When it comes to marketing, branding, or public relations for your business, how much personal information and opinion should be involved? This is a complicated topic, and one that can be difficult for a small business owner to navigate on the fly. Today, we are going to set some ground rules for how much you should be mixing business and personal as a guideline for how to keep your business strong and healthy instead of putting it at unnecessary risk.
This blog is the result of a discussion I had just this week with a business owner who got called out on social media for sharing a controversial post in a personal forum that was actually a mixed business-personal forum. This has been a common occurrence especially in recent months with dozens of business owners suffering unanticipated repercussions. And this can happen with any topic, any time there is a mixing of business and personal.
There is one page I follow because 100% of its posts were beautiful nature pictures. Suddenly 90% of the posts were political rants. After the switch, I kept following it out of marketing curiosity to see what would happen. I saw comment after comment from the page followers, “I thought this was a page about nature.” Those people were right. It was supposed to be a page about nature. That was the page name, that was the mission, that is what they had been following for a long time. That was what they opted into. They went to this page for an escape. The abrupt shift led to a huge drop in followers and rightly so. It was a different page now. This is an extreme example to start us off, but the principle is important.
But haven’t I been telling you that it is good to showcase yourself? So, how do you know when mixing business and personal is okay and when it is not?
The first rule to remember is that your branding, your marketing message, your pitch, and your content is not about you. It is about what matters to your target market. We talked about that in last week’s blog, and if you did not get a chance to read that one yet click here. The key is to always be focused on what matters to your target market. If something is relevant to your target market and aligns with the mission and vision of your business, it is a valid message to send.
The second rule to remember is that you can inject personality into your marketing as long as it aligns with your tone. If your business has multiple employees or partners, the tone you set should be based on the consistent experience your customers will have with any representative of your business. Whether the customer hears from the customer service department, the sales manager, the CEO, or anyone else, they will still come away with the same feeling about your company’s personality. If you are a solopreneur and your business is you, it can actually be more difficult to draw the line. So, this is about setting rules for how you deal with people at the start of your business, and then holding to that in all of your marketing and all of your dealings.
You can inject personality into your #marketing as long as it aligns with your tone. #smb Share on XBut wait – can’t it be a great hook to share a story, an inside look, or anecdote about why you do what you do? It sure can. This is where – after you know the rules – you can start to break them to find appropriate ways where mixing business and personal can benefit your business instead of hurt it.
Remember that you can say whatever you want to, but you cannot say what you want to with a guarantee of no ramifications. When you show customers an inside look or share a story, it should always be something that enhances what you are doing in your business. That shows why your tone is the way it is. Why you have the values you have. If your target market is already aligned with those values, knowing more about more about the origin should only draw them closer.
Is it possible to get behind a charity, a cause, or tell a story that is unrelated to your mission because you believe in it? It is. But will it work for you? This is where I suggest you take a harder look. Is the charity, the cause, the story, or the opinion you are going to share controversial or inspirational/relatable? If it is controversial, you are going to drive a percentage of your target market away, and you probably don’t even know what percentage that is since you are in untested waters. Those who remain will be more loyal because they have yet another bond to you, but you will have some damage control to do for your business overall. If the charity, the cause, the story, or the opinion you are going to share is inspirational or relatable, this could be an opportunity to hook a larger audience. However, you still do not want to muddle the purpose of your business. Find a way to connect to the cause in a way that makes sense – a portion of the proceeds being donated, partnering for an event, etc. This is mixing business and personal, but it is setting expectations for what that connection will be.
The third rule involves having caution about mixing business and personal contacts. This gets particularly complicated on social media. If you are trying to expand reach and show social proof by getting friends involved in messages of your business, you could be setting yourself up for over-mixing business and personal.
When you get started in business, you want to be able to tell all the people you know about it so that they can know what you do, support you, and perhaps play a role. Once you have sent that message and you see who is interested in your business, though, it is time to start drawing boundaries. Sure, tell your friends and family when important moments are happening in your business. But you want to be able to let your hair down in that group, to say what you really think, to express feelings and thoughts that might not be “on brand” with your business. If you start mixing strictly-business contacts in with personal contacts, you run the risk of giving them too much information. Of having them see something from you that does not represent what they bought into with your company message. And then you lose customers…but didn’t need to!
Drawing a line between business and personal in your marketing is imperative. Ultimately, you decide where to draw it, but you make your decision based on what you believe will be right for your target market.
Drawing a line between #business and personal in your #marketing is imperative. #entrepreneur Share on XFor any business owner, having a basic understanding of how to represent the business and not the human behind it is a critical facet to maintaining a positive reputation. Mixing business and personal in your marketing is a dicey proposition, and while it can sometimes benefit your business, if done recklessly it will damage it. And if you are arriving on this marketing tip of the week because you have already gotten into a mess of mixing business and personal, I recommend that you check out this public relations-focused blog about the basics of crisis communications!