4 ways technology can scale the human touch

1. YouTube

I personally think YouTube is the best channel for scaling a human touch. Creating a community on YouTube gives you the possibility to connect with people in a highly personal way. Videos in which your own employees talk to (potential) customers is such a great way to make your company more personal. It’s amazing how many lousy YouTube channels you find these days. And from major companies! YouTube isn’t a channel for posting leftover video content, it’s a channel for creating value for your customers in a very human, personal and engaged manner.

Check out how I try to create a human touch on my YouTube channel (and let me know what you think of it):  

https://www.youtube.com/user/StevenVanBelleghem?sub_confirmation=1&annotation_id=annotation_2757873397&feature=iv&src_vid=vBHk7bYZPN8

2. Live, real-time interactions

Use social media to interact. To engage. Sometimes take the time to sit down behind a computer and start to engage with customers, fans and prospects. Making time for this allows you to connect with a lot of people at the same time.

Next, there are of course many new technologies to create ongoing human engagement, such as chat functionalities on websites. Creating REAL human conversations via chat helps to create a human touch in a fast, easy and fun way.

3. New video formats

I talked about YouTube, but also try the newer video formats: Instagram Video and Twitter video are good examples of these. When someone tweets something nice about you, you’ll probably favorite it. It takes you 1 second to do so. What if you take 5 seconds to make a short thank you video as a reply. Giving that sort of additional attention to people helps create the emotional bond and the human touch. It takes a little more effort, but the impact is much greater.

4. Advertising your real smile moments

Even advertising can help to create a human touch, and the latest campaign of McDonalds is a good example of that. In the campaign, McDonald’s shows real human interactions in their restaurants. They are randomly selecting people who can pay their check with ‘lovin’. This is something very small and very human. I like it. By filming and orchestrating it a little bit, they can enlarge the effect. Their video has been watched by millions of people. By advertising and enlarging your real human moments, you increase the impact. 

I would recommend trying them out and seeing what works for you. We now have new ways to reach out to customers, so let’s fully use the potential of these new possibilities. And remember: nothing beats REAL human interaction, but let’s use technology to scale it a bit where we can.