As we enter the golden age of social media, companies can no longer afford the luxury of tightly scripted, top-down messaging (e.g., “We’re the best! Take our word for it.”).

Nor can a company simply opt out and remain silent (as epitomized in Northwestern Mutual’s “The Quiet Company” ad campaign of years past).

As social media channels have increased, so has the need to communicate effortlessly and simultaneously. Just as presidential candidates now face the constant scrutiny of a 24-hour news cycle, companies are being called on to respond in real time across multiple media platforms. This is not a time for hesitation.

To market effectively, companies need a consistent, compelling brand voice—one that doesn’t pause, mumble or clam up. Here are five ways to share your message comfortably and confidently.

#1: Determine your brand personality

The majority of small businesses grow organically, adding clients and services over time. As they evolve, they gain a reputation for how they conduct business. Taking the time to identify your company’s personality traits, the reasons customers come to you, is pivotal to determining your brand voice. Are you serious and professional? Edgy and innovative? Funny and informal?

Need a good exercise? Compare your company brand to a type of car, a hotel chain, a CEO, etc., to see which one best represents you. Are you more Richard Branson or Bill Gates? Are you a Land Rover or a Prius? Ritz Carlton or Motel 6? Define your character and you’ll speak with greater conviction.

#2: Identify your true audience

As any comedian will tell you, the same material plays differently to different rooms. Make sure you know your audience, one that’s receptive to your message and congruent with your brand.

For example, if you are a B2B company, LinkedIn and Google+ will prove a more fertile ground than tweeting out your professional service offerings to random followers. Rather than a shotgun approach, align your brand and commit your resources to those communities that will respond to your message.

Join industry-specific subgroups and forums. Participate by offering thoughtful responses in your area of expertise. And while it’s important to measure your brand’s Klout score, it means little if you’re speaking to the wrong crowd. To find out more about your tribe, check out valuable demographic information available through Facebook Insights.

Klout offers one way to measure your brand's reach and impact.

#3: Develop a consistent tone

With branding, consistency is king, so be sure to convey a familiar style of messaging when you communicate. There’s no single right or wrong way to speak, as long as it’s congruent.

The online e-newsletter company, MailChimp, has a fun, campy feel no matter what they write. From tweets such as, “You’re most welcome, human friend. Eep eep!” to a tongue-in-cheek “Pioneers in banana technology,” they are comfortable with their informal tone.

MailChimp's home page features their playful mascot demonstrating their fun style of communication.

Woot! offers witty commentary about their deal of the day, rather than stale product information. So no matter what style of communication you choose, stay with it.

Woot!'s tongue-in-cheek product descriptions keep consumers amused (and shopping!).

Don’t speak authoritatively on your company Facebook page, post Gandhi quotes on Twitter and then upload hilarious office pranks on YouTube. Multi-personality disorder will not sit well with potential customers.

If several staff members contribute to your social media, make sure they understand your brand personality (see step #1) and write from that point of view.

Woot!'s snarky voice speaks to their brand of humor.

#4: Timing is everything

Knowing when to speak is often crucial to establishing a credible brand voice in the market. Jumping in too soon or waiting too long can make you appear hasty or out-of-touch.

Set Google alerts on key subject matter in your industry so that you can remain informed, knowledgeable and ready to offer insights and commentary when appropriate.

Google Alerts takes seconds to set up and can be customized for weekly or daily delivery, straight to your email.

Google Alerts provide easy, top-line reading to keep you informed and up-to-date on industry trends and developments.

Having material will also allow you to participate regularly, while avoiding the pitfall of under- or overcommunication. (Nothing like a torrent of tweets to turn off followers.)

Timely contributions demonstrate that the proverbial “lights are on” and someone is at home in your business. If your last blog post or update is six months old, that speaks volumes.

If your only post looks like this, you'll give the impression that you have stage fright.

On the flip side, with pressure mounting to “get out there” and participate in social media, it’s easy to feel compelled to say something… anything… just to prove you are using all the tools available. Avoid appearing inept by gaining a sense of the conversation and reading through comments and feedback before rushing in.

#5: Practice makes perfect

Hesitation stems from lack of confidence. And nothing builds confidence faster and better than practice. Fortunately, the web provides ample opportunity to perfect your brand voice. Start with your company blog (You have one, right?) and build a library of helpful articles showcasing your expertise.

These gems can be repurposed and submitted to various article directories to further amplify your message. Reach out to online publications and blog sites as a contributing author. Pepper in a few good tweets, Facebook updates and LinkedIn contributions, and you have the makings of a recognized voice in your industry.

