How to Define Your Brand Voice
Brand voice is everything, especially when you’re trying to capture the attention and engagement of your audience on social media. Social media is a great place to build relationships and showcase your company culture, but what does it mean to establish a brand voice?
What is a Brand Voice?
It’s the personality of a brand. Think of it like creating a persona. If your company/brand was a person what would it look like, talk like, act like, etc. It is an early bird or a night owl? Coffee or tea? Suit and tie or blazer and jeans? Is it prim and proper or does it have a mouth like a sailor? You get the idea. Your company persona should carry through every inch of your marketing and branding and then some.
Why Your Brand Voice is Important
Selecting your brand voice is important. Staying true to your brand voice is even more important. Your brand voice demonstrates who you are as a company. It’s the way people can connect and relate to your content. We often talk to our clients about making sure their content incorporates the facts, fun, and feels. How you craft your message around facts, fun, and feels is part of your brand voice. It’s the emotion (or lack thereof) that you put into the message. It doesn’t matter if it is a Facebook post, ad copy, a video, website page, or a blog post. The qualities of your brand voice should carry throughout.
Qualities to Consider for Your Brand Voice
Here are some qualities to consider for your brand voice. It’s a good idea to make this part of your brand guidelines and make sure your marketing team understands when and how it’s appropriate to respond to certain situations. For example, while Elevate’s brand voice is playful, relaxed, and informative, we wouldn’t want to respond in a playful manner to an emergency or crisis. That would be insensitive of us. So while we are playful 95% of the time, we are also mindful of how we respond and what our message conveys.
Compassionate & Empathetic
Goofy & Humorous
Educational & Informative
Emotionally Driven
Sarcastic or Snarky
Passive
Assertive & Serious
Bold & Shocking
Thought-Provoking or Awareness
You’ll also want to decide if your company and brand will respond to and/or embrace certain conversations surrounding certain topics. For example, as a company, Elevate steers clear of political conversations. Here are some things you’ll want to consider how/if you’ll respond to:
Political
Religious
National/Global Issues (i.e. 9/11)
Inclusive (i.e. race, gender, etc)
Self-Promotion (brag on yourself!)
Great Examples of Great Brand Voices
As marketers, we love to follow brands that have voices all over the board. We work with brands that are very flirty and feminine, brands that are strictly informative, and even brands that embrace sarcasm. Each one of us on our team gravitates towards different brand personalities. Here are a few brands we love and why:
Sheets & Giggles Twitter
Wendy’s
Why: While the majority of the time they are cheerful, they have no problem taking a sarcastic jab at their competition. When they do take a jab, it often goes viral. Check out their Twitter page.
Sheets and Giggles
Why: Easy comic relief and has somehow found a way to make buying bed sheets entertaining. Their brand voice is consistent throughout their website copy, social media, and email marketing.
Bath Township Police Department (Michigan)
Why: Going against the grain, the Bath Township Police Department takes to their Facebook page with content to cause many belly laughs and share-worthy content. We like how they share some humor and personality, but when it’s time to be serious, they know how to get down to business.
A Great Example of a Great Brand Voice Gone Wrong
Burger King UK
The situation: It all started with a one-line Tweet on International Women’s Day. Burger King UK published “Women belong in the kitchen". You can imagine the uproar that this caused. They used this bold statement to capture attention about their new program to help female employees pursue their culinary dreams and careers.
The problem: While trying to be funny with this shocking statement to serve as clickbait, BK UK is accused of poorly missing the mark. So much so that they issued an apology and took down the original tweet. See the aftermath on Twitter here.
The takeaway: Even if you plan to have a follow-up message as BK UK did, people may not see the follow-up. First impressions (and first reads) are everything so consider that first glance and how someone will digest that information. We think that BK UK had a great idea but it probably wasn’t thought through and looked at from all angles.
How to Create Your Brand Voice
We hear from companies all the time how tough it can be to create a brand voice. Some companies, maybe even you, aren’t quite sure what your brand voice is or where to go from here. Our recommendation is to take some time to reflect on your current branding. How would you define it? Does it excite you? If you were a client of your own company, what intrigues you about your branding? If you find yourself thinking your branding is boring, then it might be time for a brand refresh.
Once you reflect on what your current brand is like, take some time to dream up what you want it to be. What are some brands that you love? What are those qualities and characteristics?
If you’ve hit “writer’s block” don’t worry. You’re not alone in this exercise! This can be a hard thing to work through, but we can help. Give us a shout and we can work with your team on defining your brand voice and setting up the next steps for carrying it throughout your marketing and communications!