A brand’s voice is an expression of its personality and the way it is perceived by the public. It is a strategic tool that effectively communicates the brand’s values and essence – which is why it is important to implement it properly in all content pertaining to the brand.
Ensuring that brand voice is consistent throughout your content will contribute to the brand’s growth and a consistent experience for your customers.
Your brand voice talks through your content. If you don’t speak in your brand voice in your content, you will find it more difficult to continue to connect with your audience.
As such your brand voice doesn’t just help you tell your story – it helps your business create a consistent, memorable impression.
So how do you go about ensuring your brand voice is embedded in all your content?
To get started, consider your brand voice as more than a voice, as a ‘character’.
Define your voice and understand what makes it unique – its quirks and character.
And then go beyond voice alone and consider what would be the preferences of your brand voice. What style and type of images would it prefer, what videos would it share, which other brands would be its friends? Who would it be if it were a person?
This allows you to extend your brand voice beyond written content into how it would engage on mediums like Instagram and YouTube.
Once you’ve defined your voice you can start to work on how to present it and make it come to life.
Here are some ideas:
- Use language and tone: Write like you speak. Aim for an informal tone that is natural, friendly and easy to read.
- Create a voice map: A voice map is a visual depiction of the tone and style of your brand voice. It can be as simple as a mind map, a handwritten note or a more complex visual representation.
- Develop a brand persona: A character or individual that exemplifies all aspects of your brand voice.
- Develop a style guide: Define the look and feel of your brand voice and how it must be applied in content.
Also, always keep in mind that your brand voice is a transitory thing. It is a constantly developing and shifting tone that needs to stay relevant and fresh with the constantly changing media landscape.
One of the most common mistakes is to simply put a voice to your brand, and then expect that to be the end of it. You need to continue to work with it and adapt it as time goes on.
In order for a brand to truly make brand voice a part of its identity, it will need to be constantly updated and updated often. There is no such thing as a “set it and forget it” brand voice.
This is a challenge for most businesses because they tend to want to create a brand voice and then move on. They want to focus on their content and their audience. They don’t want to constantly think about the way they are talking to their audience.
This is an issue because if you don’t work on your brand voice, it will slowly start to change and become more and more irrelevant. As we keep saying, we live in a world where everything is constantly changing and developing.
If you and your business don’t work on your brand voice, it will slowly start to change and become more and more irrelevant.
You can put a voice to your brand, but you can’t leave it there. You need to constantly work on your voice and make sure it is as relevant as possible.
So as you can see, creating a brand voice is an ongoing process. It’s not something you set and forget. You constantly need to work with it and make sure that it is as relevant as possible to the constantly changing media landscape and adapts to new forms of communication as they emerge.
The SimpleMarketing.AI Content Engine generated this post (with a little human editing).
To learn how you can reduce your own Content Marketing burden with AI assistance, visit SimpleMarketing.AI