Can you remember what life was like before social media? We have to admit that for us it’s a little hazy and seems like a lifetime ago…
Who were you before social media? You probably had a different perception of yourself, or at least how others perceived you, before you were suddenly in charge of managing multiple social media channels and your social media life merged into your real life. Today it seems more apparent that our real-world lives are an extension of our digital lives rather than the other way around. We’re having to consciously disconnect in order to get back to our real selves.
A recent study found that a third of teenagers feel more accepted online than in real life, small wonder then that’s where they spend the majority of their time.
There’s a plethora of social personas that we publish online – each of them with a slightly different nuance depending on the channel and audience. It can sometimes be exhausting managing all of those characters, don’t you think? Professional on Twitter and LinkedIn, fun-loving and outdoorsy on Facebook and a foodie or fitness freak on Insta.
So who is the real you and how much should others really believe about your social media life compared to your real life? Make sure not to go too far so that people find you ‘disappointing’ in real life, as Aliza Licht, Senior Vice-President of Global Communications at Donna Karan International explains in how to develop your presence on social media.
What about your brand or business?
According to Ashley Brookes at Hootsuite, one of the worst things a brand can do is to try and be cool when they’re actually not very cool at all. Staying true to your brand and company culture is vital. If you’re not a cool brand, that’s fine, you could always make light of the fact that you’re not cool as Ashley reports in Why Brands Fail at Being Cool.
The moral of all of your online stories is to simply make them as real as possible. Whether on your individual profile or your corporate page, ensure that as much of your personal presence shines through as if you were standing in a room with your audience and they could actually see the look in your eyes as you tell them about how amazing your weekend away really was or how life-changing your company’s new product really is.
If you sometimes feel you can’t cope with the upkeep of managing multiple digital personalities, talk to us about getting a content calendar set up for your corporate social media channels.
