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Finding Your Online Voice
You have a website, a blog and a number of social media platforms, your online marketing strategy is in place and you’re ready to start spreading the word.
However, you don't know who you want to address, what you want to say or how you want to say it.
It’s a stumbling block facing many businesses and finding the right voice for your brand is crucial when it comes to communicating and standing out on social media.
Giving your company consistent character by using a single, recognizable voice will allow you to enter into more conversations with your followers. It will also add personality to your brand, setting you apart from your competitors. Even better, if consumers like what you’re saying, they will start sharing your content and marketing it for you.
Developing and conveying an authentic online voice for our clients is something we pride ourselves on and will always be one of the first things Cake Media addresses when taking on a new marketing role.
Need Help? Here are Some Key Things to Think About:
Who is Your Target Audience?
Are you a bar, hoping to catch the attentions of the 21-35 year-old market, a hotel targeting families, a pet store going for animal lovers or a cafe, aiming to bring in local foot traffic?
We recommend a brainstorming session, to determine exactly what kind of customers you want to target. This will help you to define WHO you will be addressing online and will allow you to think more about how your brand will communicate.
This Fourth of July tweet from @Macys was obviously written with female customers in mind and is conveyed in a chatty, friendly voice:
What Do You Want to Say?
Will your social media channels promote new products, will you be showcasing recipes and pictures of food and drink, will you be a resource for information about a particular subject such as financial advice or mechanics, are you selling clothes or showcasing a hotel?
Planning WHAT kind of things you want to say to your target audience can help to shape the online character of your business.
Posts from brewing company @newbelgium are targeted at beer lovers/bargoers and are focused on their product line. This gives them a relaxed, informative and often-humorous delivery.
How to Say It
Ask yourself—if my brand had a personality, what would it be? Fun, young, reliable, healthy, older, professional, educational, motherly, whimsical, casual?
Before you start posting, try to have a strong grasp of your online character. It will prove central as to HOW you are going to get your message across.
This tweet from @Target is friendly and relatable. It appears to be targeted at women, it is pushing the Target product line, while maintaining a casual and conspiratorial voice, furthered by the use of a winking emoji.
While it's important to maintain an authentic voice (i.e. your brand's consistent personality) online, we should note that the tone of your posts can change and you shouldn't feel restricted by one single type of delivery.
Think of tone as being the mood your business is currently in and ask yourself - if my brand was speaking right now, what would it sound like? Funny, serious, casual, informative, professional, friendly, sassy?
Telling customers that you are going to be closed for the day or talking up your new happy hour specials—they'd be communicated very differently in real-life. Think of conducting your online conversations in exactly the same way.
Still confused or (we hope not) even more confused? Connect with Cake Media and we can help!
Thanks for visiting, Laura and Jenny.
Welcoming a New Client: Aloha Mixed Plate
We are delighted to have Aloha Mixed Plate as our newest client at Cake Media!
In early June, we began working on a social media management strategy for AMP and spent a day on site to shoot original pictures and video of their food, employees and oceanfront location. This is a service we provide for all our clients, built into the price of our social media packages.
Our early aims include growing AMP’s follower count, increasing follower engagement levels and boosting their presence on social media, by paying special attention to Instagram and Twitter feeds that need to be populated with content.
On Facebook, where AMP employees had already done a great job in cultivating a following in excess of 10,000, we want to add video content, further images of menu items and to interact with customers in realtime.
With video, a wide selection of brand-new images and a strategy in place, we went into action on June 11.
Little over two weeks later, we’ve already seen some great results, such as a Facebook video post that reached over 12,000 people, with an average video completion rate of 95 per cent. Plus, Instagram and Twitter follower counts which are increasing by the day.
Mahalo for choosing Cake Media to be your social media management team, we are thrilled to be working with you!
Have you followed Cake Media on Instagram yet? Follow us today: @cakemediamaui
Until next time, thank you for reading! Laura and Jenny
Design Work for Star Noodle
Star Noodle’s social media channels are managed by Cake Media and we’ve seen great results in follower growth and interactions, since we took the role on earlier this year.
The Asian Fusion restaurant is part of a bigger company, called Na Hoaloha ‘Ekolu, who also own The Old Lahaina Luau, Leoda’s Kitchen and Pie Shop and Aloha Mixed Plate. They are a incredibly generous organization who do a LOT for the community of west Maui.
This year, Na Hoaloha ‘Ekolu celebrate their 30th anniversary and—in the spirit of giving back—their 30 Acts of Aloha program has them carrying out 30 “solidly identifiable acts” of kindness in the local community.
Recently, we were asked to help Star Noodle in their marketing for a Rummage Sale and Craft Fair as part of 30 Acts. The scope of work was to include a logo that could be used for current and future community giving events at Star Noodle, and to design a poster image that could be used as an event banner and in advertising in local online and print media.
Jenny wanted the poster to be instantly recognizable as being from Star Noodle, yet set apart from previous fundraisers, as this was a one-of-a-kind event. Using inspiration from the Star Noodle uniform and in Shepard Fairey’s OBEY artwork, while using playful fonts and choosing a lighter background color palette, she designed three posters and two logos for restaurant management to choose from. This is the poster they chose:
As you can see from the finished logo (below)—which was printed onto t-shirts and sold at the event—it incorporates the Star Noodle star, framed with a taro leaf design and with a piko in the middle—the piko is the small round part where the taro stalk meets the leaf surface and gave name to the belly button—both are right at the core of Hawaiian culture and the piko is part of 30 Acts of Aloha’s official logo, so was perfect to be used as part of this design.
Thanks for visiting, we'll be back soon with more content, design and social media news from Cake Media! Laura and Jenny.
Cake Media: An Introduction
Welcome to our first blog here at Cake Media!
This is where we will be sharing our news, examples of our work and social media insights in the weeks, months and years ahead. Hopefully this will become a useful and informative content, design and social media resource for you and your Maui business.
As a new company, the last few months have been dedicated to getting our project off the ground—formulating a business plan, registering our LLC, building and populating a website, designing a logo, printing business cards, meeting with clients, designing and creating content and more. In short, it’s been a busy and exciting time.
One of the biggest early challenges we faced was picking a company name that a) we both liked, b) would be memorable to our clients and c) would work from a copy and design perspective on our site/logo/business cards, etc.
So… you may ask, how did we arrive at Cake Media?
As sisters from England, we both love tea and cake, you could say it’s an integral part of life in the land of rainclouds, cricket, village tearooms and country pubs. Whenever we were brainstorming ideas for our burgeoning business, our meetings were often (okay, always) accompanied by tea and cake.
Several name ideas came and went but nothing stood out. Nothing felt right. Until one of us (probably gazing at the crumbs on our plate) remarked that, “We should just call ourselves Cake.”
As you can see, it stuck.
We are now one month into being an official LLC here in Maui County and we are delighted to be working with several local companies already. Our first clients are Star Noodle, the Kaanapali Beach Hotel and Leoda’s Kitchen and Pie Shop and it’s a real pleasure to be working with these fantastic west Maui businesses for their social media and design needs. We also have some exciting projects in the pipeline, which will be revealed right here very soon.
To take a closer look at Cake Media and the work that we do, please follow us on our social media platforms by clicking the tabs below.
Mahalo for visiting! Laura and Jenny