How to Create an Emotional Connection with Your Brand

October 23, 2012

People who talk about brands via social media are usually driven to do so by emotion. They hate the fact that their plane is late or the line is too long for coffee. On the other hand, they love a certain sauce because their mother swore by it growing up or they would only buy a certain car brand for their children because they had the same dependable vehicle since high school.

So, if consumers connect with brands out of pure emotion, why shouldn’t marketers speak to them with the same amount of sentiment?

To truly engage people through social media, pause the business side of your mind and speak from the heart. It sounds cheesy, but getting in touch with your inner warm and fuzzies is the first step in making real connections with your consumers.

Here are some tips to get started:

Don’t be afraid to get personal.

If you want to get to know your customers and fans and show that you care about them individually, pay attention to what they talk about or respond to. Learning their personal interests will help you push out relevant brand messages that takes your audience’s needs and wants into consideration, making it more likely that they’ll listen.

The biggest way to show people that you know them personally is to make product or service recommendations that relate to your brand AND their interests when he or she vents on the page, asks for advice, or needs help on a subject in the larger pool of your industry. It shows them that you’ve been listening, and even more impressively, that you actually care.

Go ahead, introduce yourself.

Don’t be shy, and don’t expect your key influencers to come to you (though that would be wonderful). If you know there’s a well-connected individual or group out there and it’s a travesty that you haven’t yet met to combine marketing forces, introduce yourself.

The key here is making sure you’re not acting like big brother or an aggressive bull dog on a short chain. On Twitter, for instance, follow hashtags relevant to your brand, and when you see conversations between people about, say, a cell phone breaking and you are a phone insurance company, jump in and offer some information about how you can help without being a salesperson.

Own your oddities.

It’s cool to be quirky. If you think about it, the weirdest people with the strangest habits are often the most interesting – if they’re confident. People gravitate to unique individuals out of curiosity and stick around without judgment if the odd-one-out acts with conviction.

Provide some personal details about the people behind your brand. You can’t expect people to want to share their interests with you if you’re not reciprocating. Show off your abnormal policies, the unique people behind your brand and the interesting things that happen every day. You like your friends because they’re different, right? Positioning yourself as fun and unique (and the maker of a great product or service) will help your customers will think of your brand as a friend too.

It’s important to focus on normal, healthy human interaction. By acting more like the personified version of your brand and less like the rigid computer technology used to connect you to users, you’ll be creating loyal brand consumers before you know it.

What are you doing to help foster an emotional connection with your brand?

Image credit: Stephanie Hofschlaeger

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