Social Media Personality Profiling For Business

Social Media Marketing For Different Personalities

It’s the epidemic that’s defined the 21^st century. Everyone has it, it’s shared amongst us and spreads like wildfire…yes, social media has pervaded all aspects of our day to day living. Everyone knows the scare stories about how over-exposure to the internet can be damaging to our health and personality, but let’s turn it around and think about how different personalities can affect social media. Everyone’s different – just take the fascinating Myers-Briggs personality test from the clever folk at Quistic. For business owners and social media managers, it may be interesting to think about specific personality attitudes and learn how certain stressors and energisers can help guide marketers in best engaging with their target audience.

According to a recent article by Penelope Trunk, founder and CEO of the personality and career experts Quistic, everyone is motivated by one of three core desires: achievement, affiliation, or competence (or in simpleton’s terms: winning, relationships/affiliation, and craft). Think about what drives you: if you can understand and identify yourself amongst these three key motivators then you can better place yourself to succeed in business. The Myers-Briggs test places one’s personality on a sliding spectrum of 16 possibilities but somewhat worryingly, if, like myself, you are an ENFJ personality type it appears that you find “thinking is often your weakness”; however, it also advises to start writing a blog to further career prospects, so perhaps it’s bang on.

Certain City banks are already using personality profiling to better engender brokering partnerships and deals – if a client is particularly data-focused they will match them with a similarly data-minded broker, or match more ‘blue-sky-thinking’ companies with their own optimists. Understanding how to improve communication across different personalities is a useful and insightful business move.

You might think that marketers should be sensitive or empathetic or have a keen eye for detail or a creative spark or an appreciation for deadlines; in fact, they need to be all of the above and more. A split personality is perhaps encouraged in the marketing world, and even more so in the social media marketing world. You have to be able to tap into the different mindsets of your varied audiences, understand which channels will best speak to which personalities and create content that appeals to a variety of character types. Your strategy needs to speak to multiple personalities, thus you need to be able to adopt multiple personalities.

Everyone knows that social media is a great way to market your business; obviously, you understand what your business is about, but do you really understand your customers? For all you social media managers, and there are a lot of you – five million‘social media experts’ at last count on LinkedIn – here are a few personality traits that you might wish to nurture when marketing a business online. The thinkers at Hubspot suggest that in order to better engage with your business’ customers, you should become: 

The informant – tell your brash reader what they need to know. And don’t beat about the bush.

The inquirer – appeal to the quieter members of your audience by asking them questions, and encouraging a climate for engagement with considerate content.

The helper – for the busy-bodies who are never satisfied you must provide top-notch customer service and answer questions and complaints directly.

The thought provoker – show the curious members of your target market that you are open to dialogue and debate, and that you are the go-to-expert for knowledge in your specialism.

The class clown – appeal to the jokers with some classic slap-stick humour.

The entertainer – this applies to everyone. Everyone likes, and needs, to be entertained. So be interesting.

The go-getter – and for those personality types that your business hasn’t yet tapped into…go and get them on board.

It’s no longer enough for a business to market itself along outdated ‘buy me now’ call-to-action commands; with the advent of social media marketing, the emphasis is clearly on the social aspect. Everyone loves a good story, and this works to any good marketer’s advantage. Your blog and social media personality should be in sync, as this shapes how customer’s view your business’ character and will affect which personality types are more naturally drawn to your company. People come to expect a certain tone from your business, so keep your online personality consistent across the multiple channels. Social media is pre-disposed to helping you nurture and expand your business – people buy things from people they trust and respect, so let your honest and knowledgeable personality come to the surface.

Obviously social networking engages the interests and activities of more narcissistic individuals as opposed to those less motivated by peer approval; introverts and extroverts use online communities differently according to their need to be people-oriented and outwardly social. Nearly 60% of extroverts use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for professional purposes, while 47% of introverts shared the sentiment; although there is clearly a difference in the figures, it’s good news for marketers as it shows the popularity of social media in general. Studies into how different personality types use the internet consistently show that despite minor fluctuations, on the whole, all personality types are using social media for business and professional purposes.

Although there are obviously nuances and dynamics to be considered when marketing on social media, and those marketers who can most intricately manage these will be rewarded, overall the vast majority of your target market – be they introverts or extroverts, shy or narcissistic, thinkers or feelers – are using and responding to social media for professional purposes, and  it follows that it is a useful and successful channel for marketing.

Katie Rowley 

Recent graduate and now interning as content editor, when she's not writing articles Katie can quite likely be found festival-ing, holiday-ing or reading a book (dedicated English student that she is).