Knowing your brand personality and audience, speaking consistently at the right time and honing your message will improve your brand voice and strengthen your identity. By following these five simple guidelines, you’ll feel more at ease communicating to a growing audience. In the end, you’ll be writing your own words, while speaking your customers’ language.

What do you think? How steady is your brand voice? Has social media affected what you say and how you say it? If so, share your experiences in the comments box below.

So, if you use social media to connect with your customers (or fans, or followers, or tribe…), authenticity is a must.

Keep reading to discover five tips to make your company more “human.”

#1: Use your name

Putting a name (that’s a real, human name) on your blog posts, tweets or status updates shows your audience that you’re not a robot or an automated stream of sales pitches and company news. Using your name when updating social media humanizes your content and makes you relatable for your audience.

If you use a team of people to update your accounts, each one can sign off on his or her contributions. Even if they just use initials to save space when posting to limited-character services like Twitter, this shows your audience that thought and effort have gone into creating and distributing your content.

Comedy duo Hamish & Andy sign off their tweets and status updates to show who contributed the content.

#2: Add a face

Adding a face to your social media accounts works in the same way as adding a name. It humanizes your content and gives your followers an idea of the person behind the keyboard.

If you prefer to use your company logo or a product image as your profile picture, you can still use photos to add real-person value to your presence.

Many companies have “meet the team” pages, with information about the company members and what they do. This is a perfect place to add a team picture or individual photos.

David Hartstein has some great tips for using photos effectively on your Facebook page, which can be equally useful when adding pictures to your website, Google+ account or photo-sharing sites like Flickr.

Maintaining professionalism in your images so they represent your brand well is a must. As you can see below, IdeaPaint balances fun and creativity in its team photo to show off what the brand is about without losing its professionalism.

The IdeaPaint Facebook page features a great team photo.

Adding new photos regularly is a great way to keep people interested in what you’re doing as a brand. You can show the personality behind the logo by adding “behind-the-scenes” photos and sharing your work in the community through pictures.

#3: Connect with people through your writing voice

So now your audience knows your name and what you look like. They feel like they recognize you, but they don’t know you yet.

Adding personality (your voice) to your content creates a whole picture of you as a person. If you want to connect to people (Remember my intro? That’s what social media is all about!), you need to be a person.

People don’t connect to corporations, robots or automated messages.

Aussie bookshop The Nile does a great job of adding personality to tweets.

Your voice is a huge part of drawing in your audience and engaging them. The way you write has to replace facial expressions, body language, physical gestures and tone of voice, all of which help you get your point across and keep your audience interested in face-to-face communication.

That’s a big task for a 400-word blog post. It’s an even bigger task for a 140-character tweet! Which is why analytics and research are so important to companies using social media—we need a way to measure whether our voice is coming across in our content, and whether we are engaging people or turning them off.

Developing your voice takes time and effort (what doesn’t in social media?), especially if you are acting as a channel for your company’s message.

The important thing is not to quash your own personality in favor of your brand’s message. Writing like you talk can be difficult at first, but by free-writing in your spare time, or just through practice, you can incorporate what you sound like in a conversation into the way you write.

Re-reading your work is important here, too. Even a short blog post can give you some great insights into how you sound by reading it aloud or going over it with someone else.

Jeff Goins has some great tips to help you find the things that make you unique, and how to develop your writing voice to reflect who you are.

With a face, a name and a voice full of personality, you are now a fully equipped human being! Exactly the kind of person your audience wants to talk to, which means you can get your brand’s message across more effectively.

Now for a couple of tips on how to interact with your audience using your new-found humanoid existence!

#4: Listen (the great equalizer)

One of my favorite things about social media is that it acts as an equalizer in a way that no other communication channel does. Unlike writing letters, calling a switchboard or emailing a support team, social media can (and often does) give you access to Fortune 500 company CEOs, celebrities, future employers and those amazing people who make it all possible: web developers.

You can use this to your advantage.

By interacting with your audience on their turf, you have already taken the first step. But engaging your followers takes more than being in the right place at the right time.

If you show up on Flickr and try to generate discussions about new home-security equipment, you probably won’t have much luck. Or if you start a Facebook fan page and fill it with legal jargon, your fans will probably dwindle quickly.

Interacting with your audience in the right way is imperative to a successful social media strategy. This is where listening comes in. Listen to your fans; not just to find out what they say about your brand, but also how they say it. How do they interact with you? How do they interact with each other?

