On Authenticity

Authenticity is essential, so important it was named the 2023 Word of the Year by Merriam-Webster. Largely because understanding what is real has become hard for all of us. We have a sense of what we feel is ingenious, but there is an eerie feeling of being unable to trust what we see. So it’s important to be consistent with your values and brand to maintain trust and likeability with your audience.

But here’s the thing - it’s difficult for us to be authentic. For starters, it’s a tough quality to define, and if you don’t know yourself or your brand, you could get lost in trying to appear authentic rather than actually being authentic.

Being honest and transparent is an essential part of this, but authenticity goes beyond that. It is about being honest with yourself and others and being ‘true’ to your values.

Here are a few ways your brand can maintain authenticity.

1) Understand your brand story and values, then ensure you are accurately reflecting your company and products when you speak

For example, in recent years, there has been a backlash against greenwashing, brands that use language, claims, or imagery to claim they are making a positive environmental impact, but that impact doesn’t exist. Ensure your content and interactions with your audience reflect not just your values but the day-to-day reality of your brand.

A simple way to do this is to look at your company and brand values. Use this as a starting place to build evergreen narratives and a content calendar. A note to marketing & sales teams: Even if the topics don’t directly relate to your products, they will help your audience connect better with your brand and understand how your products are part of a bigger story.

This can be as simple as speaking about a problem your audience faces. Cadence is an excellent example of an authentic brand that produces upscale travel-sized packaging from recycled materials. They do an excellent job of highlighting their brand and brand values in a way that authentically speaks to their audience. On their Instagram account, you see stories not just about their products but also “BTS,” a behind-the-scenes look at the company and employees, “impact,” showing the environmental impact their recycled products have. Suppose you read about their company and brand values in their About Us section. In that case, you see how they translate that to create an authentic experience for customers they engage at every step of the customer journey.

2) Speak directly with your audience

Instead of thinking of your content as needing to reach thousands of people, think about needing to reach one person, thousands of times over.

A brand that embodies personalized communication is Spotify. With more than 220 million subscribers, this app has an extensive reach. But their Wrapped playlist at the end of each year brings a personal touch and creates a moment. This highlight reel shows each user the top genres, songs, and artists they listened to. In 2023, they took this one step further and recorded thank-you messages from artists who played for some of their top fans. Spotify could have stopped with a top ten summary or announced their top global artist - but they took it further to give each user a personalized summary. This creates massive earned conversations. Both in earned media coverage (for example, the radio hosts I listened to this morning were talking about their wrapped lists for a good 5 minutes) shared social content as people share their list on social media - but millions of conversations people have about Spotify, from the POV of their personal use of the app.

It’s also important to remember you’re not speaking at your audience, you’re speaking with them. Digital media, especially social media, should feel like a dialogue. This comes through in your tone and language, connecting with each fan through engaging language. It is also about responding when you can. While you can’t respond to every comment, and you may not want to respond to some of them, you should build time each day to engage with your audience. This should be in response to the review of social comments and tags. But if you want to take it one step further you can also comment on something one of your followers posted. Just make sure that the posts and comments align with your values.

Listening is always an essential part of the social media mix. For the sake of authenticity, you need to make sure you’re hearing the general tone of conversation so you don’t make a misstep like

3) Quality content over perfection, every time

Yes, you want your content to be high quality. This means you want it to look good visually and ensure the audio is clear. But you don’t need to strive for a perfect 10/10 production value on every post.

It is more important to ask yourself how you add value to your audience in every communication. Are you educating? Entertaining? Encouraging? Are you talking about what your audience cares about? If so congratulations, you’re setting yourself up for quality engagement.

What you share or post doesn’t need to be perfect in terms of polish. In fact, having an overly produced asset might unintentionally give off an air of inauthenticity. But make sure what you post is quality in terms of the value it adds to your audience. A masterclass in this is Duolingo. Not only did they lean into creating an online persona for Duo, their pop-obsessed Owl mascot, but their brand voice is fun and engaging, and they tap into the trends and conversations their audience cares about; TikTok is where they shine, but their authenticity comes across on all platforms, including X/Twitter. They do a great job of entertaining and (occasionally) educating. It’s all quality content, but they strive for engagement over perfection.