Personal communication

Our management team recently established some guidelines for developing our LinkedIn profiles, but we each wrote our own (helping each other, of course).

Social media tools can be great for nurturing relationships with prospects and referral sources. One of the keys to success is letting your personality shine through. By definition social media is more conducive to casual, personal communication than, say, your company brochure.

Have you thought about how many different words are rooted in the word person? Personal, personality, personable, persona, personify, personalize!

It’s an important concept in our culture. Not quite the same as individual. Not quite the same as human. There’s an innate quality to the word person that makes it more relatable. Each of us wants to be seen as a person. We all want our interactions to be personalized.

Technology offers wonderful ways for us to connect with each other. But if your messages are watered down and sterilized, what’s the point? There is so much “communication fast-food” online. It’s convenient. It’s predictable. It’s a formula. But in the end does it resonate? Do you call and tell people how amazing it was? Do you recommend it to your friends?

Personalized communication also doesn’t mean talking about yourself. There is an art to talking about someone else’s needs (like your target market’s) in language that sounds like you. Challenge your messages. Do they use more “you” and “your” than “we” and “our”? If not, rewrite. Read it out loud. Does it sound like something you would say? If not, rewrite.

Of course, it has to stay professional. We’re big believers in keeping a distance between personal social media and professional social media personas. Your firm’s social media policy should address this.

The power of these tools can be fully realized when your firm’s personality reflects in your social media. So allow a little creativity to make the greatest impact on your firm’s business development efforts.