As the internet continues to fill up on content, brands need to work harder than ever to break through the content clutter and connect with people online. We’re sure you know how to get your brand seen in news feeds through methods like targeting, paid campaigns, boosted posts, or even working with influencers which is great! Now, once you get in front of people, is your message actually having an impact, and creating connections with your audience like you hope?

Influencers and brands alike are getting caught simply trying too hard. Influencers are crying in posts and then getting called out for “like-fishing”. Celebrities are posting that they’ve never had cereal before or that they are bloated not pregnant. Brands are posting incredibly badly photoshopped bodies… Check out Instagram Reality on Reddit, it’s brutal but eye opening.

Your followers can seriously spot inauthenticity from a mile away. Everyone connects most with content that’s real, and people are catching on to content that isn’t authentic.

So, how can brands keep things authentic on social and connect with their audience in real ways? Here are a few tips.

Stop overusing calls to action

Essentially, the entire point of marketing is to create an opportunity for sales, leads and brand awareness. Making it easy to get caught up trying to turn every online interaction into a quick sale by adding a call to action on everything.

We get it, you want sales. When it comes down to it, try playing the long game with social media here and there. Strike an important balance between posts that are meant to convert or sell quickly, and posts that are meant to simply connect with your audience. Remember, people don’t sign on to Instagram in hopes of seeing a sales post.

Creating positive brand moments using interesting and engaging content creates connection, and makes people feel like they’re part of your brand. Where’s the first place they’d going to go when they need whatever you have on offer if they already feel connected to your brand?

Be transparent and honest

This should go without saying, especially with our brand name… But let’s be honest… (See what I did there? Sorry, I’ll let myself out.) We’ve all come across some pretty fake and terrible stuff online. Being fake news, photoshopped images, stories that just seem too good to be true…

Inauthentic content is everywhere and people catch on to it quickly. As brands, it’s crucial to stay as far away from fake content, but this isn’t exactly groundbreaking advice. So take the honesty and transparency a step further… Get honest about your product or service whenever you can whether this means going behind the scenes and showing your offices/photoshoots/meetings.. Humanise your brand with your social media content.

• Do you sell a products, have you shared how the products are made? Tell people where all the materials come from, how you manufacture, or how your design process works.

• If you’re a service, show and explain the work that goes into creating your customer experience and what makes you different to competitors.

• If you’re an influencer, we dare you to post an unedited photo from your actual phone once in a while, you'll earn a great deal of respect.

If you mess up, don’t ignore or hide… Own it

Every. Single. Person. In. Marketing has been there. Whether it’s a silly typo, an email that wasn’t well-articulated, or an Instagram post you thought was genius that just goes over like a lead balloon.

Social media mistakes are typically pretty harmless, but mistakes that can damage a brand’s reputation are entirely possible.

Unfortunately can happen to any brand and when it does, your first reaction after your initial panic is to delete the offending content, and forget about the entire thing and hope no one in accounts who follows the business Instagram saw it. But here’s a little ‘not-so-secret’ secret: you really can’t delete anything on the internet. In the unfortunate event that you do have what we call… A bit of a marketing fumble, figure out the best way to fix it and own it.

If your social media 'fumble’ is serious enough, jump into PR mode and do a little crisis management. Even in serious situations, owning up to the mistake and sincerely apologising for it can help repair some of damage that’s already done.

Do what you can to fix the issue, and make sure you are transparent with your audience and that they know what you’ll do in the future to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Also, when you inevitably get late-night anxiety about the whole situation, keep in mind that social media content moves at a rapid pace. It’s only a matter of time before another brand does something unprofessional and the world moves on to trying to cancel them instead.

In less serious situations like a typo or a factual error, simply own it by correcting it. If you can turn the situation around, or even turn it into a joke, give that a go too… Especially if it suits your brand personality. People understand that people write emails, even emails from big brands and that human error is completely normal.

Remember, people love jokes, and a some self-deprecating humour is fun once in a while. You can make your mistake into a positive by making your brand feel real and show your personality.

Pretending like things never happened, especially when the mistake is quite serious, can cause much bigger problems later. Owning up to mistakes makes it clear that there are real people behind the curtain, and it humanises your brand.

Clickbait headlines are a thing of the past

We get it and have been there. The daily task of proving ROI with social and digital marketing is real and happening but… If we don’t, we’re just “playing on Instagram” and we all know, that’s not what social marketing is… Unless you ask my parents what we do for a living.

So what do we do instead of clickbait? We create fantastic content that gets engagement.

There’s certainly no definite way to plan for a post to earn a certain amount of impressions/engagement… This is why you should be cautious of agencies who promise a certain amount of engagement/impressions on your posts… But there are a definitely few tricks that have trended. Some of them are fun like posting a meme that suits a trending topic… And some of them are just obnoxious. Like clickbait, we hate clickbait, don’t do it.

Due of these awful trends, we’ve gone through several bouts of content pollution. When brands try to hijack these ridiculous online content storms, it quickly becomes tired and your content just comes off as trying far, far too hard. Have you ever seen a brand try to turn a meme into an ad? Case closed.

If your social content is posted to just to collect views, clicks, or likes, you should rethink your strategy. You’re better off not posting anything, than posting sub-par content just for the sake of gaining clicks… I’m speaking for everyone here.

Spend a good amount of time producing a well-planned social media content calendar with the goal making sure all your posts will resonate with your audience.

Remember each and every post should be worthy of being permanently attributed to your brand. Your social content is deeply ingrained in your overall brand, so make sure you’re proud of every post.

If you don’t have the time (or energy) to put these tips to the test, get in touch with us at Honest London and we’ll happily guide you in the right direction of making sure your brand is authentic online.

Written by Clara