Making corporate social media more personal

Social media changes constantly. It’s a PR practitioner’s job to stay abreast of the latest trends and work out what online forums a company should be using and how it should be using them to best reach the target demographic. When doing my daily scroll through Facebook, something on the Curtin University page caught my attention and stood out as a great technique for social media. I noticed that any comment responses made by the Curtin PR team, always had the individual employee's name attributed to it. So instead of just being a response from Curtin University, it was now a response from Emily at Curtin University.

The simple idea of having an employee write their name next to their post is used by lots of corporations and I think it can have a really positive impact. Firstly it makes an online corporate profile a lot more personal, after all social media is intended to be social. People are more inclined to interact with an organisation via its social media if they feel they’re talking to one person rather than an entire corporation. I also think making corporate pages more personal could make people think twice before trolling. Many people use social media, particularly Facebook, to vent about their bad experiences with an organisation or its products. While there is no way of controlling this and people will still attack an organisation, I think people are generally less likely to do so if they felt they were attacking an individual.

Attributing the employee name to the comment also suggests it is that individual’s comment rather than an official company statement, which could also assist the company if that comment were to attract criticism. I think this is a great technique and I would definitely consider using it if I were responsible for the social media of a large corporation, particularly one that often receives customer feedback on online forums. So if you're like me and need a reason to justify your time on social media, start observing what tricks and techniques other corporations use to encourage social media interaction and perhaps you too will get some ideas that can be implemented in your work place. 

Verity