What is My Brand Tone of Voice?

Think about your favourite brands and how they communicate with you. Do they use a mish-mash of styles to communicate? Or do they instead maintain a consistent tone? The answer is almost certainly the latter, and this consistent approach is key to developing a brand’s tone of voice and cultivating connections with customers.

Overall, your tone of voice is the way your business speaks to its customers. It could be playful, humorous, elegant, positive, weird – it could be anything you want it to be. If you imagine your brand as a person, it would be the characteristic way they speak to others. And if they start speaking differently, it can be confusing.

Now you know what tone of voice is, let’s look at why it’s important and how you can go about developing your business’s tone of voice.

Why is Tone of Voice Important?

Focusing on your tone of voice is vital for several reasons – we’ve listed four of them below…

• A Reflection of Your Brand’s Personality
  Every brand should have a personality, to make it more relatable. For example, Disney’s personality reflects the fun element of their brand and always remains wholesome, while a fashion brand might be edgier with their tone, creating a more adult-focused brand. Keeping your personality – and the tone of voice associated with it – consistent is the key to building your brand’s image.
• Increases Authenticity
  By being authentic, you automatically build trust. And a trusted brand is a brand that will both attract and retain customers. If your tone of voice constantly changes, you’ll come across as a brand with no clear identity, and if you don’t know who you are, potential customers certainly won’t.
• Helps You Stand Out
  Your brand’s tone of voice will help it stand out from the crowd – vital in a busy marketplace with many competitors. Your loud tone might be in stark contrast to the more reserved tones used by other brands. Or you might inject humour into your brand, making you stand out in a more serious and formal industry. And by standing out, you’re increasing your chances of being noticed.
• Speaks to Your Demographic
  Every brand will have a key demographic. You need to identify your core customer base, then tailor your tone of voice to speak directly to them. In essence, you want to be the kind of brand they’d meet with for a coffee – a friend, almost. By becoming a friend, you’ll gain trust, which in turn will drive sales.

How to Create a Tone of Voice

Creating your tone of voice is a vital step for any new business – without it, you’ll find it exceptionally hard to build meaningful customer relationships and differentiate your business from the crowd. Follow these steps to create your brand’s tone of voice…

• Understand Your Company’s Core Values
  Your core values, often written down in a mission statement, should be your first port of call. What is it your business hopes to do? What are the principles it will never abandon? You can then tailor your brand’s tone of voice to match the mission.For example, take Nike. Their mission statement says they want to ‘bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete.’ So, it’s no surprise that their advertising is inspiring, designed to push athletes towards doing better.
• Look Through Your Current Content
  By looking through your existing content, you can identify the pieces that have resonated most with your audience. This is particularly true for social media posts. Which ones got the most likes? Had the most comments? Were shared most?Looking at your best-performing pieces will hold valuable insights into what your audience truly identifies with. For example, did humour go over really well? If so, you’ll probably want to incorporate that into your content regularly.
• Research Your Audience
  To define your tone of voice, you’ve got to understand who is buying your products. Are your customers primarily middle-aged females? Or are they mainly teenagers with a penchant for rebellion?You can then adapt your tone of voice to mimic that used by your customers. So, for a younger audience, more slang might be appropriate, while a more conservative audience would probably appreciate something more wholesome.
• Get it Written Down
  You should now get everything down on paper. Define your brand’s main characteristics and why these characteristics are important, plus note down what content creators should and shouldn’t do to keep within your brand’s tone of voice.Your written guidelines should then be shared with everyone, and an editing team should then work tirelessly to ensure guidelines are met. Over time, everyone should naturally start writing in the required way.

Of Course, You Could Contact a Pro…

If you’re unsure about how your tone of voice should come across, there’s help available. At Hello Social, we’ve got the marketing experts on hand to investigate your brand and its customers, and then come up with clear guidelines. And we’ll stick to these guidelines throughout our time creating social media content your customers love.

To learn more about how we can help define your brand’s tone of voice, please get in touch today by calling [INSERT NUMBER] or emailing [INSERT EMAIL].