Social Media Success: Authenticity Over Perfection with Jeff Howell

In a world full of filters, how can you show up as your authentic self and build a community of brand followers? In this episode of Rocky Mountain Marketing, I spoke with Jeff Howell to discuss the importance of authenticity in branding. Jeff shares his insights on how to maintain brand integrity while infusing humanity into your brand, making it more relatable and engaging.

Visit Jeff Howelll’s social media pages:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffhowell76/

Instagram: https://www.tiktok.com/@jeffhowell76

[00:00:00] In a world full of filters, how can you show up as your authentic self to get even more people to want to connect with you? Because really social media is just about building out your community, your biggest brand followers, and, Honestly, that's what my biggest apprehension has been towards tools like TikTok.

Welcome to Rocky Mountain Marketing. I'm your host, Katie Brinkley. Join us as we dive deep with the world's leading digital marketing experts every single Tuesday. It's all about giving you the strategies that are working right now, directly from those who are making an impact. With my 20 years of experience, I'm here to help you navigate the world of digital marketing.

Whether you're looking to sharpen your skills or transform your business, you're in the right place. Let's get started on today's journey to success.

I feel like, Oh, I got to dance on that. I got to do this. I have to do that. I need to [00:01:00] use this filter or this, you know, whatever. And it can be hard to really show up as your authentic self in a world Full of filters, but that's why I wanted to bring in today's guest. He and I have actually spoken at social media week Lima two years.

And does it two years in a row now or three years in a row now, but three years in a row and every time he takes the stage, he kind of gets me thinking I could be on Tik TOK, a little bit. And then I come home and I get back to reality. And I'm like, nah, that's not for me. That platform's not for me.

What was I thinking? But it's because of the way that he approaches. Branding and being authentic through your brand. So today's guest is none other than Jeff Howell. He's coming to us live from Michigan. And you know, you, for those of you, regular listeners, you know, how near and dear the state of Michigan is to my heart.

So Jeff, thanks so much for joining us on Rocky mountain marketing today.

You are soo welcome, Katie. Thank you for having [00:02:00] me.

You know, Jeff, I was actually just thinking one thing that would have been really cool is if you would have had all of your bobbleheads out and I would have had all my bobbleheads out and we could have like, look like we're really big deals or the Funko Pop we got this year. I know, I need to put it up on display here behind me because I haven't put mine out on display. That was pretty cool. I have my bobble heads on a window sill that overlooks our three season porch. And it's kind of like right in the dining room area. And all of, like my two younger kids, every time they have friends over, they always show them, well, I've got five bobbleheads now, but I have the three most recent ones out there.

Oh man, it must be a really big deal of having five bobbleheads here. I am thinking I'm a big deal cause I got three, but you know, and that's one of the speaker gifts that Jessica Phillips gives to her speakers when they speak at social media week Lima, such a great conference. Anyone in the Midwest.

Check it out next year because it is a phenomenal conference, but that's where I got to meet [00:03:00] you, Jeff, and really get to know you better. Like I said, the past. Three years, we've gotten to hang out in Lima and I've gotten to hear you speak on the importance of branding and being authentic through your brand.

So let's, let's actually start our conversation with what the heck branding has to do. I mean, we all know that having a, you know, a brand kit, having your brand colors, having your logo, but what you talk about is so much more than just that, hex color codes.

Yeah. It's funny. back in the day when I was doing, printing and graphic design, it was always, you had to have the right brand standards and your colors and your, logo usage rules and typography and everything like that, which there is certainly a need for that. You know, you want to have brand integrity and you want to make sure that however you're represented in different media is, it's going to match up and it's going to look well, but then [00:04:00] today you can't just have a printed piece or a really cool graphic. There has to be, some humanity behind the brand that either you're representing or the brand that you're promoting yourself.

People want that connection. They want that realist, that real authentic connection with somebody. So when you have something real behind what you're sharing, I think that makes a, makes people want or more likely to connect with that brand because they know that there's something authentic and real behind it. And it isn't all just colors and logos and typography. Again, those brand identifiers are important.

