Wondering what a personality layer? I’ll simplify: it’s a coat of paint you don’t have to wear. Because you already got a personality; you just don’t use it well enough.
Hello, Reader Number 540,567?
Feeling good? No. Ok, hang on.
The web is funny, in a way.
It tore down boundaries and expanded your opportunities to publish, communicate, and connect with practically anyone in the world.
The web now makes it possible for you to sell your products and services to anyone, anywhere.
It helps you build relationships at scale. You can practically do business anyway you like. Since technology is affordable, you can use that too.
Plus, we are humans and we were all shipped with personality.
What’s business got to do with personality?
A lot.
Simon Schmid of Smashing Magazine wrote a fantastic piece on “The Personality Layer” and he has a point.
Emotions have an important role to play when it comes to making people move.
To make people click, browse, read, stay on your pages longer, to buy, to signup, to buy some more.
If you were to just put up a website and have millions of people visit your pages, you’d still get what you want. But you won’t be able to much beyond that.
Add the “personality” later as Simon puts it, and you are now beginning to make a difference.
With personality, you begin to dig deep.
You’d lurk somewhere near the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and get people to reason with their need for better health, to feel safe, to mitigate fear, to pamper their greed, to think about self-actualisation, and to help them express themselves (and this can manifest itself into several different things).
If you are looking to bring about an immediate change to all the front-facing marketing tools you have at your disposable, here are some quick ways to bring in personality to your marketing arsenal.
Your Website. Revisit it Please?
If you’ve been on this, even for a while, you’d know that my website is always work in progress.
Earlier, the hero section on the front page looked like this:
It was as corporate as it could get. It felt like I was showing off. It looked like I was trying to act, feel, and behave bigger than I am.
I didn’t like it. I let it be until I decided not to.
Now, I am trying to sound more like me. I’ll get there.
Blog Posts: Get the tone, But don’t Sweat it
When you write your blog posts, you are doing it to establish credibility. You want to establish your authority. You want to make a difference to your community — your customers and everyone else reading your blogs.
You can inspire, educate, coach, and guide people.
Most importantly, you want to sound like you. Do be sure to use your tone. Don’t be afraid to add some personality.
Write the way you’d talk (read out your posts aloud if you want to do a spot check).
I see too many people sweating over the blog posts they write or the ones they hire others to write for them.
Don’t sweat it. Stop overdoing things. You don’t have to be a perfectionist.
Don’t delay production of content just because you want to keep editing the post to death.
Social Media: Your Daily Chance to Shine
Social media might not be a great source for instant sales but it certainly gives you a close set of platforms where you can shine through as a “person” or as “a team” — depending on your case.
It’s really people out there. You know? People sharing tweets. People commenting. People talking. People arguing. People fighting it out. People hating. People loving.
It’s all of humanity streaming through in an endless torrent of tweets, Facebook posts, and LinkedIn updates.
Three very short tips for you when it comes to social media:
- Find people. Connect with them. Talk to them.
- Stop chasing money on social media. Just let it go.
- Share interesting stuff. Be known for whatever you do for work or in your business.
The social media tools, the fancy hashtags, the tips, the tricks, the hacks, and everything else can come in later.
Miss the personality part, and you are what I call a “social drone”.
You just hmmmmm until you’ll be ignored.
Emails: The Holy Grail of Personalization
Your email marketing strategy (or the lack of it) will set the stage for how your relationship is going to be with your subscribers or customers or both
Did you know that 72% of consumers prefer to receive personalized emails?
The problem is, it’s not easy for marketers to craft the perfect email, especially when they have a large number of contacts. But there are ways to personalize your emails and make them more effective.
By the time you get to this point of the digital marketing mix, you’ve gotten pretty close to your audience.
You are in their inbox, for heaven’s sake.
You better sound like you are really writing to people.
Make absolutely sure that you “DELETE” any instances of the following:
“Dear customer…”
“Dear Member…”
“Dear Account# 235762”
“Member # 017”
Every single email service provider allows you to personalise your emails with simple tags that you can add and use.
If you don’t do this, you’d think that it’s just an oversight.
Just ask the customer #235762 how he or she must have felt when they got that message.
How are you bringing your personality into marketing? Do you add that personality layer?What are you doing to evoke emotions with everything you do?