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‘Professionalism’ Is Dead: 5 Ways to Breathe Life Into Your Brand

‘Professionalism’ Is Dead: 5 Ways to Breathe Life Into Your Brand

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Since the dawn of marketing, brands have worked feverishly to be “professional.”

This meant building a polished website and designing business cards, letterhead, and other promotional materials that show no signs of imperfections. Only those with lofty budgets and deep resource wells could achieve this “professional” image that long separated them from startups and other fledgling operations. 

But the days when sterile professionalism paid off are dead. Today, it’s easy to achieve a professional brand image in short order — any company can crowdsource logos, build stunning websites, and produce a complete suite of cohesively branded collateral that puts Fortune 500 companies to shame.

To separate your brand from the lifeless masses, you have to fundamentally shift the way you operate and breathe life into your brand.

Why Personality Is the New Professionalism 

The notion of a humanized brand can elicit confusion and possibly some mixed looks. But guess who runs a company? A team of humans. And guess who buys goods or services? You get the picture.

By letting your brand’s guard down and exposing that human side in your communications, you can create something powerful. Combined with the right ingredients, you just might create a community of loyal, engaged brand ambassadors who rally behind your brand because of that human connection they experience. 

The first step in humanizing your brand is to determine your brand’s personality and how you want to be perceived. For example, are you fun, high-tech, upscale, or corporate? Once you define this, follow these practical tips and tricks to humanize your brand: 

1. Share team photos. 

Post fun team photos on your social media accounts, in your newsletter, and around your office! Capture events, meetings, lunches, and so on. Use this as social ammo to share with the rest of the world. If you reveal the people behind your company, you’ll appear more approachable.   

2. Celebrate happy customers.

Tweet, post, and blog about happy customers whenever you can. If a customer mentions you positively, leverage it through testimonials, case studies, and reviews. You can also put together videos of customers talking about their experience with your brand and share those to demonstrate third-party or social validation — a powerful force in buying decisions. 

3. Use humor to connect.

Everyone enjoys a good joke. Showing that you don’t take yourself too seriously reminds others that you’re a company of humans. For example, Charmin started incorporating clean potty humor into its branding, creating a fun, playful appeal.

If your brand is more formal, using puns can earn some smiles and echo that a person — not a brand — is posting the content. Or if you’re a little more cutting-edge, try creating your own funny videos and memes that pull in trends (think “Harlem Shake” videos).

4. Listen and respond to your customers. 

People use all forms of communication to reach out to brands for a variety of reasons. Remember that no amount of outward-facing communication can compete with actual one-on-one interactions. Whether you receive a phone call, email, or tweet, take what your customers have to say and find a way to respond.

Thanking customers for compliments and acknowledging their negative experiences are just two obvious ways to connect. You can also invite your customers to take part in the action through a contest or survey that helps your brand make a big decision.

5. Bake your personality into your marketing strategy.

While traditional social media is always a powerful tool for humanizing your brand, be sure to infuse this personality throughout your marketing efforts, such as your content, website, ads, newsletters, and brick-and-mortar office.

Remember: Your brand has a personality, and your colors, logo, and graphic styles all play into it. Consider Southwest Airlines. From employees’ personalities to the posters in its terminals, Southwest has used its cohesive brand image to develop a strong, loyal fan base.

As brands continue to compete for industry royalty, it’s more important than ever to not just be “professional,” but to also let consumers see what makes you and your company tick. Humanizing your brand is about giving audiences a backstage pass to explore your brand — and strengthening ties with them in the process.

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About Dan Lohman

Dan Lohman is the CEO of Pushup Social, a platform that allows you to add your own online community to an existing website in minutes

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