Listening has proven to be influential in driving social media campaigns. Listening, as opposed to talking (or selling!), allows you to determine the best way to connect with your audience.

Monitoring mentions of your brand name, your own name, your industry and your competitors shows you where the conversations are happening and what people are saying about you.

Once you’re in the right place, listening to the conversations around you (and about you) will give you the information you need to jump in with a useful comment, propelling the conversation. You can also tailor your content to be more personal and engaging by listening first.

The great thing about social media is that the consumer finally has as much power as the corporation. Your customers will show you how to engage them, if you will just listen.

A company that listens immediately demonstrates genuineness, originality and credibility. And you know what those equal, don’t you?

#5: Determine why you are here

To quote Jay Baer, “for many companies, the conversation has shifted from ‘why’ or ‘should’ we do social media, to ‘where’ and ‘how’ social media should be done.” The only problem is when a company decides they need to “do this social media thing” just because everyone else is.

No matter what your strategy for social media, you must have a reason for it. Otherwise, you’re just adding to the noise.

Having goals for your social media team (or just you!) to work toward will give your content purpose and will give you motivation and clarity in monitoring and updating your accounts. This will eliminate the wishy-washy gap-filler posts that lower your brand’s credibility.

Plus, your audience will be more likely to get on board if you not only create and share great content, but also have a demonstrated purpose behind your actions.

What do you think? Does your company do a great job of showing authenticity as a brand? Or do you need to adjust your approach? Maybe you have some great tips to add? Leave a comment in the box below and let us know!

The ubiquitous LIVESTRONG gel wristband, which sold for $1, adorned the wrists of cancer survivors, supporters and celebrities while uniting people around the world in the fight against the disease. If you haven’t worn one, you probably know someone who has.

Simple and inexpensive, the bands created a community that crossed political, geographic, ethnic and age lines. And they brought in an estimated $70 million for the charity.

The bracelet craze has slowed but LIVESTRONG is still going as strong as founder Lance Armstrong’s cycling prowess.

Today, social networking at LIVESTRONG creates a viral effect on the order of the yellow bracelet, but in the virtual world.

The year 2009 was monumental for LIVESTRONG. The organization moved into a new headquarters building and appointed a full-time person to social media. The payoff: they raised millions, made political statements and helped countless people manage their cancer better.

7 Days a Week

In 1997, cancer survivor and champion cyclist Lance Armstrong founded the Lance Armstrong Foundation in Austin, Texas to fight for the millions of people around the world living with cancer. The organization – now called LIVESTRONG – helps anyone affected by cancer understand what to expect, what questions to ask and provides one-on-one support along the way.

Today, LIVESTRONG employs 74 people at its “green” Austin headquarters. Brooke McMillan, with the foundation for six years, became the full-time online community evangelist about a year ago – a title that perfectly suits her responsibilities and enthusiasm. She needs that dedication for what is a 7-day-a-week job.

“Social media never sleeps,” says McMillan, who tweets and posts via her Blackberry on the weekends.

The LIVESTRONG blog serves as the hub of all social media outreach, covering everything from cancer activism to events to questions about colonoscopies. McMillan and her fellow team members take turns posting on the blog.

But it’s LIVESTRONG’s fervent community of followers that truly build the momentum with their personal stories and support for others. Most have a personal connection to the cause: those fighting cancer, survivors or those who have family or friends who have been affected.

The LIVESTRONG blog is the hub for their social media outreach.

The Voices of LIVESTRONG

More than 60% of LIVESTRONG’s website traffic comes from social networking sites, but Twitter tops them all as the #1 referral source. In fact, Twitter referrals are three times higher than those from Facebook.

Three distinct voices make up LIVESTRONG’s Twitter presence:

@livestrong – Brooke McMillan, online community evangelist (63,000 followers)

@livestrongceo – LIVESTRONG’s charismatic CEO and cancer survivor Doug Ulman (1,007,958 followers)

@lancearmstrong – LIVESTRONG’s iconic founder and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong (2,449,311 followers)

While no-one can deny the influence of a famous figure like Lance Armstrong – who tweets and posts fun insights on his fascinating life – McMillan is in fact the social media voice of LIVESTRONG.

“That’s something I take very seriously,” she says. “I make sure that the @livestrong account is not just a place to put PR, that it actually has a voice.”

With a social work background – not marketing – she started at LIVESTRONG six years ago by answering calls on the LIVESTRONG SurvivorCare help line. That experience helped her truly understand the cancer community.

