5 Ways To Give Your Brand A Personality

Patrick Gensel/Flickr Don't be boring.

Humanising a brand is the best way of endearing people to your company. Of course, like all things in life, it’s easier said than done but worth it in the long-run. Building up a personality takes effort and finding one that fits into your overall company message, and takes into account the strengths of your team isn’t the easiest.

Also, personality isn’t just limited to what you say or the odd joke you make, but on your style and how you present yourself to the public. How you interact should be a reflection on what your brand is about and allows people to connect with you, so if you haven’t properly considered what your brand’s voice is, you should do it sooner instead of later.

Deciding Upon An Identity

If you had five words to describe your business, what would they be? Serious? Fun? Easy Going? Funny? Informative? Lighthearted? Helpful? This isn’t a tagline that you will share with the world (unless you really want to), but it will help determine how you communicate to the world. Not only does it help to be consistent, but it’s useful to have when your customers (or potential employees) want to get an idea of the type of culture that forms your business.

Also worth considering are the colours you use to showcase your brand. Different colours evoke different emotions and knowing the type you want to associate yours with can really help out.

Put A Face To The Name

Since you’ll be dealing with people on a regular basis, sometimes a move as simple as putting a face to the name is helpful. Especially if it’s a case where you have to regularly deal with customer service queries, it easier for people to identify with you when they can visualise the person behind the account. Anything that stops them from feeling like they’re talking to a corporate brand will help in the long-run.

In the case of Twitter, a number of companies place images of their help team (along with initials) on their background image to show people what they look like. It’s a small move, but is effective in showing that there are people there who are going to engage with you, regardless of the query.

Zappos

What’s Your Look?

Presentation is always key. Let’s say you were being introduced to two people for a business deal and you could only choose one. The first person is dressed in a suit and the other is dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Immediately, you would go for the person in the suit since they at the very least, look more professional and appear to take things seriously.

The same can be said of your site and by extension, your social media channels, and whether you like it or not, people will judge on looks first. Relating to the idea of colour to personalise your brand, your website should reflect this and allow visitors to see what exactly you’re offering. While saying this, don’t get too wrapped up in style and neglect everything else. Things like user experience and content are just as important so having a functional and easy to navigate site is key.

What’s The Tone Of Your Business?

The message of your company and the style will help shape the kind of brand voice you’re looking for. Is it going to be serious and to the point, or will you be using fun and colourful language to sell your product?

There are very few instances where you have to adapt an entirely serious tone, doing so will very much depend upon the industry that you’re involved with, so there will always be room for a bit of personality and fun in your interactions. One great example of this is WaterstonesOxfordSt. Dealing with a medium like books, you could be easily forgiven for thinking that it’d just focus on what they’re selling. Instead, it creates some zany narratives around books that is just fun to follow. It even gets into faux arguments with other book stores like Fallons, who also get involved in the fun.

Twitter

If you’re a small business starting up, there’s no harm in making the brand voice your own, since you’re both one and the same person. Just be aware that you’re using that account even while you’re not working, or you could end up with an embarrassing mishap further down the line.

How Do You Connect?

Perhaps one of the most important factors here, how you communicate with your consumers and audience is the key to building up a solid relationship. Depending on the points above, your replies and comments will tie in with the overall tone you’ve developed so you could give either serious replies, whimsical responses or a balance between the two.

Sometimes the query will influence the type of response you give, but as mentioned earlier, unless your business handles something serious, or the topic requires a straight answer (for example, customer service queries), then you can play around with responses a little.