Give your brand a tone of voice
The way a person speaks is one of the first things other people notice. Soft-spoken, polite, enthusiastic, tough-spoken – you can judge a person from the way they communicate. No different with brands – the way they speak to their audience is extremely important, as that is how their audiences will remember them. But there are bigger hurdles to overcome before your brand can achieve a consistent, personal tone of voice: first you need to decide what the tone of voice should be, its characteristics and why; then you need to make sure that everyone in the company adopts that tone of voice in all external brand communication. In this post we are going to work on making sure that the tone of voice you adopt is good for your brand and your audience, then we will work on how to safeguard that consistency, once the tone of voice is decided.
First, define your voice
Before you can achieve a consistent tone of voice, you need to decide how you want others to perceive your brand. Do you want it to be perceived as cheerful and fun? Or perhaps more on the side of... strong and reliable? The way you want your brand to be perceived should define the way you choose your communication. An example is the company Innocent, whose tone of voice is very humorous and dynamic, this tone is felt in each of the publications they make, from the text on their website to the marketing content or their tweets, and even in the product information on their packaging.
Ask your audience
Your audience may appreciate a conversational style in which you address them, but don't take it for granted. Asking a few customers a series of questions is a good way to find out what your customers want, and one of the best ways to get your customers to answer some questions is by creating a survey. This sounds incredibly simple, but just having the intention to ask your audience can help you get the feeling to find the right tone and style.
Consult your workers
Once you've decided on a general tone of voice, it's time to start creating examples to share with your employees and collectively decide on a specific tone of voice. We're not suggesting you literally ask every single person in your company, but there should be a group of people to help make the decision to get as close to what your brand wants as possible. You can approach this step like you're trying to tune a radio station - obviously you're going to have to use your imagination again and go back in time to when you had to manually tune radios, but you get the idea. It's all about picking a general tone of voice and then fine-tuning it until it exactly reflects what your brand is like or how you want to communicate.
Neither exaggerate nor fall short
An effective tone of voice is achieved by weighing everything up. You don't want to overdo it because then it will sound like a parody, but you also don't want to leave your brand without personality and life. As an example, imagine your company markets energy drinks and you are trying to target a male audience. What would it be like to fall short? "You are a man, our product will make you not feel tired." Now let's try what it would be like to overdo it: "Harness the power of Zeus himself. Push, grow and burst his energy around everyone like the steel stallion that you are." This is about finding a middle ground where you project and bring your voice to life without going overboard. The best way to find a balance for your brand is to produce different types of pieces of copy, some where you slightly exaggerate, some where you fall short and some where you fall somewhere in between. Show the copy to the internal group of your company that you select and ask them for their opinion to get feedback. But remember, what is acceptable or not all depends on the individuality of the brand, some brands will lean more towards exaggeration and others will lean the other way around.
Create a style guide
Once we have finally decided on the right tone of voice, it is vitally important to record it and put it into a style guide. It should simply be a set of instructions for anyone who writes or edits content for your brand. The style guide should provide the basis for anyone to be able to produce content for your brand with the tone they should write in, what language they should and shouldn't use, and so on. At first, a style guide may seem like a hassle, it's time that a professional is going to waste, but believe us when we tell you that it's time you'll gain, your employees will have a detailed guide that they can refer to for the company's style, and your brand will gain a lot more in image.
Conclusion: Get your own personality by being natural
Think of a brand's tone of voice in the same way as a person's personality. No one wants to be perceived as boring, but if someone tries hard to act a certain way, those around them notice. It's the same with brands, don't try to force your brand because your communication will be artificial for other companies and also just because you think it's "cool" to be that way. At
Línea Gráfica we recommend that you guide all communication actions based on your brand personality, above all this will be decisive in your brand's online presence.
