Your brand’s voice is intricately woven throughout your business. More than just a matter of tone, this is the outward display of your brand’s personality, allowing customers to recognize products, services and content as unmistakably yours. In fact, consider for a moment whether your brand’s voice is interesting and effective enough to identify itself as your own without the aid of a logo or branding of any kind.

Not sure how it stacks up? No worries — our expert writers at Inbound AV have compiled a few basic rules to aid in nailing the voice of your brand and keeping your digital messaging consistent and appealing.

Rule no. 1: Define your brand voice in simple terms

If you’ve ever flipped through a brand’s visual style guide, you know things can get needlessly complicated in a hurry. Near-infinite combinations of fonts, color palettes, logo variations and other do’s and don’ts can get out of hand without clear, concise guiding principles.

Remember, your brand voice is the guiding directive behind every piece of written content you’ll ever produce — the more sophisticated this wordsmithing guide becomes, the harder it will be to remain faithful to it.

Before determining any ultra-specific rules to follow, commit to three or four one-word descriptions of your ideal voice.

Honest. Professional. Friendly. Technical. Relevant. Informative. Fun.

Whatever you decide, ensure that these pillars are clear enough for your in-house writers, outsourced freelancers and even those within your company writing outbound emails to easily remember and apply.

Rule no. 2: Be consistent

It can be tempting to betray your brand’s established voice just to ride the wake of a hot social media trend. Maintaining a consistent voice means resisting this temptation.

This being Super Bowl week provides excellent examples of the different approaches businesses take to capitalize on trends and major events. For every Microsoft and Duracell commercial aiming to elicit a deeply emotional response, there are ads that shine through brilliantly with humor and parody, like last year’s smash hit Tide ad. These brands recognize the importance of staying true to their respective voice, especially on advertising’s biggest stage.

Capitalizing on social trends is important, as is keeping your brand fresh, but if rule no. 1 is correctly executed, your voice should be able to adapt without losing your customers’ trust. Inconsistent messaging can ruin customer experiences, even for the most loyal followers. 

According to a 2018 finding by the Sprout Social Index, 56% of consumers are interested in branded social media content that entertains, but a study from 2016 shows 71% have unfollowed a brand because they were embarrassed. Don’t jolt customers who follow your social accounts exclusively for discounts and sales out of their comfort zones with hamfisted attempts at humor.

Knowing how to balance entertaining and informative messaging with ads that prove irritating and trite requires an intimate knowledge of who your followers are — and why they follow you. Creative messaging must always live within the framework set forth by your brand voice guidelines.

Rule no. 3: Know your social channels

Different platforms attract different audiences — something that connects with users on LinkedIn might not land with your Twitter following. Ads and discounts on Facebook might not generate the same engagement levels on Pinterest. Connecting with users on each of your social platforms requires more nuance than blasting an identical ad or blog post across every channel.

There are countless reasons a business might lose followers on social media. Offensive messaging, spamming users and unresponsiveness all come to mind as obvious culprits. However, according to another Sprout finding, another less-evident issue can be equally damaging — 41% of users admitted to unfollowing brands that don’t share relevant information.

This is a curious problem for brands, since a relevant on Facebook might not be nearly as applicable to another platform like Twitter (and vice versa). This is why you might notice brands you follow posting the same link or ad across various channels, each sporting different headlines and calls to action from one another. Take care to properly apply your brand voice to each marketing channel in a way that connects with that particular audience. 

Rule no. 4: Align and evaluate with your marketing team

Effectively implementing brand voice guidelines requires repetition. A one-off meeting (or worse, an easily-missable email) emphasizing the importance of these new pillars of your marketing content might not stick the first time. Ensure your team is onboard with persistent self-evaluation of your social posts, advertisements and web content.

It doesn’t take an exhaustive audit of your social efforts to recognize when things begin to turn off-message. Take your one-word descriptions of your ideal brand voice and read your latest newsletter with them in mind. Scan the business’ Facebook page for any updates that stick out as overly-corporate or complex. If outsourcing to freelance writers, ensure their writing maintains its proper tone. Additionally, don’t forget to look at how your brand voice connects with your graphic design. If a website and social ads are colorful and fun, so too should your site copy and product descriptions.

Need a more hands-on approach to perfecting your brand voice? Our team of marketing experts wants to hear from you. Connect with us and get started with our team right here.

Logan Jones