…
Follow Your Analytics
If you’re creating and managing your whole social media strategy without consulting your analytics, you’re doing it wrong.
Check in with your analytics regularly to see what’s resonating, what’s landing, and how people are engaging with your content. Keep a mix of content but try to lean into whatever’s getting you closer to your goals. Don’t waste your energy on content no one’s seeing or interacting with.
Connect and Collab
Forming connections with other brands and creators in your industry is a great way of building your image and giving you some respect by association. If people like that creator, they’ll probably check out what you’re all about as well.
Good collaborations don’t have to take a lot of work. They’re a win-win option that helps both creators gain followers and build brand image together, as long as they’re not done haphazardly.
Focus on collabing with brands and creators who align well with what you do, even if they’re in different niches or industries. You can get creative with whom you collab with, just make sure there’s some point of connection in your values that your audience will be able to recognize and appreciate.
Stay in Your Lane
One of the biggest mistakes that brands make on social media is trying to add their voice to absolutely every conversation. If you want to make your brand feel more authentic, stick to what you know.
Don’t jump into every trend or ongoing topic just for the sake of it. Be particular about where you chime in and where you hold off.
The risk when you try to be ever-present, especially on trending social issues, is that you may accidentally back yourself into a corner where you’re only feeding one part of your audience base while pushing the rest away.
Let’s face it. Most people who follow you do it for a very specific reason. Unless your niche is related to the issues you’re speaking up about, those who followed your content for a niche source may just leave. You’re just more noise on their timeline, not the valuable source you wanted to be.
Resist the urge to chime in on everything. When you save your voice for only the things that align with your brand, your words will mean more.
Make a few tweaks to your social media content and see how people start to connect more with your brand and your message just because you’re letting your authenticity shine through!
