A lot of discussion in our BAMA513 class has surrounded businesses having a distinct online personality, or standard voice. Maintaining brand personality is always important but this is especially important, and sometimes harder to maintain, on a realtime platform such as social media. This can be especially true when there is more than one social media manager manning the accounts. In class we had the social media manager from the Vancouver Canucks as a guest lecturer and she told us how all messages go through her so she can personally ensure the voice consistency. While I think it’s important to give the account a feel that followers get used to, it seems to me that this is a lot of added work for her. Well-tended social media accounts can make a company entertaining to follow, whereas others can make it terribly painful. In an attempt to make social media more personal, some companies such as Toronto Hydro have their social media managers sign their tweets by adding their initials at the end of the tweet so followers know exactly who sent it. Hootsuite has even added auto-initialing into their product offering. The challenge with doing this is that it makes the tweets about the social media manager and less about the brand.

Food for thought: Consider all the communications you have with your customers. Is your company voice consistent? Are you leveraging this personality online to the best of your ability?