LIVESTRONG has over 63,000 fans on Twitter.

She continues her education and cheerleading by pointing Twitter, blog and Facebook contacts to LIVESTRONG resources and the support line. For that reason, @livestrong follows more people than follow its Twitter feed.

LIVESTRONG connects its social networking communities of hundreds of thousands with the information they need. McMillan often polls fans and followers about their questions for cancer specialists – and then provides those answers on the blog, with links from Twitter and Facebook.

LIVESTRONG also taps into its yellow bracelet icon with a Twitter avatar with the yellow band across the bottom – now created by more than 50,000 followers.

Exceeding Fundraising Goals

When the economy suffers, nonprofit donations overall go down. In 2009, LIVESTRONG worried about a dip in funds from its annual signature fundraising push, the LIVESTRONG Challenge.

The events draw thousands in cities across the country to run and bike in support of cancer research. In 13 years, the Challenge has raised $60 million.

Considering the rough economy of the past couple of years, LIVESTRONG was unsure what the 2009 events would bring. They used social networks to spread the word and build excitement, and quickly filled events and fundraising goals.

They even posted on Twitter and Facebook while on the ground at events with twitpics and updates.

In total, this past year’s events brought in $10.8 million – a new milestone.

“We ended up not only exceeding our goal but reached a new record, which we can hopefully beat this year,” McMillan said.

Supercharging Challenges

More than anything, Twitter helps get it done – and fast.

LIVESTRONG learned its power early on when their CEO Ulman accepted a wager from a donor. If Ulman could reach 25,000 followers in three days, the charity would receive $25,000.

Over three days of “hammering away in the Twittersphere,” tens of thousands stepped up to follow Ulman. In the end, the donor let LIVESTRONG poll the community to determine where to apply those funds.

When a guy affected by cancer, Drew Olanoff, decided to auction off his @drew Twitter ID for cancer, the response went way beyond anyone’s expectations. Comedian Drew Carey (now at @drewontv) learned about the auction, and instead of just buying the ID, he offered to give LIVESTRONG a dollar for every Twitter follower he got – up to $1 million.

Comedian Drew Carey helps LIVESTRONG

Record Holiday Sales

LIVESTRONG sells high-quality, branded gear in its online store, with proceeds supporting the charity. Again, the organization wondered whether holiday sales could top the previous year.

For the 2009 holiday season, McMillan made sure that the LIVESTRONG community knew about the mostly Nike gear and easy online shopping by featuring specific items on Facebook and Twitter.http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=2527&message=1

Again, LIVESTRONG hit record numbers with store sales during a year when holiday retail numbers fell flat.

“I put a little ad out on Facebook and it just exploded,” she said. “I tweeted out different items that were featured. This year it just took off.”

70,000 Signatures

LIVESTRONG actively solicits support for initiatives through its www.livestrongaction.org page. This past year, the organization is focused on healthcare reform to ensure that those with cancer have access to healthcare and medications.

Social networking sites drive people to the action site. There, they can create dedication pages with stories of their loved ones and sign the LIVESTRONG Healthcare Reform Petition in honor of that person.

“It makes it more powerful and brings it back to the whole reason why you would sign a petition anyway. It’s not just putting your name on there for another cause,” McMillan said.

Again, Twitter was the leading source of traffic for the healthcare petition. With 70,000 signatures in hand, CEO Doug Ulman arrived on Capitol Hill and met with representatives of Congress.

“When he went, every office had a giant stack of dedications and signatures. ‘These are the faces and people you’re representing and don’t forget it,’” McMillan said.

The Power of the Story

The true impact of social media lies in what cannot be measured: LIVESTRONG’s support of the cancer community.

In that regard, Facebook provides a community of people (781,328 currently) who help each other, separate from LIVESTRONG’s official posts. Every day, about 30 people post on the wall.

“A lot of folks share that it’s the first time to ever write their story. They’re writing it on our wall,” McMillan said. “A guy said his mom was diagnosed and four people he doesn’t know talked about supporting him. This happens umpteen times a day. I’m very proud of the community.”

The spirit of the yellow bracelet lives on.

Are you a cancer survivor?  Can social media help other causes?  How do you create a community of passionate fans and followers? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.

Posterous is known as the most “social” networking place of social media. It’s also the ideal solution for sharing content that’s too long for a tweet and too short for a blog post.

There are many different reasons and motivations to create a free Posterous account. Let’s have a look at the 7 most common reasons for businesses to use Posterous.

