Throughout my journey discovering social media one aspect that really stood out is how important your authentic voice is to the brand. As a marketer I quickly realized that it is better now to have more of a casual conversation with your audience that they understand rather than being formal all the time like I was taught years ago to do. You need to be transparent and real to have your audience want to engage in the conversation with you. I found this video on Youtube that goes in to detail as to why your voice is so important for your brand to have social media presence:
A social media expert once told me ” think of how you would talk to a friend or colleague face to face would you have more of a conversation or would it be formally structured?”. This was the best tip ever from this expert: Be your unique yourself! Be who you are! After recently taking a Social Media course the most important take away for me was finding just that “my authentic voice”. At first I have to be honest the process of finding my voice in my writing was a bit of a struggle, but as time went on it got easier. It got easier simply because I just focused on the way I usually communicate in conversation with people face to face. After doing some research online I found this interesting blog that reiterates the tip above: How to find your voice on Social Media
In the world of social media your clients will decide if they want to build a relationship with your brand or not based on your authentic voice. It is key in connecting your audience with your brand. Do you feel your voice is important to your brand?
Sources:
Youtube:Your Unique Voice: Social Presence – 6-Step Strategy To Profitable Social Media Marketin, by docstocTV
How to find your voice on Social Media, Leading Indicator – Reema Ibdah, Social Media Specialist, CMA Ontario
Image – Find your voice – www.socialh.com
I remember when I first started my social media accounts thinking to myself, eventually this is going to become tedious and time consuming to manage them all separately. Especially if, in the future I was thinking about adding other Social Media tools to the mix. The content calendar is a fantastic tool to use for organizing your posts, however I still had to sign in to my accounts separately to post. Recently, I went to a lunch and learn at work and they talked about a social media dashboard tool called Hootsuite. You can use it to manage up to five accounts for free, and you sign up just as you would for any other social media account. All I can say is this TOOL IS AMAZING for managing multiple social media accounts and has key features you can use to be more efficient and save time when communicating with your audience.
As I began to use social media platforms for marketing I was a little worried about ensuring I had compelling content to share regularly with my audience. Where am I going to gather all the content for the posts and what about timing? How often should I be sharing content? How can I share content about events or promotions that are happening over the weekend or in the evening? One of the social media experts I work with recommended using a content calendar to assist in pre-scheduling and organizing my posts. It is just a simple Excel spreadsheet with the following headings:
However, I needed more than one account as I had 3 distinct communities I wanted to connect with. Now that I had the three accounts, how was I going to manage all of these profiles separately? Through one of the presentations I found out about this amazing tool called 
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 