Consider Wendy's, for instance, right? you don't ever see the person behind the X account that they have, but you know that there's a couple of really funny people behind it that go out and decide that they just want to roast people and roast other brands. Questionable food quality, you can always tell that there's some really great humans behind that [00:05:00] strategy, because, you know, that there's some pretty funny people and that makes it identifiable. It makes it more relatable.

and I love that you brought up Wendy's. So let's just talk about that, them and their account for a little bit. So for people who might not be familiar with the Wendy's X, formerly known as Twitter account, let's just give a little bit of insight into them and, and I also think KFC does a great job of it, of this too.

Yeah, let's just talk about what they're doing, because obviously it's not some little redheaded girl with braids tweeting. They have a very, he said, funny group of people that have given a personality to a logo.

And from a premium brand perspective, that makes it more relatable. You know that whenever you're connecting with a brand. Wendy's or KFC or another premium brand that, you know, has people behind it. JetBlue is actually kind of good at this too. They're not funny or they don't, you know, they don't go out of their [00:06:00] way to be irreverent like Wendy's does.

But you know that when you're talking to somebody over Twitter from JetBlue, you know, that's a person. Chipotle is kind of a similar way. I just love that because again, you know, that when you're interacting with somebody, they are, they're hilarious and they're people and they're showing a true side of not just themselves as human beings, but they are representing Wendy's and Wendy's is okay with that.

Sort of making that part of their identity and part of that brand. And so one of my points with that is like, it's don't be afraid to try things that are counter to what a lot of premium brands might expect you to do. It's okay to be a little irreverent. It's okay for you to be a little funny and have an enjoy being part of the branding building process.

It doesn't have to be sterile and super corporate. I think that that's so important to keep in mind because we get caught up in, well, I have to make sure that I'm not too political. Well, do think that that kind of still plays it. But I mean, like I'm [00:07:00] professional. I'm making sure that, Oh, there's no spelling errors.

I don't want to call anyone out. I don't want to make anyone mad. I think social media after the pandemic has really changed. Everybody wants to know. The person behind the brand, the way that that brand makes them feel gone are the days of the generic, I don't know, like happy 4th of July, Canva graphic, you know, those days are gone with social media and having what you're talking about.

This authentic feel when you open up your account and you're following these brands, you feel a certain way you feel connected to them. I think it's a really cool way of evolution within social media.

Yeah. I agree with you. One of the coolest parts too is understanding, certain brands sort of know their audience too. Because, Twitter sort of become Wendy's domain, right? You know that when you go to their Twitter account, that's just where they live and that's where they operate.

But there are also other brands, [00:08:00] multiple brands that will utilize, you know, their different platforms, not to have a different identity per platform, but they utilize it all differently. You know, I think people or brands who are. Or even personal brands individuals who are trying to go after certain demographics.

They know where to go. That isn't unusual, but you can't you don't always necessarily expect, you know, Wendy's to get on tiktok, for instance, and have somebody on video and roasting somebody because, having somebody without, you know, have via video and person to person is a little bit, you know, you can't hide behind that twitter account at that point.

But when you have brands that are super visual, you know, that's where you got tiktok and youtube. Shorts and Instagram reels, things like that. You're able to have that really good video content without necessarily being a whole highly produced or Polish or having a bunch of filters on it because you can just be Yourself.

Be who you are.

So Jeff, the million dollar question is how do we still have our brand voice, but give it a personality?

[00:09:00] It's gotta be you, right? You know, something I said during my talk in Lima, which I still think is kind of funny. I check all that myself was that my slides were terrible. I noticed that like the night that I was going through my talk on Tuesday night. I'm like, man, these are awful. And I use that. As part of the, as part of the presentation, that my thing isn't making slide decks, right?

It just isn't. And the presentation wasn't about how to create a good slide deck. It was about personal branding. So leaning into some of your quirks, I don't want to say failures, but maybe not living up to certain things. Like even at the beginning of this particular podcast, I've been stumbling over my words because I'm coming from, doing a bunch of work.

So trying to switch gears, I'm 47. Sometimes my brain doesn't work as quickly as I'd like it to. And sometimes you just have to embrace that when you're producing a bunch of content. Sometimes it's okay to say, you know what, that piece of [00:10:00] content that I put out earlier this morning or last week, wasn't the greatest.

