Brand Voice
This is how your brand communicates with the world in communications, branding, social media and so much more. Voice can encompass so much more than just the choice of words you use, it is the rhythm and the energy. Do you use a lot of actionable words, are you more laid back? Depending on the goal for your business and your product or service you will find what works. Throughout all of these processes to develop your brand voice being consistent is an umbrella rule to have. Getting loyal customers can be tough enough alone, but changing your interactions with them will make it harder for someone to associate with your message.
Finding “Your” Brand
Before you start posting and promoting your business, there are several things you need to identify.
- What is your mission? Are you simply selling a product, or trying to impact a customers life? This may seem like an obvious answer, but we cannot move forward with a social media campaign without a direction to work towards.
- What values do you hold as a business? Your values drive how you maneuver life as a brand, whereas the mission is an overarching theme you work towards. Take the values as your delivery methods and language, such as valuing a strong social presence, you would communicate on a local level with regional references.
- Thirdly you should identify the goals you have as a business. Your goals will be much more actionable compared to finding a specific voice and message. This may include reaching a certain follower count, specific engagement and more. From these more calculable actions you may post once a week to once a day. You might respond to all comments or just relevant ones. All of which utilize your voice, but are more quantifiable.
Now that you have done the gritty work of finding the baseline goals and directions you want to take, who’s going to receive this information?
- Even if you’re just starting out, or have been operating for years and are just starting the online presence, you likely know your ideal customers. Finding the “buyer persona” is not as complicated as it sounds. Based on your product or service there are certain assumptions you can make about who might be buying or looking to follow, and eventually buy.
- It can be boiled down into a few areas of focus such as demographics, geography, wants/needs, and socioeconomic. Your customers will have plenty of overlapping habits, but at the cross sections are where you target.
Lastly, how you use your platform and communicate with your new buyer persona is the voice you will create.
- Every brand has a voice, athletic wear companies want to use voice that initiates action and excitement. Hotels use phrasing to make you think their comfortable and familiar. Travel organizations will sell you on excitement and wonder. They do all these things through the words they choose, their phrases they lean on and more. “Just Do It” isn’t only something to put on a shirt or jacket, it’s how they want their consumers to live. You may not do what Nike does, but their communication is consistent and specific.
- Creating a tone and, to an extent, energy of your words will resonate more organically than random copy thrown together. Being emotional with your word choice helps greatly here. Happy, relaxed, energetic and more. The emotion is more of a theme, and your brand has a unique one.
Importance
Since we call this a unique brand voice, it should be known that you are creating this to seperate yourself from the rest of the crowd. Being unique will drive traffic to you out of interest. Just like your personal voice and sound, the brand voice should standout. Be bold and interesting. Start trends, don’t always follow them. A good brand voice, drives brand recognition and loyalty. Organic results and sales are just as important as paid advertising results, though they can be harder to come by. The juice is worth the squeeze here though!