It helps make your brand more genuine and personable, but it needs to be consistent. While you might adopt a more playful voice on Twitter Phone Number List and a more professional voice in a whitepaper, consistency is key if you want to create a brand that your customers recognize and engage with over time. How to Determine Your Brand Voice The voice you use for your brand depends on the persona you’re creating content for. In some organizations, you may address different personas. It’s important to identify both a “go-to” voice that addresses everyone and one that addresses individual personas. Stephanie Schwab of Social Media Explorer breaks down a brand’s voice into four categories: Character/ Persona, Tone, Language, and Purpose. Here’s her list of attributes for each category—which of these descriptors resonate with your brand? (Note: You may decide that some attributes fit with one buyer persona, but not with another.) Character/Persona Friendly Warm Inspiring Playful Authoritative Professional Tone Personal Humble Clinical Honest Direct Scientific Language Complex Savvy Insider Serious Simple Jargon-filled Fun Whimsical Purpose (different content will probably serve different purposes) Engage Educate Inform Enable Entertain Delight Sell Amplify Create a Consistent Voice Once you’ve defined your voice, you’ll want to aim for consistency across your entire company—allowing for some variability for each persona.
Here are some strategies we use at Marketo to achieve a consistent voice: Create brand guidelines. Ideally, you’ll develop a distinctive visual and written style that makes your brand instantly recognizable by your audience. To create brand guidelines, simply translate this style into words, include plenty of examples, and get buy-in from the C-suite. Check all your content against these guidelines and be sure to share them with any outsourced design agencies and your writing team. These guidelines will work best as living documents that are updated as you encounter new questions. So what should your brand guidelines include? Here’s a list to get started: Visual Guidelines—Do you use stock photography? How can your logo be used? Anything that visually supports your brand should be included here. Style Guides—This is where you indicate any writing style preferences that support your brand. Do you capitalize product names? Do you prefer open or closed words—for example, web site versus website. Do you have a style guide you rely on as your guiding principle—like AP Style or Chicago? Document these here. Personas—If it’s an internal document, it may make sense to include the details of your personas in your brand guidelines.