Changing Content: Authenticity is audience-specific

Social media is blurring the lines between commerce vs. content (see part one of this series) and user vs. brand-created posts (see part two). But what shouldn’t be blurry is your brand voice.

How do you manage a consistent brand voice across so many different platforms with different audiences and different purposes? The answer is authenticity. By combining consistency with authenticity, we can adapt more easily to different spaces and platforms and better connect with our customers on a deeper level.

Authentically online

The key to creating this authentic content across platforms? Know. Your. Audience.

A brand, like a person, is multifaceted. Just as you don’t act the same in the boardroom as you do at a bar, a brand can be flexible with how they showcase themselves in different situations. It’s still the brand speaking, they just know exactly who they are speaking to and what that audience may be interested in hearing about.

Posting with care

The Washington Post does this beautifully. While they tend to play things fairly straight in their paper, they package stories in a different way for TikTok. Their TikTok is filled with skits acting out the latest news. The information is the same, just repackaged and told in a way that better connects to their TikTok audience. While they can’t make a skit for every news story, they manage to keep their audience up to date with content that speaks to them.

We’re not suggesting every brand create unique content custom-tailored for the audiences of each platform. But think about whether the content you’re making matches the demographics and interests of your followers.

If you haven’t already, read parts one and two of our Changing Content series to stay up to date on these seismic social shifts.