Brand Trust: Consistently Upholding Expectations
We spend the majority of our time here at Dreamhouse, thinking about how we can connect in a real way with our people. Our mission is to
Impact lives through genuine brand engagement.
It’s personal. It’s relational. It’s tangible.
And this isn’t just something that we’re striving to do with our own brand, it’s the way we want to represent our client’s brands as well! It affects every visual element, every headline, every caption, and beyond. So, needless to say, we spend a lot of time and energy wrestling with this question:
How can we captivate our people?
I recently encountered a situation that struck a passionate chord in me –one that required a long rant to Kim after work and led to me hastily drafting up notes for this blog post.
One of our clients asked us to post some content that was directed at a very specific audience (an audience that was not their target) and was pretty insistent on doing so. I felt literal pain in my chest as I discussed this with them because I knew that this specific post would alienate over 50k followers on the Instagram post alone.
Why did I feel this pain? It’s only one post, right? Who cares if you have an off post that doesn’t connect with your target?
Well, if you want my honest, gut-reaction, rant… here’s what I wrote to my client explaining the reasoning for not sharing this specific content:
If I saw this in my feed, it violates my expectations of what I want to see from the brand, because it’s clearly not directed at me. Each post that alienates a part of your audience has a deep subconscious impact on the way people interact with you socially. We have to be intentional about this.
Each post connects me deeper to a brand or pushes me away.
Any post that isn’t “for me” doesn’t mean I unfollow immediately, but I feel misunderstood by the brand, and distance with us grows. Sometimes this can happen occasionally and be overcome by the product/brand name, but if it happens over time, it hurts your brand reach because if I don’t connect with a post, I don’t like it, or spend time with it on my page, or click on it, or interact with it… each post that I don’t interact with is noted by the algorithms and I’ll see less of this kind of content. It’s subtle, and it’s impact may not be immediately obvious but will have far-reaching impacts over time, and, more importantly, over relationships with individual people.
It’s a relationship. It’s trust. It’s branding.
So, whether you’re a small business owner or a content writer or a graphic designer… I just wanted to stick a rock in your shoe (what a weirdly vivid phrase!?) and ask you to go back to the basics. Consider your true target.
Who are YOUR PEOPLE? Think about them and write to them.
This is how you impact lives with your brand! It’s not ultimately about getting more likes on your Insta’s… Likes don’t grow businesses… it’s about building relationships built on trust and humor and common interest and understanding! Keep doing this with your people and the impact of your business will grow.
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