Marketing experts have long advised businesses which begin using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter that using a personal human voice to communicate with followers can build a much stronger relationships than simply broadcasting advertising messages. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have completed a study that reinforces that advice.

During the study, researchers presented participants with a variety of mock social media pages for known for-profit and non-profit companies. Comments on the pages used a range of tones, with some bearing the image and name of a company representative and others only using a basic company name image.

The study participants were found to have a much more positive view of those companies that used a conversational human image in their social media interactions than those who only used the company image.

“There is great value in using a human voice when communicating and developing good relationships with the public,” researcher Hyojung Park, a doctoral candidate at the Missouri School of Journalism, told Science Daily. “Perceptions of relationships with an organization seem to be significantly more favorable when the organization’s social networking page has a human presence rather than an organizational presence. Levels of trust, commitment, and satisfaction from users all appear to be positively affected by the use of the human voice in social media.”

“Communicating in a human voice adds a sense of personal and sociable human contact to the interaction with the public,” Park said. “We have evidence that perceived conversational human voice may promote trust, satisfaction, and commitment in relationships between an organization and the public, which in turn results in favorable behavioral intentions toward an organization.”

So, for better social media relationships with your customers, try revealing the human side of your company. Both you and your customers will get more out of the interactions.

Related articles

• The human touch – adding a voice to social media relationships (prsa.org)
• Using human voice on social media can help firms build relationships (news.bioscholar.com)
• Social media advice: Get real or go home (customerthink.com)
• How to jump into the social media pool without drowning (smartblogs.com)