#1: Can Replace Your Blog

When a regular blog is not for you, Posterous can give you similar advantages to a regular blog without the work of setting up a blog and maintaining it.  All you have to do is send in your content by email.  It’s that simple.  This is why Posterous is great for lifestreaming.

This can be a good starting point for businesses hesitating to create their own blog. Posterous can provide a place to learn more about social media and develop the right content strategies.

#2: Fills a Gap Between Blogging and Microblogging

Posterous is an easy way to publish more content to reach different audiences. Steve Rubel says, “I still see a big space in between blogs and Twitter that allows you to have a hub and spoke strategy and post in multiple formats.”

And as Ted Villa says, “Posterous is clean and nimble, simple to use and a great tool in any organization’s social media toolkit. It’s a great way to extend a client’s footprint online and increase links to their site as well as their social media sites.”

This can fill a gap in your presence on social media.

#3: Can Improve Your Visibility

Posterous can help you improve your visibility in search results in two ways.

First, you have more updates for search engines to find. If you like to share photos and videos online, Posterous makes it very easy to do this (see reason #7 below for more details). And with photo and video publishing made this easy, you end up sharing more content to increase your online search results.

Second, you can publish your Posterous content on your own website. Unlike other social media platforms, you can set up your Posterous account on your own URL.  This means you can set up your Posterous account on:

• Your own domain name separate from your company website
• Or even use a sub-domain of your current website or blog

This is something important to keep in mind as the social media landscape changes over time.

#4: Gives You Another Voice on Social Media

Many business professionals also use Posterous to post content that would be off topic on their main website or blog and engage with a different audience online.

Posterous provides an easy venue to share different “social” content. A separate platform makes it easy to create an additional point of connection with your audience, with a different style, to engage different mindsets.  As Debbie Weil says, “There are distinct differences in how you talk or write for the different platforms.  Simply put, you write in a different ‘voice’ and, generally, talk about different topics.”

This makes it easy to reach out to different audiences.

#5: Makes it Easy for Groups to Publish Content

Posterous allows you to set up group accounts too.  This means you can set up:

• Posterous pages for individual team members
• Collaborative Posterous pages for different company employees to post on the same page
• Collaborative Posterous pages to bring people outside your company to collaborate on one Posterous page

Here’s one example of how Posterous brings social networking to a higher level: ClickIdeas

#6: Helps You to Segment Content for Different Audiences

You can use your Posterous account to create different points of contact with your audience.  Pat Kitano says, “I originally intended this slideshow (How to create a blog without “writing” one) for local businesspeople who wanted a blog for marketing purposes, but didn’t have the inclination to start a blog due to writing and time commitments. After posting the slideshow, I received feedback that Posterous was a great method to create new ‘blogs’ on a variety of topics and interests that were parallel to the principal blog. One mentioned how fast Posterous blogs were indexed by Google.”

This makes it easy to test different market segments outside of your main blog or website.

#7: Is the Easiest Option to Share Photos

Posterous is simply the easiest social media platform to share photos and videos.  All you have to do is email your photo or video to Posterous and it does everything else. This means you can publish your favorite photos and videos from any location where you have access to your email, even from your mobile phone.

This is why many users choose to post all of their photos and videos to Posterous and set it up to feed their Facebook, Twitter and other social media profiles.

Bonus: Makes You Easy To Connect With

Sometimes a personal touch helps you to create a stronger connection with your audience on social media.  This is why some business professionals use Posterous as a place to provide a unique glimpse into their personal lives.

Jason Falls does a good job at providing both personal and business insights on his Posterous page: Falls, Off the Rocker. He links to these Posterous posts from his Twitter account and invites his Twitter followers to get to know him better.

A Step Toward Creating Social Connections

Creating a social presence and adapting to different social media platforms are not easy for many businesses.  Posterous provides a way for businesses to make a social connection between their own website and other social media platforms as they learn more about incorporating social media into their current marketing tactics.

Ready to Give Posterous a Try?  Here’s some good resources to check out:

• Read Mashable’s Posterous Guide.
• Have a look at Guy Kawasaki’s Twelve Tips and Tricks.
• And remember to subscribe to Social Media Examiner.  There’s more to come on Posterous and other social media platforms.

Now It’s Your Turn

• What are you interested in getting out of Posterous?
• Do you already have a Posterous page?
• How is Posterous helping your social media marketing?

Share the link to your Posterous page below and tell us what your experience has been so far in the Comments section below.