I wasn't on my game and that's totally okay. Because it's going to allow you to not set such a high standard for yourself and not kill yourself when you're not optimizing yourself to that high level, and then it's going to let the people that follow you know, okay, this is just a person or this brand is not perfect.

And in a world of a lot of these premium brands being afraid to show. Chinks in their armor or to show scraps, uh, scrapes and scratches or dents that becomes much more relatable when you kind of give yourself the permission to not be perfect.

I mean, that's me with video. Like I said, when I started this episode every now and then I get the itch to like, Oh, maybe I could do TikTok. I mean, you don't need to be, you can just talk to the camera. And I'm like, Oh gosh, there's no way I could do that [00:11:00] because right now you and I are having this podcast conversation.

It will go out on YouTube, but I mean, that's about the extent of how my comfortableness. Of being on video, I can't just go and do some vertical video. It takes me a lot of time because I overthink it. And I know this about myself is our reels extremely important on Instagram. Do they get you the most re yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

I know all this obvious. I know it. However, I know that that's not my superpower. I don't feel comfortable doing it. And. I focus my efforts on different platforms because of that.

And sometimes that's really okay to be known for that one thing and only being on that one platform. I just prefer TikTok because it does give me the permission to not have to worry about having something that's so highly produced. There's a lot of brands that produce really good quality ads or quality [00:12:00] content that's vertical that are highly produced.

And that's cool. But When you look at some of the other people that promote the usage of tick tock wave. While it's a really good example of this,

I love Wave. She's been on the show a few times.

yeah, she's great. While she does have a conversation about how to go viral in some of the more, you know, utilizing some of the more, uh, up to date trends to kind of help to get attraction.

She still has the, one of the fundamental things about her content is just being real and being yourself. I love that because I don't make it a highly produced tick tocks. I just have the phone in front of me at a weird angle sometimes. And I'm just talking about whatever I want to talk about for that day.

And sometimes it doesn't go super smooth, but whatever I post it anyway, because I want people to know that who they're getting from me. Is who I am wherever and I'm not going to put up some sort of fake facade, just to try and get clicks reviews or attention. I want to be authentic with in [00:13:00] whatever space I'm in and what you get from me is what everybody else gets to you again.

Personal branding aside, I think there's a lot of very large brands or premium brands get back and stand to, learn that lesson because they get so concerned about everything having to be perfect and everything has to be, at a certain production quality and there obviously is room for that. You have to have that at some point, but genuinely it's okay to just sit back and have somebody sitting in front of a camera that's part of a premium brand and just, you know, Either encouraging somebody to buy whatever, or even just having like a really cool message that, Hey, I represent XYZ brand.

Maybe it could be something about men's mental health, or it could be something about, veterans month. There could be something about Valentine's day. It could be something about, summer destinations. I don't know. There's a million or an infinite amount of topics that somebody could talk about from a premium brand perspective, but. Having somebody [00:14:00] just doing that would provide a significant amount of humanity. And therefore I think there's a desire for people to want to make that connection.

And now for just a quick break, you've heard me talk about some of my favorite social media tools on the show. And one of them is a tool called MetraCool. MetraCool allows you to plan, analyze, and grow your digital presence all in one place from websites to LinkedIn to YouTube. You can track everything that you're doing online and see just what's working and what isn't.

Check out MetraCool today at katiebrinkley. live slash cool. All right, let's get back to today's show.

When is it okay, I guess, when, when is it okay to put a face to the brand? Like, do you assign someone, like if you're, let's say you are the CEO of a company, maybe it's not a huge company, maybe there's 10 employees. Maybe there's 20, you know, we're not, we're not talking about the, the CEO of AT& T here.

We're [00:15:00] talking about the CEO of a medium sized or a small business and they don't want to be on camera. When do you give that person or that personal brand side to your social media account?

It doesn't have to be anybody other than somebody who's willing and is willing to represent the brand. Well, I mean, it could be, it could be the accountant. It could be, you know, it could be the marketing person could be the CEO could be whoever, could be, if it's, auto dealership, it could be one of the lead mechanics in the shop, just talking about whatever.

