Public Relations Committee Seminar] Online Lecture by Takahiro Yamamoto, Sharp Marketing Japan Corporation

How to communicate on SNS in an age when it is not easy to get your message across.

"Act trustworthy on social networking sites." This is the key point to always keep in mind when communicating on social networking sites. Today, one-way advertisements and PR are no longer acceptable, and we live in an age of "information overload," where individuals transmit and collect information on their own smartphones. That is why Mr. Yamamoto is conscious of communicating from the standpoint of being "half a retired employee" even though he is a member of Sharp. In other words, he believes that chatting from the perspective of an "uncle at the grocery store" will bring him closer to his followers. For example, imagining the same daily life as everyone else, he tweets mischievous tweets even though he is an official account, such as replying to consumer electronics shopping advice.

　It is also important to give followers the image that a live person is writing on a social networking site. We were told that this makes it easier for people to feel a sense of familiarity with the company, for example, even when the company has no choice but to send out negative information, by letting them imagine one person who dares to tweet about it. As a concrete example, we learned that changing the subject to "I am" instead of formal expressions such as "our company is," etc., can give warmth to the text.

Thus, on social networking sites, it is important to transmit words from the standpoint and sense of being a "friend" of followers. As an official account operator, it takes courage, but this behavior will give followers the image that "there is a person behind the corporate brand, one person at a time. This is the first step in gaining trust on social networking sites.