Social Media Marketing For Dummies®

Chapter 5. Developing Your SIM Voice

In This Chapter

• Understanding why you need to have a SIM voice

• Differentiating between SIM voices and brand voices

• Building your voice in the social Web

• Choosing the owner of your company's SIM voice

• Crowdsourcing SIM voices

A social influence marketing campaign, program, or strategic approach won't be successful if no observable people are behind it. Consumers want to know who the people behind the brand are. Being a trusted brand is not enough. Putting your CEO's name on the About Us page of your Web site isn't either. When consumers engage across the social Web, they want to engage with real people who have personalities and opinions. In other words, the people representing the brand need to be SIM voices that people can search on Google or Bing to find out more about. That means the consumer should be able to search the person representing the brand and see via the search results that the brand has put forth a real person to talk on its behalf. That's why you need a SIM voice.

Having voices that can be researched through the search engines is instrumental to establishing credibility and being authentic. This chapter discusses why you need a SIM voice, how it differs from a brand voice or personality, where it gets manifested, and who can play that role. I then discuss using that person's relationships to help with crowdsourcing (outsourcing a task to a large group of people or community in the form of an open call).

Figuring Out Why You Need a SIM ...