I mean, it doesn't have to be anybody in particular because whenever, you're making content face to face video and you're being genuine. It doesn't matter who it is. As long as that connection is being made . Is how I've always looked at it. Um, back when I was doing marketing, uh, I would always try and get multiple representatives of whatever business I was working with, to write content. Write articles or whatever for their [00:16:00] website, because you want to provide, you want to make the person that is ingesting that content feeling like they that they have access to you.

A face for the business and people want to do business with people, right? And even if, like you said, whether it's the marketing person, the accountant, the receptionist, whoever, giving that business a face is going to make people know, like, and trust you more. They're going to feel connected and they're going to want to tell their friends about you because they feel like they know you, even if they've never met you in real life. Right?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's just randomly. There's a YouTube channel that I follow. They make race cars are drag race cars and sometimes you see the owner of the company pop in and talk about, going through a project or whatever, but most of the time, the people that you see on their YouTube videos are, is going to be the fabricator and the guy in the body shop guy and the people putting the wiring together.

They're just doing the blue collar work of putting the car together [00:17:00] and that's relatable to a lot of people because they're just regular people putting the work together, but they also have really good content to share and they really have a relatable, skill set And they're representing the brand of the shop.

Yeah. So for people that are listening to today's episode and they're saying, okay, all this sounds great, but I still don't really know what I can or should talk about from my business account that makes it different from my personal accounts.

it varies depending on the size of whatever, um, you know, if you're just a, if you're just one person, you're a sole proprietor and You've got a lot of content that you want to promote, something that like, um, we just actually mentioned Carrie Kelly Mirabella here just before we started the show, somebody that, um, kind of is kind of doing her own thing, kind of doing multiple things. Doing a lot of work in AI and also Amazon affiliate marketing and, She is the same wherever, right?

She's going to talk about [00:18:00] most, I see most of her content on Tik TOK is about her Amazon affiliate marketing stuff, wherever I see her on, on, on the other accounts, like LinkedIn, be more discussing the AI. So it's kind of like you pick, pick your channel and talk about a component of your business, depending on what channel that you're on.

But if you're a multiple employee company, then you almost have. An unlimited amount of resources, because if you get enough people that are willing to have conversations about what they do, then they can talk about their sphere of expertise in your business, how they've gotten to where they are, what type of skill sets they have, how that, how those skill sets relate to customer service or helping the business grow or, creating an exceptional experience for the customer or, things that they've done to help other customers.

Obviously case studies are super important if you can, you know, get the, um, the permission of that customer to have that story told. I mean, there's. You know, almost an infinite amount [00:19:00] of content there, but how that, how that splits off from say their personal account versus the branding, you know, that's one of those, that's one of the things you sort of ask, okay, you know, what, what are these people talking about on their personal accounts?

You know, are they, me being a little, too controversial or whatever, because sometimes, you know, sometimes you, you want to have these individuals spreading really good information about your business or being a good representative of their business. But then, you know, they're their personal stuff isn't always that great.

It's okay to have that conversation and it's okay to maybe, um, maybe not have that person share, you know, because if somebody doesn't have digging, they're going to find something that they don't like. And, you know, sometimes that can be a little bit of a detractor. I guess, you know, when I, I'll say to people like, hey, you know, share whatever you want, be vulnerable, be authentic, be who you are. But I also kind of say, look, you know, read the room a little bit too, you know, because we, we know that there are certain polarizing, uh, topics, especially at the moment, um, that, that are going to be more alienating people than bringing people together. And I don't think [00:20:00] anybody wants to intentionally, drive people away from either their content or from somebody else's content.

You know, like I said, read the room a little bit and just be considerate of how other people might take something that, you know, is going to be somewhat controversial. And maybe either put that behind, uh, um, you know, share that only with your personal friends or whatever, and not to everybody.

But, um. Again, I'm not going to tell somebody not to do that if they don't want to because I'm not about, you know, if that's what you want to share, then that's what you're going to share.

It's interesting, Jeff, because I, I do that for Instagram stories. I try to share at least one Instagram story a day. And there's times though, where I'm like, well, I probably, I really don't want to share like a bunch of, it's probably silly, but I don't want to share a bunch of pictures of my kids at the pool.

