Who should be the ‘voice’ of the organisation in social media?

I was in a client workshop yesterday and we were discussing how brands should approach developing a clear personality and a tone of voice for their social media platforms (Facebook and Twitter, predominantly). My advice has always been this, who do your audience either:

1. have the deepest relationship with
2. want to have the deepest relationship with

Working out which members of the organisation an audience already have the deepest relationship with or want to have a deeper relationship with can really inform how to develop an organisation’s personality and tone of voice in social media, primarily because they can put those individuals front and centre and let them inform the organisation’s personality/tone of voice by being themselves (and by ‘themselves’ I mean by being the embodiment of their role within the organisation, mixed with their own personality).

Think about it this way: For telcos, their audience almost always have the deepest relationship with the customer service department, hence the huge success of @comcastcares. Similarly, for tech brands, geeky audiences want to have the deepest relationship with the R&D team, so it makes sense to put them front and centre, speaking directly to the audience (e.g. Dell IdeaStorm)

Just a wee thought I wanted to share.

As you were…

Image courtesy of altemark / Mikael Altemark