Have you ever struggled with inconsistency in your brand content marketing? Facing voice and tone inconsistencies in content strategy implementation is a common issues marketers face. The most effective solution to curb this problem is to prepare tone of voice guidelines for the content team. These guidelines not only give direction to the overall content marketing plan but also ensure stronger messaging. Moreover, your brand identity is retained in front of your audience. But, how to prepare the right tone of voice guidelines for your brand content marketing team? First, let’s understand what is tone of voice in content and why it is important:
Why tone of voice is important?
Setting the right tone of voice moves your brand content marketing in the right direction. There are 3 main elements of any effective communication:
- Choice of words
- Tone of Voice
- Body language
According to Albert Mehrabian, the choice of words, tone of voice and body language are 7%, 38% and 55% important in effective communication respectively. [1]
Tone of voice for brand varies from platform to platform, depending upon the audience present on every media outlet. However, variation does not mean inconsistedncy. Implementing some set rules for content creation helps in maintaining a consistent voice and language across all fronts in your organization.
Understanding Tone Of Voice Guide:
The tone of voice guide is a clear set of instructions for setting the right brand voice.
Since brand creation is all about personifying your brand, it means that your brand will also have a voice – just like a person. Brand voice refers to a distinct and steady personality or style or your brand. Similarly, tone is a subset of voice. It is linked with the attitudes and moods depicted in certain brand content pieces. Tone may change depending upon the audience, the channel or the situation. However, brand voice remains the same.
For example, your client proposal description may be more formal as compared to your informal Instagram stories. Similarly, the content you post on your blog may be more detail-oriented and factual as compared to what you sent in your emails.
Thus, you need to properly document your brand voice. Moreover, you also need to train your brand content marketing team on shaping the tone based on different circumstances.
What are the Different Types of Tone of Voice?
There are several types of tone of voice. Brands can select any tone of voice depending upon the brand elements and brand marketing strategy. Choosing a brand voice and tone is a decision that requires thorough thinking and brainstorming, as it will define the brand’s content marketing messages.
Some common examples of brand tone of voice are:
- Informal tone
- Serious tone
- Formal tone
- Humorous tone
- Conversational tone
- Inspiring tone
- Respectful tone
- Empathetic tone
- Motivating tone
- Assertive tone
- Alerting tone
How to Document Tone of Voice Guide for Your Brand
Documenting your brand’s tone of voice guidelines is essential to align brand content marketing efforts with content creation and strategy execution. When your tone of voice guidelines are well-documented with suitable examples, your team will efficiently follow the instructions. Thus, it brings coherency in your brand voice. Here are some of the main steps you can take to document tone of voice guidelines for your brand:
Define your voice: Brand Brainstorming Exercise
Since your brand is the personification of the selected brand elements. Thus, your brand voice speaks volumes about your promise. Since the customers today require a great deal of transparency and authenticity from brands, your need to establish a solid brand voice to win customer’s interest and trust.
The brand voice brainstorming exercise is very helpful in finding out your brand’s tone and voice.
To do this exercise, here is what you need to do:
- Imagine sitting together with your business partners and competitors
- Set the scene for sitting. Imagine that you are all sitting on a conference table and the conversation is in full swing.
- Now, place your brand on the table and think about what typical characters your brand shall play in accordance with your audience
- Do you want your brand to be the voice of authority among the business partners and competitors? Is your brand going to lighten the mood with humor? How about spurring intellectual conversations amidst piling generic information?
- Once you see the world from your brand’s point of view, it gives you a clear idea of how your brand would talk as a person instead of a mere business identity
However, in this exercise, you may face the challenge of confusion during thinking and decision making. To curb this issue, consider what your competitors are doing. Remember that every person will perceive your brand differently. So, your main focus should be to outrank your top competitor.
Also read: 9+ Effective Brainstorming Techniques To Ace Every Stage of Writing Process
Develop A brand Voice dictionary
Brand dictionary helps you navigate through the collection of words and phrases, so you can choose the ones that match with your brand’s personality. The dictionary also contains instructions for content marketing team on how to use the words and phrases appropriately. Here is how you can develop a brand dictionary:
- Define the brand style of language. In this step, consider your target audience and think whether the brand is for everyone in your target audience or you will be talking to specific audience segments.
- List out appropriate sample words and phrases that match brand style of language. For example, the brand dictionary for a coffee brand would include words like refresh, recharge, energize and so on.
- Finally, add instructions on which type of words shall content team prefer over using other words. For example, there is a difference between using premium over luxury.
Keep in mind that every industry and brand has its jargon. The brand dictionary shall set clear outlines about the usage of jargon which matches your brand tone of voice.
Prepare Clear Good and Bad examples of tone of voice
Humans understand best with examples. No matter how complex of a topic you select, examples always help in simplifying understanding of just about anything. When it comes to executing your brand tone of voice, examples help alot. When multiple team members are developing brand content for you, the good and bad examples of brand tone of voice helps them choose the right writing style for your brand. Since traits are subjective, giving clear examples of sentences and phrases that support your brand voice is a good way to move forward.
Ditch the Hassle and Use an AI Writing Assistant
If you want to place more focus on aligning brand tone of voice rather spending hours on basic content creation, using an AI content writing assistant will resolve your problems. WriteMe.Ai is an AI content writing assistant offering more than 20 tone of voice options. Select the content tone of voice for any type of writing and generate content that aligns with your brand voice in minutes!
References:
[1] Albert Mehrabian – Psych.UCLA
