It's long been known that corporate brands have started using social media in way's it was never meant to be used. The fact that faceless entities exist on sites where personal transparency is valued, is unusual.

A couple days ago my friend was telling me about having a conversation with  Nike Plus on Twitter. He didn't know who the person was that he was talking to, but assumed it was someone from Nike.

At the end of his story he mentioned that the reason he signed up for Twitter was to network with REAL people and get to know people he idolized on a more personal level. He suggested that corporate brands appearing in social networks was so gradual he didn't realize it was filling up with these FAKE people.

So, faceless corporate brands aren't just promoting new advertising & marketing campaigns on social networks; they're actually pretending to be humans; creating their own content for specific sites.

Example:

Nike Plus posted this to Twitter:

"Congrats 2 ACPin from E. Brunswick NJ 4 winning the Nike+Twitter "Sprint to Spring" challenge w 82mi in 14days. ACPin whats ur twitter name?"

Who was this posted by? Is this congrats from Nike? Do they really mean it? Do they REALLY want to know his Twitter name?

The point is, no one knows. No one really knows who this is, the bio doesn't give us any clues. This is an example of 'synthetic authenticity'.

So, how does a brand avoid this?

I have 2 ways:

Add a face (or several faces) to the brand

If your already trusting a person (or group of people) to be the voice of your brand; you might as well tell us. That would deal with part of it. You still need to work on the content they produce. It shouldn't feel like the company's forcing them to produce content that promotes the company; the spokespeople for your brand should create content that's valuable to your target audience.

In the Nike Plus case, they should really choose people who naturally Tweet valuable content their target audience would like. (Maybe someone who's an athlete, or at least someone who jogs and uses Nike Plus gear.

Act more like a brand

If you're here, why pretend to be one of us when you can help us connect to each other? You can create a hub of activity with your branded page. It's possible to do it on any network. Rather than producing your own content, find people within your target audience to syndicate. Mentioning them and using their content will help connect users within your target audience. You'll get known as a great place to find people to connect with.