Every brand that succeeds on social media gets two aspects of the activity right – authenticity and a consistent voice. If done right, in time, the audience begins to recognize the brand’s voice as authentic, one which often influences the opinion of people and drives action. Thought leadership on social media is a very big deal and it comes when your voice and input are helpful, real, verifiable, meaningful…authentic.

So if you’re out there trying different recipes for success with your social media marketing, let me show you how you can succeed in winning over the audience by adding authenticity to your voice.

Your brand’s voice is its identity online and you want it to be as closely aligned to your brand’s values, morals, and mission statement. The cool thing about this is that you are at liberty to modify your voice depending upon the social media forums and audience types; basically so long as you do not compromise on what is essential to your brand’s identity and reputation you can engage in a fun way, soberly, scholastically, etc.

Your approach to interacting with your audience will change based on your objectives. If you wish to reach out and engage then in all likelihood you are not going to use complex language. But if you wish to educate, then you may have throw some jargon at them and adopt a more scientific tone. And that’s fine because it enables you to adopt personas according to the situation but without compromising on the core brand identity – the authentic voice.

It’s highly possible that you will arrive on the social media scene with some notions on the voice you should project but with time those notions may require reevaluation. This will happen because on social media, your brand’s culture will be exposed to the values and style of expression of the communities you are reaching out to and vice versa. For all practical purposes, you’re on their turf, so speak their language but retain your personality.

On social media, as in real life, you may want to adopt a tone that can get the conversation going. Conversations — those are the basic building blocks for achieving business objectives on social media. And if you pay attention to how the audience reacts to your communication, you will find it easier to flesh out an authentic voice that furthers your brand’s mission; fulfills audience requirements; and also presents opinions that are heard, respected and shared.

Another important pointer to the development of an authentic voice on social media is the manner in which your competitors are doing it. Regularly review the of a few of them, ones that resemble you the most, and learn from their mistakes and successes.