You know, on my Instagram stories, I just, I don't want a bunch of [00:21:00] strangers on the internet to see my dog, my young daughters in bathing suits and whatever. So I always just put that into my, my friends list. And this is where you, you can still share and you can have those close friends where you can still publish content too.

You can have like, this is just the, for the people that. You know, Hey, you know, you, we know what we're up to. We're good friends, and you can have those different lists again, and then we went camping over the 4th of July and I shared a whole bunch of pictures of our camping trip with my Facebook friends, but I published a Facebook regularly and I don't include a ton of pictures about my kids. Those are the public posts. So I think that you can still have that divide, especially too, if you're a consultant, a coach, a realtor, where you are using more of your personal quote unquote, personal accounts as a business account, right?

the line between that's blurred quite significantly over the last [00:22:00] few years and that's okay. Again, that's more of the major reasons that these accounts have the ability to share with different groups. But again, I think the most important part regardless is that, you're still sharing something about yourself.

And you're still being authentic and real with who you are and what you want people to know about you or the brand you represent.

One million percent, one million percent agree. And I think, I really think that COVID is because it's the reason behind it is people were, I mean, this, it was great for my business, but a lot of people had pushed social media off to the side or put it on the back burner. And we're like, Oh, I post it like six times a year or every now and then.

And. All of a sudden that was how you were getting that brand awareness when the world was shut down. So people were paying attention to their social media again, but they couldn't go out and get a bunch of great branding photos or get stock, get, images of their product or so they were [00:23:00] having to show up as the brand.

And that's when. It definitely, I feel like it changed for the better because people now have, there's voices behind these businesses and like you said, it feels more authentic when you are following a business like a Wendy's or a KFC where it feels like that's, you know, there's a person behind it, man, it makes you like the brand better.

Yeah, it absolutely does. I think there's certainly something to the pandemic where it forced us, whether we liked it or not. It forced us to not just get creative, but it forced us to be in front of a camera. Because that's vastly, a majority of, of, of work even happened over things like Zoom.

And no longer did you have the ability to just go travel to a customer, you had to do your meetings over Zoom. And, you know, again, for better or for worse, it made people more comfortable being in front of a camera. I think, and I agree with you too, that it was a majority of the [00:24:00] time was a very positive thing.

Thank you. It gave people more comfort and say, you know, I can do this. I can be in front of a camera. I can share whatever and but nowadays, you know, 4 years later, you still have to be that, you know, being authentic and be real because even with a bunch of people being in front of a camera, there are some people who have found ways to put filters on that as well. You can still tell, and that's fine if that's what, if that's what they want to do and how they want to operate. But I would prefer just to not worry about having something highly produced and just talk.

Yeah, I'm right there with you and you do that on your tick tock, all the time. You're out there speaking on stages, not just social media with Lima. You were just at an event in Wichita. You're people can find you, speaking on stages all around the world, in the country right now.

So if people want to connect with you, if they're not able to see you at your next event, IRL. What's the best way for people to keep up to date with Jeff and [00:25:00] if they have any questions about personal branding and bringing that authentic feel into their business's brand, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

Well, it's Tik Tok or Instagram are the two main places to find me. And it's just Jeff Howell 76. You find me there, um, connect with me in each of those platforms. I am on LinkedIn. I am on X, I am on Facebook, but, of the multiple social platforms, Tik Tok and Instagram are usually the two places I spend most time.

Amazing. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for joining us on Rocky Mountain Marketing today.

Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Rocky Mountain Marketing. I hope you're leaving with valuable insights and the inspiration to lead your market. If you've enjoyed our time together and found today's podcast episode useful, I have a small favor to ask of you. Please hit that subscribe button to stay updated with the latest episodes.

And if you know someone who could benefit from these episodes, maybe a fellow business leader or an aspiring entrepreneur, [00:26:00] go ahead and share this episode with them. Let's spread the knowledge and grow together. Also, I'd love to hear from you and continue the conversation beyond the podcast. Visit me at katiebrinkley.

com to connect, to find more resources, or just to share your journey. And be sure to pick up your copy of my new book, the social shift at Katie Brinkley. com slash book. Thanks again for tuning in. I'm Katie Brinkley, and I can't wait to dive into more strategies and stories with you on the next episode of Rocky mountain marketing.

Let's keep on taking your marketing to new heights.