How to Discover and Define Your Brand’s Voice
Your company or organization is comprised of many voices—those of your leaders, team members, board members, volunteers or anyone who works on your behalf. But when “speaking” on your marketing channels, your brand’s voice is what your audience hears. It’s the voice behind your blog articles, your website content, social media posts and so much more. A lot is invested in your voice. After all, it can help your brand stand out in a sea of other businesses and orgs vying for dollars.
Let’s dive into the powerful world of messaging—specifically how to discover your brand’s voice.
What’s the Difference Between Voice, Tone and Style?
To an outsider, words are just that… words. But not so fast! There are different aspects of your messaging that evoke certain emotions and feelings from your audience. Those aspects include voice, tone and style. You may have heard the term “voice” used interchangeably with the words style or tone, but all three factors play a role in how you speak with your audience.
Voice
This is the distinctive sound of your brand, including your personality. Does your organization sound playful, cheeky and fun? Inspirational? Serious and straightforward? Your brand voice also speaks to the rhythm of your words. Maybe your organization writes short sentences. Sharp sentences. Or maybe your words are more like a flowing stream, musical and filled with gleam. Okay, so maybe you wouldn’t go as far as rhyming, but you should pay attention to the rhythm and structure of your organization’s voice.
Tone
If your voice is the personality, then your tone is the way your voice is perceived in various situations. For example, if you’re a nonprofit, you wouldn’t use the same tone when asking for a large donation as you would when speaking about the fun everyone had at last night’s volunteer appreciation event.
Some situations call for a more serious tone, while others can be playful. This is especially true for nonprofit organizations because many charities are helping to solve the world’s problems, which are often very serious matters. However, there will also be times to celebrate your successes.
Understanding and consciously thinking about your tone based on the context of your messaging can make a difference between being perceived as empathetic or tone-deaf. You want to read the room, so to speak, and make sure that your tone fits the situation.
Style
Consider this: How do your words look on the page? Do your titles use a capital letter for the start of every major word? Do you use the Oxford comma? What about words you should avoid? Implementing an editorial style guide is the perfect way to ensure that, even if there are multiple people writing for your brand, your style stays consistent. You will also want to keep these style rules in mind with your logo design, branding and other visual elements associated with your organization. Even if you haven’t established a guidebook for your style just yet, there are plenty of starting points for your organization, like the AP Style Guide or the Chicago Manual of Style.
How to Use Your Voice to Communicate
Communicate with simplicity.
Short attention spans and the age of multitasking mean simplicity is best. There’s a reason TikTok videos have been so effective—they’re short and captivating. Break up your paragraphs where you can to provide your readers with an easy reading experience. And avoid industry jargon as best you can, unless using it says, “We know our stuff,” to your target audience (and your audience knows the jargon).
Communicate with sensitivity and awareness.
This is mostly common sense, but consider your audience and choose your words carefully. Stay away from words and terms they might consider offensive or insulting. For example, if you decide to speak about “children with special needs” as opposed to “children with disabilities,” be consistent. Don’t talk down to your audience. Speak with respect. This is the perfect type of thing that you would include in an editorial style guide to be sure that everyone is on the same page about words or phrases your brand does use and which ones they don’t.
Communicate with selflessness.
Your marketing messages are not about you—or they shouldn’t be. And this is what a lot of brands get wrong, because it feels very natural and normal to think that marketing = much ado about you. The thing is (and forgive my language) customers don’t give a shit about you. They care about what your brand can do for them. You can tout the key features and amazing benefits of your goods and services all day, on every platform, but if you don’t explain how those things address your audience’s pain points and solve their problems, nobody is really going to care much.
Three Brand Voice Questions to Ask for Every Message
What is your main message?
It’s easy to get caught up in trying to get your voice just right that you completely forget one of the most important details: your main message. This is the first place to start. Ask yourself what you want your audience to take away from the message, what you want them to do next and what details must be included.
2. Who are you talking to?
It won’t do you much good to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) if you don’t know exactly who you’re trying to reach. Personas are the perfect way to identify your audience. A persona involves identifying aspects of your audience that can help you better understand them, like age, background, hobbies, interests or habits. While your audience is undoubtedly unique, it helps to try to group your audience into categories.
Give your personas a real name and demographics. Consider who your typical customers are, and create your fictional characters from there.
Create varying persona types for each group, and this will help you as you try to communicate and put your best voice forward.
3. Where is the middle ground for your voice?
It’s time to decide how you would like your voice to be perceived with this specific message. As a baseline, decide the level of formality you’re comfortable with as a starting point. Then, determine if it’s okay to go outside of those lines for certain reasons. For example, you may decide that it’s okay to be less formal for a social media post, or even more formal for educational materials.
What’s the number one rule for brand voice?
Consistency. You want your audience to feel that every communication touchpoint, no matter who wrote the messaging, is coming from the same brand. If you’re not consistent across all communication, you’ll create confusion, and it’s hard for people to connect with a brand that’s confusing.
