What is a brand voice?
The term "brand voice" refers to how you use language to express your brand's personality, values, and unique position within your market. It includes your standard tone (though specific tone can and should shift somewhat based on your message), attitude, level of formality, word choice. Your voice, along with your style guide, helps keep all your brand writing consistent and aligned with your overall organizational mission.
Why does my brand need a voice?
There are so many reasons why brand voice matters, but here are a few I believe are significant:
Having a clear voice humanizes your brand and offers an opportunity to infuse personality.
It also helps to differentiate you from your competitor field, where there are likely many brands that rely on stale language to talk about the work they do.
It gives you a starting point for building an emotional connection with your audience and sets clear expectations for interacting with your brand.
Knowing your brand voice offers everyone on your team (and anyone who writes on your behalf) the clarity and guidelines they need to communicate consistently.
Things to consider when establishing your brand voice:
Here are some ways to get started if you are an entrepreneur or small business.
Examine Your Existing Content
When developing your authentic brand voice, think about how you actually write and speak with your audiences on a day-to-day basis. It's a lot easier—and a lot more real—to put some polish and parameters on the way you naturally communicate than it is to invent a whole new way of talking about what you do. Are you usually pretty casual in the way you talk about what you do? Do your marketing materials make edgy statements or use language that might not be suitable for your 5-year-old niece or your great-grandmother? Is formality essential to reflect the professionalism expected in your industry?
Consider Your Values
I am always talking with clients (and really anyone who will listen to me) about the importance of identifying and living their brand values. Begin by determining your brand values and what they mean in the context of your business. Next, be sure that the types of things you share and the words you choose to use or avoid match those values. For example, let's say you work with kids, and "inclusivity" is a core value for your brand. You might make a conscious effort to use words like "your grownups" instead of "your mom and dad" to be inclusive of a broad spectrum of family structures. Or you might use the singular "their" instead of gendered pronouns when possible.
Identify Your "Connection" Goal
Think about how you want to establish a connection with your target audience. For most entrepreneurs and small businesses, getting personal is a smart strategy and can even increase word-of-mouth referrals. Do you want your audience to feel like you are a wise guide? A co-conspirator? A rebel? A serious, trusted source? Each of these relationships necessitates a different use of language.
Investigate Your Inbox
Take a trip through your inbox and look at email messages from frequent contacts. If you read through several emails from the same sender, you'll begin to notice patterns. Jan is short and to-the-point and uses the same one or two formal sign-offs over and over. Meanwhile, Evan is a frequent emoji user and writes in more of a casual, conversational style. If Jan signed off with a wink, you'd probably notice and maybe wonder what's going on with her. Think about how you want your brand to show up in email communications. Are you casual and friendly or precise and serious?
Create a Word Bank
The way two professionals in the same industry describe their work and the value they offer can vary widely. Think about the words and phrases you use when talking about what you do. Let's say you are a photographer—do you take "dynamic, action-packed shots" or "natural, emotion-filled images." Because your brand voice should reflect the essence of what you are all about, it's important to know what language best captures that essence.
Know Who You're Talking To
We've all heard a million times the importance of audience personas and understanding our ideal customer. When establishing your brand voice, this work matters so much. The more clearly you can imagine who you are writing and speaking to, the more you can develop resonant messages. People connect most easily with someone who sounds like them because it makes them feel comfortable and understood. We want to do business with brands that "get us."
Once you have done all of this introspection and research, it's time to create a brand voice chart to capture your brand voice's key characteristics with examples. This exercise, when coupled with a style guide, gives you a solid foundation for brand communications. If you need help creating a comprehensive voice, tone, and style guide, I offer packages that get you set up with everything you need. If you want to begin by identifying your brand voice for yourself, check out my free Brand Voice Chart template!