Let Your True Personality Shine

This is a topic that’s been on my mind a lot lately, the importance of showing your brand personality on social media. Inspired by a recent LinkedIn post, we are going to explore why showing your true self is key to creating compelling content, even if you feel like you are too quirky or boring. We’re discussing the NFL’s sassy TikTok responses and I’m getting vulnerable with my own experiences. I’m also highlighting a couple accounts as we talk about why being authentically you can attract the right audience, making your brand unforgettable. Tune in for a little inspiration when it comes to injecting personality into your content. 

In this episode we’ll be covering:

• Examples of brands showing personality in their content and their effectiveness, like Wendy’s and the NFL.
• Being true to yourself matters in your content and your followers can tell when it isn’t authentic.
• Building a connection with your audience so that followers feel like they know you.
• Investing in a brand strategist and learning good copywriting skills will help bring more personality to your brand content.
• Leveraging personal interests like oat milk and reality tv to create that connection with followers.
• The growing need for genuine connections in a digitally connected yet socially distant world to address loneliness.

Links + Resources

Reel #1

Reel #2

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Other episodes you might have missed:

Episode 006 : Selling a Lifestyle, Not Just a Product

Episode 007: Relatability in Everyday Content with Instagram Stories and Reels

Episode 019: Convert Viewers to Followers with the “That’s Me” Reel

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Transcript

Shannon McKinstrie [00:00:05]:
I am your host, Shannon McKinstrie. Welcome to Good Content, the podcast where I remove the never ending content creation guesswork and overwhelm so that you can actually enjoy being on social media again and growing your business with what has always worked. Good content. So I've been wanting to talk about this, actually, for a while, and I saw a post on LinkedIn earlier that made me go, okay, we're definitely talking about it, so let's just get this podcast recorded, it's another social media marketer. And she said, I've never unfollowed a brand for showing their personality. I have, however, unfollowed a brand for being too. It says, I've been, like, starting to be look too cookie cutter, too perfect, you know what I mean? Where it's just like, too bland, you know, that sort of thing.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:00:49]:
And it's so funny because it reminded me of something that I, a segment I saw on the Today show. And this is really telling, and I'll get there in a second, but it was kind of cool because it's like, for the past week, this has just been, like, in my head going, we've got to talk about this on this show, because it comes down to how to make really good content. Right? So personality, right? I've talked about it before on the show, especially in the product episode where I talked about products having a personality, even if it's a can of soda or we know Wendy's, Twitter can get kind of hilarious and crazy, even products have a personality, whether it's serious, sassy, sweet, demure, whatever it is. And as brands like mine and some of y'alls, right, whether you are, if you're a solo entrepreneur, personalities, definitely, um, you can't fake it, right? And then other brands like that we saw over the weekend, with the NFL coming back and Taylor Swift arriving, it was crazy. If you're on TikTok, you probably saw it. It was really, really fascinating. And as a social media manager, I was, like, dying and loving it. So what happened was Taylor Swift gets out of the golf cart, and the social media manager for the NFL put it up on TikTok and was like, you know, the queen has arrived, or whatever it said.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:01:59]:
And someone commented, right. Obviously, you knew it was coming. Can you guys just show some football? And this is TikTok. The game hadn't started yet. Okay. It was the first game of the season. Yeah. So there wasn't any football to show yet.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:02:11]:
So it was just kind of funny. So the social media manager responded, shoot, it was so funny with a clip once the game started and just replied in a comment with a new TikTok of showing part of the game. It just said here, comma, damn. So funny. Okay. Uh, sassy. Just like here. Gosh.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:02:31]:
Like, you know, my job's hard enough. Like, right? As social media managers, we want to reply stuff like that all the time, trust me. But as a social media manager, none of my clients are big, huge brands. Like, we gotta be a little careful. It's the NFL. If their social media manager gets sassy with someone, they're gonna be just fine. But that's the personality of the social media manager, and I love that the NFL is letting her. I think her name is actually Shannon.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:02:53]:
I found her on LinkedIn. I was cracking up. Let her do it. Right? Like, we even want big brands like the NFL on social media to have a personality. And honestly, NFL is entertainment, so it's going to be, it's going to be a little more in your face, et cetera. Now, if you're a law firm and you want to, you know, there's nothing about what you do is funny, or if you are lawyers and what you do is funny, but you're naturally very funny, lean into that. And so what I want to say right away, I already know what your gears are doing right now, but for a lot of you, I'm boring. I'm not interesting.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:03:23]:
Okay, first, we're just not even going to go there. Like, don't even go there. That's not true. I follow a lot of accounts that I think people maybe meant say are like, oh, that's a boring account. I also follow, like, really funny, haha. Wild accounts, right? If I'm looking at cooking and stuff and I want to follow an account, like, talks like, there's a popular TikToker that I love following, and her account is so peaceful and loving. And then I have, like, my wild, outlandish accounts. We don't only follow one personality, so that's what's kind of cool, because I think a lot of people are like, oh, well, maybe my personality is to blame.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:03:56]:
No, like, stop it. I know my personality is to blame for a lot of people unfollowing me. Shoot, I get the comments right? Like, it's okay though, because there's other people in my field that they will be more attracted to, and that's great. So with that said, you just gotta be okay with it. Your personality and your brand's personality are going to attract certain people. It's gonna push other people away. And that's fine. So I just want to say that with, that was the Today show segment, right? And I think the reason I wanted to focus so badly on this is because I know a lot of people are, like, faceless and doing all this stuff, and I'm like, you guys, like, stop it.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:04:27]:
Yes. While if there's accounts that have probably never showed their face, whatever, it's fine. But we are literally hardwired to respond to faces, and we are dying for connection. Okay? So if you're a faceless account, whatever. Do you at least have a personality in your copy that is uncopyable? Right. Your personality is going to take a little even more to shine through. So invest in learning how to write really good copy and invest in a brand strategist. But also, everyone needs to invest in a brand strategist.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:04:53]:
So before I go into the Today show thing, let me tell you, this is the thing. When I first started showing my face on stories, I was already showing my face on stories and talking to the camera on my personal Instagram stories. So I knew how I sounded to my friends and family on my personal account. Then when I started doing it on my business, I did not sound like Shannon. I was nervous. I was like, am I professional enough? And I held back, right? But if you know me and if you know my story, you know that I've had a camcorder in my hand since I was eight years old, my dad's big, clunky one on my, like, little eight year old shoulders, tormenting everyone. There's literally in this podcast studio, which is. You can barely call it this.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:05:27]:
Cause, you know, we're getting there, though. Um, there's boxes of video tapes over there that I'm getting digitized. I'm used to documenting my day. I'm used to taking people, showing them things I think are interesting. I hope they're interesting to you guys. I try to be careful on stories. Not to bore you too much, but I take you guys with me on my day and, like, little things come up that become part of my personality, right? Started sharing my love of oat milk, my love of bravo margaritas, chips, and salsa, right? Like, you guys will send me memes about that stuff, or you'll be like, oh, I'm out. And I saw this.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:05:55]:
It made me think of you. But on top of that, that helped me build my brand, right? I just started throwing things out. It helped me understand my personality as a brand, right? It also helped me bond with my audience. It kept me top of mind with them. But it also gave me the freedom to actually show up as me. And that is huge for someone like me, who, in my days of CNN and these sales marketing jobs that I thought were my dream jobs, I felt so out of place. I never felt comfortable to be myself, smart enough to be there in the same room with these people. I just never felt like I could be me.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:06:29]:
And what a beautiful thing it is and what a gift it is to have social media, that we get to actually make money from our personalities. What? Like, who would ever, I would have never thought. So we get to be authentic. So again, if I was trying to show up on stories as someone other than myself, you guys would feel it and hit unfollow with a quickness. Or be like, Shannon, everything good in there? Knock, knock, knock, knock. You good in there? So with that said, be your boring self. Be your sassy self. Be your happy go lucky self, be your bulldog self, be your sarcastic, self deprecating humor self.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:07:00]:
And if you are a corporation, what are your core values? What do you guys stand for? What are your mottos? What do you work into your business? If you look at my core values that I've worked through with brand strategists, fun, not taking yourself too seriously. All of that are part of it. That's part of my brand, but it's also part of who I am. Integrity, all that stuff, too, right? Trust, blah, blah, blah. So if you wouldn't describe yourself as fun, loud, energetic, then, you know, don't try to show up on camera like that. It's okay. I know there are so many. If I pull up right now and start searching, I promise you there's gonna be talk to the camera videos of people who are serious, boisterous, like, silly, right? Gregarious.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:07:37]:
What are these words like? Shannon, who are you? Like, I don't use words like this, right? But, like, the SAT vocab is coming out of my brain for some reason. But do what? I mean, you'll feel it as you scroll. So I want you to know, while, I'm not here to teach you personality. I'm here to say, get on camera. Or at least if you're not going to show your face a lot when you write, work your personality in there. If you get on camera and greet us the way you greet someone you don't know, that's not going to work. I want you to greet me like, we've known each other for years and we're sitting down at brunch. We.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:08:09]:
So, with the Today show, this woman got on and said, that we are in a loneliness pandemic. She, like, studies all this stuff and she said how we are, you know, again, hardwired to respond to faces and the fact that we are on our screen so much and we're connected even after we try to shut down at the end of the day, that we're still checking our laptops, we're still checking our phones, we're looking at people like 70% less or something crazy and like, we're making less eye contact. So when we get that connection, it's really powerful and we're desperate for it and we're longing for it. So again, I know I'm, you're like Shannon, but you just said, you know, look, people. But yeah, we're longing for that in person. Which, again, if you haven't gotten your ticket for the Day One Conference, get it. It's in the show notes and talk about the power of getting together in person. But because we are longing for an actual connection with real people, and yes, it'll still be through a screen, they're going to connect to your brand a whole lot more if they feel like they know you and know your personality or your brand's personality, et cetera.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:09:01]:
Okay. Um, so with that said, I just want to show a couple reels that are going crazy right now just to kind of touch on this subject real fast before we wrap up. But again, if your content doesn't look like you feel like you, something's off. We're, we're not going to feel it. Just like that post the girl did on LinkedIn. I was like, that is it. That is exactly it. Um, okay, so this girl is a personal, like, she has a personal brand, right? It says, and it's a funny humor.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:09:25]:
And it says, I wonder why we weren't invited to be on this show. And the TikTok is about The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. If you have not watched it, well, if you love trash reality tv, you're going to love it. If you've watched it, DM me, we ought to talk about it. I already binged it so good. The next clip is because it's all the moms looking all done up, and then it's the mom looking like all moms look in the middle of the day and she's like, oh, wait, right? You go to her bio, it says, I identify with sarcasm and humor. So again, she is someone that, like, for the moms who love self deprecating humor, make poking fun, they're going to love that account. She's not trying to be anyone else other than she is.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:09:55]:
Okay. And then I look at this one. Okay, again, hers had 4000 likes. Let's see how many views of almost 500,000 views. Right? And then this other creator, this woman is a. What is her account? This is Brunch with Babs. I love her bio, the Internet, mom, grandma, you didn't know you needed very different energy, right? Both of these are accounts that I'm definitely gonna go follow. I follow a lot of accounts on my personal account that are like moms, cooking, things like that.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:10:25]:
Her content is very, to the heart, wholesome. She's showing you some food she baked for a neighbor. And all the comments are like, we need more babs in our life, blah, blah, blah. Different personalities, different types of accounts. I'll get two different things from. Love both. So I want to say that because, look, while both of these went, I think, I mean, her reels have over like 3 million things like that.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:10:45]:
Do you know why they come through? Do you know why people love them? Because that's Babs personality. And this is Carly's personality. When you watch her stuff, you can tell. And Carly has over 500,000 followers. Babs has 3.8 million. Holy moly. They would not have the following they had if they were trying to be anything but themselves. Even if you have a corporation with a bunch of people, what's the personality that you can bring into your copy, all your content? I know I'm going over.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:11:10]:
I know this is longer than normal, but, like, I just really want to drive this home. Like, you don't have to be anything but yourself. Think of me working in the corporate world of no one ever knowing anything about me because I was too shy to let my full self. I mean, they probably would have hated it because it was all very serious, all the jobs I worked at before. And like, again, what a blessing that we can be ourselves and get paid for it. And, like, our personality is going to bring in the right people and it's going to repel the ones that aren't going to like us. That's good. We don't want people in our lives or business who are just don't vibe with us and our energies.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:11:42]:
So please promise me that you'll kind of check in with yourself. If you're really struggling with this, hire a brand strategist, a copywriter, you know, anyone that can help bring this out. Because as a social media manager, it's funny, I had clients all the time. They'd be like, Shannon, because I would leave comments as them and they go, oh, my gosh. I thought wrote that. I'm like, I know that's your voice. That's your personality. I know my client's personality so well.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:12:03]:
And, you know, every time I bring on a new client as a social media manager, I don't do, I don't disclose social media management anymore because I'm, I've got my clients and that's all I can handle right now. But I have them fill out a whole form. What will you comment to this photo? What would you say to someone? How would someone describe you like all this? Because I need to know this, that I know how to be them and be their personality. So don't fake it till you make it. Just talk. Be you. And again, it's going to feel cringe. It's not going to feel great at first.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:12:30]:
It's not going to feel good until you can really. And then the second you're yourself on camera, you're going to feel so good. Especially because the comments and the followers will come through. They will. I promise. I love you, friend. Talk to you next week.