Social Media Marketing For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Defining SMM Voice Characteristics

The SMM voice is fundamentally the voice through which you engage with your consumers in the social web. Every conversation touch point on any social platform from YouTube (www.youtube.com ) and Facebook (www.facebook.com ) to Twitter (www.twitter.com ) and your own discussion forums needs to be in the SMM voice. This strategy can take the form of one voice, or it can be several who work closely together to speak as one. But all SMM voices share certain characteristics in contrast to a brand voice. In the next few sections, I look at some of the key characteristics.

Multiple and authentic

Most companies have multiple, authentic SMM voices. The reason is obvious. They are generally too large to have one person representing them in all the conversations digitally. There are multiple people who focus on different conversation areas, whether it’s customer support, industry insights, product information, or awareness building. In some cases, each person represents the company on different social environments. Each person talks in her own voice and loosely follows centralized guidelines. Zappos (twit ter.zappos.com) is a good example of a company with multiple SMM voices. The company is proud of its multiple SMM voices and trusts those employees to represent the brand effectively without losing their own authenticity. One of Shiv’s previous companies has its SMM voices represented at razor fish.alltop.com/ . They have social influence marketing guidelines ...